He tucked his phone away and led his gang in the direction of the next boulder. The ibuprofen was kicking in already, or maybe that was just the buoyant effect of his mood. His family was going to meet Spencer’s family.
Tonight, dinner. Someday, a wedding.
19. Spencer
Flynn’s words kept playing through Spencer’s mind like the catchiest of melodies.
I love you.
That was what Flynn had said, right? I love you. Flynn loved him. Flynn loved him, and he was in the finals, and his family had come. Last night’s pink cloud carried him through his morning run into the shower and all the way up to the moment he had to meet Pierre.
He’d gotten two texts that morning: a good morning kiss from Flynn and a decidedly un-kissy summons from Pierre. Why did he dread seeing his coach so much? This was a moment of shared triumph. They should be celebrating, the way he and Flynn had celebrated last night.
Well, not exactly like that.
He’d been working with Pierre since he was eighteen, only barely an adult from a legal point of view and not hardly an adult in any other way. He’d been flattered that a coach of Pierre’s caliber was willing to work with him and aware of how much he had to learn. He’d been raw, climbing on instinct and what he’d learned from the better climbers at his gym, except by the time he was eighteen, there weren’t any better climbers at his gym. So he understood why Pierre had treated him like the child he was.
But their relationship had never morphed into something more egalitarian. He still deferred to Pierre on everything, even though he was fully capable of setting his own schedule, researching his own diet plan, and doing his own scouting. Even though he was a better climber than Pierre had ever been. Even though he knew his own strengths and weaknesses with an intimacy Pierre never could.
He’d made the right decision yesterday, one based on probabilities. Even if the risk hadn’t paid off, it still would’ve been the right choice, because in the Olympic preliminaries, there was no difference between finishing tenth and finishing last. Just ask that poor climber from the Czech Republic. But more importantly, it was his decision to make. Pierre had no right to call him on the carpet for it. This was his career, his shot, and he’d been the one on stage.
Armed with righteous indignation, he stormed into the lobby of Pierre’s hotel with his chin up, determined not to apologize. He lasted all of two minutes.
Pierre was very rational—more hurt than mad, which Spencer could understand when he thought about it. It wasn’t a question of whether Flynn’s strategy had worked or not. It was a question of it being Flynn’s strategy. Except… wasn’t it a little bit about whether it had worked or not?
“I’m thinking we could combine the two methods going forward,” Spencer suggested. “Rehearse the madness, so to speak. Letting go of perfection—putting myself in the mindset of not overthinking it—was a whole paradigm shift. It broke through the barrier I’ve been struggling with. So I could take that new attitude and—”
“What are you planning to do tomorrow?” Pierre asked. They were in the same hotel bar where Flynn had joined them the other day, seated across from each other this time, and Pierre had one of his patented steely blue glares fixed on him.
“I really only have one choice for tomorrow. I need those extra seconds Flynn’s strategy buys me.”
“Is Flynn your coach? Because if he’s your coach, why did I bother changing my flight so I could be here working with you right now?”
“You’re my coach.” But maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe when all this was over, Spencer would look for a new one, someone whose climbing style had less in common with his own, who wouldn’t suggest the same strategies his own mind came up with. But for now, Pierre was here and Pierre was his coach. “Flynn had some good ideas, that’s all.”
“Was this one of them?” Pierre cued up a video on his phone. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”
“That’s, um, that’s the third boulder problem, right?” He watched himself make a couple of attempts, falling each time near the start.
“Can you tell me why you’re about to go left when the zone hold is to the right?”
The zone hold was a scoring position. If you couldn’t top the boulder, you got half credit for controlling the zone hold. Strategically, it made sense to secure the zone hold first, then try to figure out how to get to the finishing hold, but moving right hadn’t been working for him.
“Because, watch. See how I flip my hand this time? I realized I could jump from that position. I don’t stick it on this attempt but on the next one, I do.” He’d topped that boulder without using the zone hold, and if you topped the boulder, it didn’t matter whether you used the zone hold or not. Pierre knew that.
“But is that the strategy we agreed to, or is that another tip from Flynn?”
“It was a choice I made.” The advice he’d gotten from Flynn about thinking of his attempts as learning opportunities instead of black marks might’ve had something to do with noticing that option and choosing to explore it, but it wasn’t like it was the first time he’d ever topped a boulder without going through the zone hold. People did it all the time. Pierre was just being difficult.
“Do you not want me to succeed? Because both of the things you’re angry at me for contributed to me being in the finals tomorrow.”
“Of course I want you to succeed, but this is only one competition. I’m considering your career as a whole, and that means consistency. A risky move might net you a win sometimes but not every time. And unexpected success in one comp will be more than canceled out by unexpected failure in others.”
Unexpected success. His success yesterday had been unexpected. By him, by the media, and also, apparently, by his coach.
“You weren’t even training me to win.”
“Did you think you were going to win?”
“No.” But maybe his coach should’ve believed he had a chance at it. “What did you mean about changing your plane tickets? What you said earlier. Why did you have to change your plane tickets?”
Pierre glanced down at the cup of coffee he’d been toying with. He cleared his throat. “Now, Spencer—”
“You were planning to fly back before the finals, weren’t you? Because you didn’t think I’d be in them.”
“It was a reasonable assumption. It’s not like flights can’t be changed.”
“Right. Which means you could’ve booked your flight for after the finals and changed it if I wasn’t in them, but there’s a fee to reschedule, so you put your money on my being eliminated.”
“Your money,” Pierre corrected, because Spencer was covering his expenses.
“If you think I’m paying a change fee because you bet on me losing, you’re a hundred percent wrong. Change your ticket back. Go home.”
“Spencer.”
“We’re done here. There’s nothing more you can teach me.” He slid out of the booth, stopping to throw a few thousand yen down on the table to pay for his cup of coffee, though Pierre would probably expense the whole bill right back to him anyway. His fury carried him out of the hotel into the morning sunshine and left him there. He’d sent his family to Tokyo to sightsee, assuming he’d be closeted with Pierre all day, which meant he didn’t have much of anywhere to be right now.