It’d felt good to show off a little. If there were a peg board event in the Olympics, he might have a chance of winning it. Even Shino, who was practically a shoo-in to medal, hadn’t been able to do as many laps up and down as he had. It was all in the abs.
The gym had been welcoming, the staff happy to give them a tour. There’d been a lot of pleasantries it was impossible to skip over—Canadians were known for being polite, but they had nothing on the Japanese—and dozens of climbers who wanted their picture taken with the Olympians. That had been fun—posing with one starstruck climber after another, shaking hands and giving autographs. Some of the gym’s patrons spoke enough English to wish him well, and all of them did that bowing thing that made him feel like a king.
What wasn’t going to be fun was missing the only chance he would ever have to march into the Olympic opening ceremonies with his country’s delegation. The peg board would’ve still been there tomorrow. The ceremonies were only tonight.
When they’d finally poured out of the gym back onto the sidewalk, they’d found themselves in a swarm of business people, dressed identically enough to be eerie—like a penguin army. Mika and Shino had exchanged horrified glances and started urging everyone at a frantic pace toward the train station.
Yes, Shino had warned them that the trains got crowded at rush hour, but Spencer had never seen anything like a Tokyo train station at six o’clock before. Even Flynn seemed to understand the gravity of their situation when they came up against the horde of people on the platform, several train-fulls deep, everyone waiting for trains that arrived already full.
Shino apologized them up to front of the crowd, flashing his Olympic badge and dragging them in a bedraggled human centipede behind him, until Spencer found himself being literally pushed into a car that couldn’t possibly hold another person.
Separated from his group, not even sure if they were in the same car he was, and uncertain about where he was supposed to get off—or how!—he caught sight of a white hand waving high overhead and made his way to it, swimming through bodies like they were molasses. Someone grabbed him and pulled hard until he landed on a platform gasping for air.
“Did we get everyone?” Flynn asked.
“You!” Spencer wrenched his hand out of Flynn’s grasp. “If I miss the opening ceremony because of you—”
“How was I supposed to know it would be like that?”
“Because Shino said it would be.”
Shino was farther down the platform, gathering the other climbers together. Somehow they’d all made it onto the train and back off again, but with only half an hour to walk to Athletes Village, change clothes, and get to the venue where the opening ceremony was being held, there was no chance they’d make it on time.
Which was why Spencer was running up the stairs, too impatient to wait for an elevator, and cursing Flynn as he went. He held his badge up to key into his room, only to have the door swing open in his face. A burly blond guy wearing the exact outfit Spencer ought to have on—red track pants and a white tank top with a giant red maple leaf on the front—stood in the doorway.
“You must be my roommate,” they both said at the same time.
“Roddy, wrestling,” the stranger offered.
Spencer had a wild moment thinking roddy wrestling was a particularly nasty form of the sport before realizing that Roddy was the guy’s name. Roddy had a midwest accent and reminded Spencer not at all of the stringy kids who’d been on his high school wrestling team. Wrestling grew up, apparently.
“Spencer, climbing,” he said in return. “Um, can I get in there?” Because Roddy was standing directly in the doorway through which he needed to go.
“Sorry.” Roddy backed up into the room. He’d really made himself at home in their shared space, which consisted of two twin beds separated by a matching set of nightstands, one low and wide dresser with three drawers on each side, and a single tiny closet. Spencer had unpacked thoroughly, using exactly his share of drawers and his half of the closet, but Roddy’s stuff was strewn everywhere. His bed was covered in clothes, as if his suitcase had exploded, and every dresser drawer was open, including some of the ones Spencer had appropriated for himself. How many drawers did Roddy need? Didn’t wrestlers compete mostly naked?
He shook off the image of how Roddy would look in his uniform. He preferred the leaner builds climbers had anyway. They were discreet, not like all that bulging Roddy had going on. When Flynn wasn’t climbing, you’d hardly guess he had any definition at all, but once he was in motion, he seemed to have more muscles than had actually been discovered yet, every inch of his upper body contorting with rippled strength.
“Don’t feel like you have wait for me,” Spencer said as he rooted through his drawers for the warm-up suit he’d very tidily folded away but now couldn’t put his hands on. He was about to blame Roddy for its disappearance when he found it exactly where he’d looked in the first place. “You’re going to be late.”
“No hurry.” Roddy dropped down onto his bed, folding his arms behind his head and looking up at the ceiling instead of watching Spencer shuck his shorts. Spencer had planned to have a shower, maybe put a little mousse in his hair, look good for the cameras in case the folks back home managed to spot him in the crowd, but thanks to Flynn he was going to have to make do with chalk-coated hair and a sheen of flop-sweat.
He swiped a fresh application of deodorant under his arms and topped his tank with the warm-up jacket hanging in their shared closet, next to what looked like a lot of club clothes Roddy had apparently brought.
“Ready.” He led the way down the hall to the stairway, setting a frantic pace. They were absolutely not going to make it. Once out of the building, he booked it across campus. He didn’t know where he was headed exactly—no time to pull up the app on his phone—but he could guess it was that big building with all the lights on that was way the fuck over there.
The sun was still up and the evening was still warm, so the warm-up jacket was a lot more than he needed. Roddy had his jacket bunched up under his arm, but Spencer couldn’t slow down long enough to wrestle his off. He couldn’t believe he’d fucked up his first job at the Olympics.
“We don’t gotta run,” Roddy said, starting to huff a bit next to him.
“The ceremony started ten minutes ago.”
“No, it didn’t. You’d hear, like, fireworks or something. They’re never on time and even if they are, we don’t come on for an hour.” Roddy decelerated and Spencer slowed down to match him. Roddy’s words carried the weight of experience.
“You’ve been here before?”
“This is my third Olympics. Probably my last. I’m an old fucking man, Spence.” He was twenty-eight tops.
“Ever win anything?”
“Nope. Not likely to this year either. I’m mid-pack, lucky just to be here.”
“Me too.”
“All right. Low key effort, high key fun. Put ’er there.” Roddy held up the hand closest to Spencer, inviting him to smack it.
“I didn’t say I’d given up.” His chances might be low, but he wasn’t going to throw them away. Sometimes slow and steady won the race. He could get lucky with routes that favored his style of climbing or have a good day. Other people might have a bad day. If the top three qualifiers were the only ones with a chance at winning, they wouldn’t bother sending twenty climbers to the Olympics. Or having a preliminary round.