“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?”
“Those are the up-and-comers.” Topher put a finger on Jake’s chest. “You are the best. I want for you to go out there and give it everything you have and win a fucking gold medal, okay?”
“I can do that.” Jake pumped his fists.
“If you want further motivation, I can threaten to withhold kisses until you bring me a medal.”
Jake laughed. “You wouldn’t.”
“It would be an interesting test of my willpower. And this conversation we’re having kind of screams, ‘Topher has issues and is projecting them on Jake.’ But I’m here for whatever you need.”
“Thanks. You’ll be on my mind, then.”
“Really?”
Jake grinned. “Well, no. Probably tumbling passes and vaults will be on my mind, but maybe I’ll try to think of you if I start psyching myself out.”
“Then let me give you something to think about.”
Topher couldn’t help himself. He leaned close to Jake’s face and smiled before giving Jake a soft, slow kiss.
He pulled away gently and gave Jake a wink when their gazes met. “I gotta go, and so do you, but text me later. Or not, if you’re partying to celebrate your gold medal.”
“Don’t jinx it.”
“Perish the thought.” Topher flipped the lock on the door. “I’ll be in the stands, sexy. Think of me fondly.”
“I will.”
Topher slipped back out of the bathroom and returned to the press area, hopefully before anyone noticed he was gone. Chelsea had disappeared, and now Natalie was chatting with a few crew members. Topher stood just inside the door and collected himself.
This thing with Jake… he had no idea what to do with it.
Chapter Thirteen
AFTER KEEPING Natalie company until she had to go to the booth to record her commentary, Topher fell into conversation with Eileen Schiffler, one of the primetime gymnastics commentators. She was a nice woman in her sixties who had done some work on previous Winter Games as well, so they knew each other a little. Topher decided to play nice even though he knew Natalie hated that these older commentators were still doing the call most Americans heard.
After all that, he managed to make it to the stands when the all-around was already in progress. The all-around was a chance for the best gymnasts in the world to compete directly against each other. No more teams to add or subtract points—just each individual gymnast proving his mettle on each apparatus. The best cumulative score on all six apparatuses won.
He found his spot in the TBC section of the stands, which was basically several long rows of seats peppered with various personnel from the network. Topher sat between two empty seats and got out his phone. Flipping on the video selfie camera, he posed, smiled, and softly, he said, “Hello. It’s time to take in the spectacle of men’s gymnastics, which is fast becoming my favorite event at the Olympics. The women’s team has been getting so much publicity that hardly anyone is paying attention to the men’s team, despite the fact that they won silver at the team competition. Jake Mirakovitch, whom I think we can all agree is absolutely dreamy, could win a gold medal, and I know everyone at home is rooting for him. Right? Now look at this.” Topher rotated the camera so that it captured the vast gymnastics battlefield below, where men flipped, flew, and fell.
While he panned the camera, Topher spotted Jake chalking up near the high bar. “Excellent timing,” Topher told his phone as he zoomed the camera in on Jake. “Let’s watch Jake kill it at high bar. I have it from the horse’s mouth that this is his best event.”
Jake walked below the bar and clapped once, sending a chalk cloud into the air. He hopped up and grabbed the bar and swung back and forth a little before jackknifing his body and swinging all 360 degrees around the bar. Topher still hadn’t learned the names of all the moves, but he watched Jake swing around the bar a couple of times before launching himself into the air, twisting his body around, and then grabbing the bar again. Jake flew a good two feet above the bar as he twisted. Then he launched himself into the air again and caught the bar facing the other way. The move had happened so quickly that Topher hadn’t even seen the twist. Jake swung around a couple of times again before holding a handstand and doing some kind of trickery by bending his body and ducking around the bar. Then he rotated around the bar again, launched himself in the air, and did a somersault before catching the bar again. The audience seemed to be with him now, oohing and aahing with each completed element.
Topher was sure each of these tricks—each one bigger than the last—had an official name, probably after some legendary gymnast of the past. But all Topher really knew as an observer was that Jake looked great as he completed each move, completely in control, like spinning around a bar was an easy thing everyone could do every day and not something that required a great deal of skill, strength, and training. Topher was in excellent shape, if he did say so himself, but he had no idea how to make his body go around a bar like that.
And then came the dismount. Three quick rotations around the bar, and Jake launched himself in the air, twisting in two different directions simultaneously before straightening out and landing on the mat. No stumbles, no steps, just Jake sticking the landing, posing for a moment, and then pumping his fist in the air.
Topher couldn’t really tell much about difficulty level or which skills the judges might deduct points from, but he had the sense that he’d witnessed something special.
“That was spectacular,” he said to his phone.
He turned off the camera and posted the video while the next gymnast—a British man—mounted the bar.
The rest of the rotation went by in a blur as Jake’s crazy high score distracted Topher and reminded him of what had happened in the men’s room before the competition. If this rotation was anything to go by, Jake wasn’t psyching himself out at all. Topher glanced at the leaderboard. After two rotations, Jake was in first place.
Would Jake pull this off?
Rings were Jake’s next station. Topher sat forward in his seat. He wanted this for Jake so badly, his heart beat in his throat.
And though Jake’s arms shook a little during his rings routine, it looked really solid. It wasn’t the highest rings score in the group, but his other scores kept him in first place.
Topher hoped for Jake’s sake that whatever magic was happening now kept going.
FLOOR AND vault had gone well. His high bar routine had been nearly flawless. Rings and pommel horse had… happened. He’d gotten through both without any major mistakes.
And now Alexei stood beside Jake as they waited for his turn on the parallel bars, his hand at the nape of Jake’s neck. Jake currently sat in second place, mere tenths of a point behind Hosuke, who right then took off down the run-up area to vault.
Viktor walked over. “You win medal” was all he said.
“I’m trying,” said Jake.
Viktor nodded. “Do Toumilovich third.”
Jake nodded. He’d kept his high bar routine safe, something he regretted in retrospect because he could have used the extra points, but he could pull out all the stops on the parallel bars. He could swap in a Toumilovich, which involved using the bars to propel himself into the air to flip and twist at the same time, instead of the easier kip skill he usually did as the third element in his routine. They’d been doing some more difficult tricks in practice, and he could beat Hosuke with the routine he’d done in the team competition if Hosuke was less than perfect on vault, but having the higher base score would give him a little bit of a point buffer.
Six years of international competition had taught him how to mentally calculate scores. Some complicated math was involved in strategizing for which elements to do; sometimes a few tenths of a point could tell him when to take risks. But the points only really counted if he did the skill correctly.
Some fanfare in the arena drew Jake’s attention to the scoreboard, where Hosuke had posted a high vault score. That mea
nt Jake needed a score over 15 on the P-bars. No pressure.
He felt his heart rate kick up.
But no, he couldn’t let that happen. His nerves had caused him to tighten up and under-rotate at Worlds; that was why he’d hit his head and gotten a flipping concussion after performing a vault he’d done probably a thousand times without error.
“You can do this,” said Alexei. “Don’t be nervous.”
Easier said than done. It hit Jake quite suddenly that only a ninety-second routine stood between him and a gold medal. That this was all a matter of him nailing it or him completely fucking up and losing the medal again. And there were so many ways to fuck up—not holding a handstand long enough, losing his balance on a pirouette, not getting enough height on his tricks, and of course, whiffing a landing or falling off the bars. He’d done that last thing a few World Championships ago—just totally lost his balance and couldn’t save it—and it was such a stupid amateur mistake that the moment was burned in Jake’s brain forever. It was Olga Korbut hitting her feet on the mat while mounting the lower bar at the 1972 Olympics. At the time he’d been so shocked that he’d made a mistake on such an elementary skill that his whole body had gone numb. It was like he’d forgotten how to do gymnastics entirely.
So it was of course entirely possible for Jake to fuck this all up, to have spent the entire meet near the top of the leaderboard and blow it in the last rotation. The odds were in favor of that happening, since it had happened so often before.
Except he could do this. He could deliver a 17-point P-bars routine if he did the trickier skills.
“You win medal,” Viktor repeated. He slapped Jake on the back before walking over to the vault, where Corey, currently in fourth, probably needed a pep talk.
Jake watched Smithfield from the UK complete his P-bars routine.
“I’m freaking out,” he told Alexei.
Alexei nodded. “I know. Forget Olympics. Forget medal. Pretend we are in gym in Houston. You do routine the way you do thousands of times.”
Jake nodded, but he’d gotten this pep talk before. It didn’t prevent him fucking up. Nerves, growing exponentially, often did him in. There were six cameras trained on the parallel bars, and all those cameras made him nervous. The fact that there was so little room for error made him nervous. Hosuke nailing his vault made him nervous.
Then Topher popped into his head. He’d hardly thought of Topher at all once competition had started, despite what he’d said, but… Topher. Something to think about that wasn’t gymnastics. He pictured himself and Topher hanging out after the competition ended. Getting drinks at the America House. Making out like teenagers in a men’s room. Sneaking into Topher’s hotel room and having sex. Yeah, that was all… definitely not gymnastics. And now his heart raced for an entirely different reason.
Jake glanced at Alexei, who watched Boskovic’s turn at the P-bars with pursed lips.
Topher sat somewhere in the stands. Jake knew about where the TBC section was, but he didn’t dare look toward it. Still, knowing Topher was watching, that Topher was rooting for him, was weirdly calming. Thinking about Topher and what might happen excited Jake, but in a way that didn’t make him feel like he needed to vomit, unlike the looming parallel bars. Maybe Topher was not exactly a life-after-the-Olympics plan, but he was definitely something. Thinking about him made Jake happy.
Maybe that happiness was exactly what he needed. He took a deep breath and let warmth spread across his chest.
Alexei slapped Jake’s back. “You’re up.”
Jake already had his armguards on, so he stuck his hands into the little cauldron of chalk and rubbed some all over his hands while Alexei did a cursory check of the bars.
Ten skills. Ninety seconds. Gold medal.
Jake shook out his limbs, trying to stay loose. He ran each hand over one bar and gripped it a couple of times, making sure the chalk gave him the right amount of grip. He had the muscle memory to do this routine. He’d done it twice today in practice, in fact.
He walked between the bars, grabbed both, and pulled himself into his first skill.
He followed Viktor’s instructions, thinking about the first three skills and doing the trickier one third. He could tell, as he sighted the bars, that he got good height on that third one. He caught himself on his arms and moved into the handstand. He counted, felt his arms shake a little and tried to mentally push aside the stakes.
Just another meet… just another meet… push into the burn…. Topher.
He thought of Topher watching him from the stands, and it made him feel warm and tingly instead of nervous, and he launched himself into his next element. And the next. And soon he’d completed everything except the dismount, so he set himself up for it, launched himself in the air, somersaulted twice, and put his feet down.
Bam! Stuck landing.
It was over.
Alexei combusted, laughing and cheering as he ran over and threw an arm around Jake before Jake had even properly finished saluting the judges. “You stuck… I can’t believe you stuck landing! Oh, Jake, that was amazing! Almost no mistakes.”
“Did I… do that?” Jake asked, feeling a little dazed. He was conscious suddenly that there were several cameras on him, but it didn’t matter. If he fell now, no one could deduct from his score.
“You do great gymnastics, Jakob. The Toumilovich—I’ve never seen you get height like that. Very, very good.”
Viktor stood waiting when Jake got back to the bench, and handed him a towel. Jake wiped the chalk off his hands and the sweat off his face and turned toward the scoreboard. He wished he had a calculator, but he knew he needed about a 15.5-something to beat Hosuke.
The score flashed up on screen. 15.738.
Jake’s bones liquified. Alexei had to catch him. But he’d done it.
He’d fucking done it.
Jake Mirakovitch was the best male gymnast in the world. And now he finally had the gold medal to prove it.
Suddenly he was pulled into a manly embrace with a lot of back-slapping and realized Corey was hugging him, then half the coaching staff.
And… holy shit, Valentin was running toward him. Where had he even come from?
“My son, my son,” Valentin cried as he pushed everyone else aside and pulled Jake into his arms and put a hand on his head. “Oh, my son, you won all-around. I’m so proud. So proud.”
Jake closed his eyes and leaned into his father’s embrace. Valentin Mirakovitch had been a legend in his day, and now he was a legendary coach. And Jake….
Jake had finally lived up to all that.
Valentin was basically the only thing holding him up, though, because Jake was suddenly exhausted. All that pressure, all the tension he’d held in his body, all the strength he’d needed to get through routines on six apparatuses and twentysome years of gymnastics…. He felt all of that in his bones, which felt like they’d just turned to jelly.
But he’d done it. He’d won an individual medal. And it was gold.
He started crying. And once he started, he couldn’t stop it, so he pressed his face into his father’s shoulder so as to not let all the cameras trained on him know that he was anything other than elated to have won this medal. But they didn’t know… no one knew. No one knew what it was like to be the son of one of the greatest gymnasts the sport had ever seen and to compete for that attention with his talented sister. No one knew what it was like to train at a gym with his family’s name on it, to deal with concussions and busted knees and shattered wrists and a torn Achilles that one time, to have a body covered in scars, that ached on bad weather days. No one would ever know what the weight of all that expectation felt like, nor the strength it took to throw it off.
So he cried, because he was happy, but he was exhausted. And it wasn’t even really over, because he still had the event finals. But holy shit….
He’d done it. Jake Mirakovitch was the best all-around gymnast in the world.
Valentin steered Jake toward the benc
h and helped him sit down. Jake kept a hand over his eyes so it wouldn’t be clear that he was crying. Valentin sat beside him.
“I know what this cost you,” Valentin said softly in Russian. “And I know I am hard on you. I know those tears, and I know the relief they show. And I know you probably think I care more for Chelsea because I am her coach, but I’m very proud of you, Jakob. You work harder than any gymnast I have ever seen, harder than your sister, and you deserve a gold medal.” He let out a sigh. “I hope you know, gold medal or no medal, I am still proud, and I still love you.”
That only made Jake cry harder. Jesus Christ. He wasn’t going to be able to look at a camera.
He took a deep breath and tried to get himself under control.
“Thank you, Dad,” he said.
Valentin patted his back. “I knew you could do this. You had this in you. The real fight was mental, not physical.”
Jake laughed and shook his head, trying to shake off the tears. He mentally cursed Valentin’s coach pass, wishing he wasn’t here so that Jake wouldn’t lose his shit on camera, but such was life and here he sat, so he wiped his eyes, waved at the TBC camera, and stood back up. He looked around, and half the equipment had already been moved to make way for the medal stand. The medal stand Jake was about to stand on top of.
“How?” Jake asked aloud.
“Do not question,” said Valentin. He hugged Jake again. “Go get your medal.”
Chapter Fourteen
JAKE STOOD in the middle of the huge crowd packed into America House. It had been a great day for Team USA, who would also be taking home medals in swimming, cycling, and fencing. Jake wore his medal over his official Team USA warm-up suit and kept touching it, not believing it was real. It was heavier than he’d expected.
Corey had finished the all-around in fifth, which was still a better showing than any American male gymnast had managed in the previous Games.
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