His Last Love

by MEGAN MATTHEWS

  “She’s petrified I’m going to get some girl pregnant who will wind up being a gold digger and I’ll have to get married and take care of a baby and it will ruin my career.”

  “Aren’t you like twenty-five? There are undoubtedly some younger kids participating in the Golds. It happens every year, but no one on the snowboarding team is under the age of eighteen this time.

  “I didn’t say it was a reasonable fear. But trust me. It’s easier this way. Even if I explained the situation like you did to me last night, she wouldn’t believe me. She’d want to meet you and ask about your birth control.”

  “Hold up. Your mom asks girls about their birth control?” I thought that level of crazy was only for fathers with shotguns.

  He shrugs, leaning up against the wall again like this is a regular conversation and not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. “In her defense, it’s happened in our family before. She got pregnant with my older brother at sixteen and had to hang up her skates on a figure skating career. And my brother’s girlfriend — now wife — had a baby when she was sixteen and my brother was seventeen. Mom was not expecting to be a thirty-three-year-old grandmother.”

  “So you told your mother I was six feet tall with a beard and a flatulence problem?”

  “Details add to the realism.”

  “I guess. I haven’t had breakfast yet. Maybe we can stop at the lodge and pick up a to-go box.” Bacon would make me feel better about this whole situation.

  “I have a protein bar back in my room. We can grab it before we go.”

  I stand up by the small desk I’ve been working at. “Yeah, no thanks.”

  “Are you sure? It will give you lots of energy.”

  I’ve seen those rock hard blocks of black crap they carry around and eat like they’re candy. My idea of a good breakfast is not one where I choke down granola and tree nuts.

  “I’m positive. I’ll grab something quick. I wouldn’t want to take away your snack.”

  “If you change your mind let me know.”

  I pull my coat down from the closet hanger and zip it up around me. “Trust me. If I change my mind you’ll be the first to know.” Getting to the lodge requires a short taxi ride, which requires going out in the snow. Something I do not do here unless I am heavily bundled. I cannot wait to get back to California.

  Oliver leads me out of the room and to the front lobby where the taxis are always waiting. He’s practically skipping ahead while I linger behind trying to organize the few items he allowed me time to throw in my bag. I use one of the team vouchers to pay our fare when we reach the lodge. Oliver hits the top of the stairs and has the front door opened before I’ve even made it completely out of the taxi.

  “Hurry, Kenny. There’s skee-ball afoot.” He holds the door open allowing me to walk through.

  “We’re here to play skee-ball?” I ask, the smell of bacon tripping my nose up as soon as I walk through the door into the lodge’s lobby.

  “Yup. Skee-ball helps me compete.”

  I stop and turn in his direction, my nose sniffing out the scent of bacon. “Throwing a ball at a bunch of holes helps you snowboard down a mountain?”

  He shrugs. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  Actually it could hurt. A lot. He could pull a muscle. A ball could fly back off the ramp and land on his foot, breaking his big toe, and he’d be unable to compete.

  “On second thought, Oliver, this isn’t such a great idea.”

  “McKenna!” My name is yelled from behind me in a woman’s voice.

  I turn and am met with the smiling faces of Marley and her boyfriend Remi along with his sister Reagan as they march in our direction. Their hands are loaded up with small white Styrofoam containers. “We just finished breakfast. You missed it.”

  I missed it? My demeanor falls. I’d been thinking about the bacon to get me through. “Is one of those containers bacon?” I point to the three containers Marley is carrying.

  “Yup.” She holds one of them out for me. “You want it?”

  Suddenly I’m back in the game. “Really?”

  “Sure, take it.” She pushes it closer my direction. Like I need more persuasion.

  “Thanks,” I say, snatching the container from her.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll steal one of Remi’s.”

  “Hey!” Remi says, clutching his two containers closer to his chest.

  “Remi, you’re retired now. You can eat bacon every day now,” Marley says.

  It doesn’t seem to ease his despair. “But I’m newly retired. You’ve been eating bacon for years.”

  “Exactly, which is why I have to continue the practice. Plus, you had like sixteen pieces at breakfast.”

  “Kenny, let’s go.” Oliver tugs on my coat sleeve like a small child wanting to get his mother’s attention.

  “Thanks for the bacon. I have to go.” I leave the three of them in the middle of the lobby arguing over whether Remi ate fifteen or sixteen pieces of bacon at breakfast and how many it takes to clog a heart.

  “Do you know where this arcade is?” I ask when Oliver leads us down a random hallway in the back of the hotel.

  “Of course. I can sniff out a skee-ball ramp from a mile away. Kind of like you had your nose to that bacon as we entered the lodge.”

  I scoff. “Did not.”

  He turns back to give me a disbelieving look but doesn’t slow his pace.

  Talking about the bacon reminds me of the bacon. I pop open the top of the container and let the delightful smell assault my senses. It’s what I imagine heaven smells like.

  The to-go container is full of the fatty goodness and I have to eat three pieces quickly so they don’t fall over the edges and drop to the floor. Nobody wants a bacon tragedy. The first bite is magical as I chew quickly and swallow to start my next piece.

  “Chew, Kenny. We wouldn’t want you choking.”

  “I am chewing,” I say and then immediately choke when a crispy piece gets lodged in my throat. Oliver stops racing to the arcade long enough to hit me on the back a few times. “I’m fine.”

  “Well if you and the bacon decide to get married, make sure you invite me to the wedding.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I deadpan, shoving the last two pieces of bacon in my mouth and tossing the white container in a trashcan when we enter the arcade. A tasty dream is gone too soon.

  Oliver’s eyes light up and he stops to take in the large room where hotel management stuck a crazy array of video games and ticket machines.

  “First to the skee-ball and then we do basketball toss,” he says pointing to two games set in the far side of the room.

  At this point I totally give up fighting with him. If a basketball bounces back from the rim and knocks out his front tooth, he could still compete. You don’t need teeth to snowboard. Plus, my stomach is full of delicious bacon. Oliver can do whatever he wants.

  “You have to play against me. It’s no fun playing by myself.” He grabs onto my hand and pulls me across the room.

  “Sure.”

  What Oliver doesn’t know is I play a sport of my own. I might not be a pro athlete but I did play six years of basketball through middle school and high school. I was the highest-scoring point guard my junior year. This man is going down.

  “I have to get change from the machine. Stay right here.” Oliver positions me in front of a lane for skee-ball and then pulls a wallet from his pocket as he heads toward the ticket counter.

  Against my better judgment, I smile. Here I am, way too early in the morning, at an arcade about to play skee-ball with a pro-snowboarder. If you had told me a year ago this is where I’d be in February, I’d have laughed.

  And worst of all, I’m kind of enjoying myself. I’m still pretty sure all athletes are assholes, but there’s something about Oliver. He’s not as stuck up and demanding as the other athletes I’ve worked with since taking this position. His smile is a bit too infectious and his positive attitude annoying. If he wasn’t an
athlete and we weren’t at the Winter Games, there’s a possibility I might actually like him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The birds have begun to chirp when I hit send on my last email reply for the morning. We’re all supposed to follow the same regimen as the athletes. Early to bed, early to rise in Asbell’s words, so I’m not sure why I always wake up to so many emails from the other public relations assistants. Maybe they don’t sleep. Maybe they’re all bunch a robots Asbell had constructed to optimize the handling of the athletes.

  Excuse me, we’re not supposed to use the word handling. The PC term is assisting.

  Too bad I didn’t realize “assisting” actually meant running around catering to crazy assholes for a month. I’d been in need of a new temp job, and the headhunter I’d been working with the said this had amazing potential to launch my career in marketing. He didn’t tell me all the extras.

  There are only a few days left of the Winter Games and part of me is counting down the hours until I pack my bags and head home. However, maybe a few days of handing…er…I mean assisting Oliver won’t be so bad. I’ve even started to like him. His laugh and funny personality sucked me in. He’s hot too. Don’t think my libido missed that.

  I’m sure he has an asshole part of him somewhere — he is a pro athlete after all — but he seems to have a fun side as well.

  A new email pops up, the subject line: Isaac’s Disciplinary Measures.

  I quickly scan the email to see what has happened to the skier Asbell believes forged paperwork to get Cyrus, another parallel slalom snowboarder, detained right before his race. If Asbell yelled at me for “letting” Cyrus be picked up by security, it was nothing compared to the assistant assigned to Isaac. But still, word on the street is she fought for him to not lose any privileges. There have been a lot of allegations about things Isaac has done, but who knows if any or all of them are true.

  The email states Isaac should be confined to his room for the duration of the Gold Medal Events until the day of his competition in the fifty-kilometer men’s free start cross country skiing. Luckily for Isaac it takes place on the last day of the Golds or else Asbell may have sent him home. Although there would be a lot of questions asked and it would be bad PR. The email sounds like they’re planning to wait until he returns home and then decide what to do with him. Unfortunately, the Gold Medal committee doesn’t have much power. More than likely they’ll ban him from future competitions. Depending on how and if the media gets wind of it — he will probably lose a few sponsors. It depends on whether the story gets picked up by social media or not. If the fans get wind, they could start a media frenzy. Then sponsors and the committee would be forced into action.

  The whole thing is kind of irritating. Someone should have to take responsibility. Be held accountable.

  A reply all message comes through on the Isaac email, but I hurry and close my laptop not bothering to read it. I already have my directions from here on out.

  Stick to Oliver Slade like glue. The only difference with today is my outlook is much better. It will be a cakewalk. Oliver has practice time scheduled for most of the morning, but hanging out with him this afternoon has the possibility of being not so bad. At least he doesn’t seem like one of those athletes who has one hundred superstitions or prerace rituals that all have to be followed to a T or else they might not win. Even though we all know the color of your race day socks — or worse underwear — does not affect your speed. And the way Remi Jonsson walks around carrying his snowboard he calls Diane, I would say he needs to see the team psychologist. It can’t be normal to have such an unhealthy attachment to an inanimate object in your thirties.

  With the laptop, closed I grab my daily agendas out of the printer, following my routine of sticking a few copies on my clipboard and leaving one on my desk. Luck is on my side because when I reach the elevator, the doors are opening. It lets out a few athletes — one a member of the speed skating team and the guy I think is sharing a room with Oliver. I’ve had to learn a lot of names the last few weeks. For someone who never watched the Winter Games before, I had to take a crash course on the plane over here. It’s a lot to take in.

  I jump in the elevator and hit the button to Oliver’s floor. If that was his roommate I caught a glimpse of, hopefully Oliver is already awake. By this time yesterday he’d barged into my room, but some athletes like to sleep in on days they have later practice times. His room is a few off from the elevators, so it doesn’t take me long to get there once the doors open.

  My plans are to pick up Oliver, eat breakfast together, and then get him to the practice area with thirty minutes of extra time. He mentioned yesterday he likes to get there early enough so he’s not in a rush putting on all of his equipment. You need to use every second available for actual practice. I have the whole day mapped out for optimal practice time. I reach his door and raise a hand to knock but pull back at the last second when Oliver’s voice seeps through the heavy wooden door.

  “Get the hell out. No one can see you here,” he yells loudly enough anyone walking by and probably his next door neighbors hear.

  I test the door handle and am surprised when it’s unlocked. The door pushes open with the slightest touch. Inside the small dorm-room-like setting is a girl, her shirt half unbuttoned and hanging off one shoulder. She’s leaning on Oliver’s bed on her knees buttoning up her shirt when she notices me and stops. Oliver paces in the free space between the one desk in the room and both athletes’ beds wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers.

  “I don’t understand why you’re being this way,” the girl says in a high-pitched mousy voice.

  Oliver jerks on his short brown hair causing it to stick up in every direction. “You don’t understand?” His eyes dart wildly around the room, finally settling on me. “McKenna, this is not what it looks like.”

  He takes a step in my direction, but I hold a hand out to stop him. I know exactly what this looks like. What I can’t figure out is how. I was with Oliver all night. I dropped him off at his room where he promised to go to bed. Directly to bed. I did everything I needed to do, short of tucking him in. How did he even get a girl up here? When did he have time to pick someone up? Did he watch me get on the elevator and then turn around and leave? He didn’t come off as a liar yesterday, but these guys are conditioned from childhood to put on an act for the cameras. Maybe being nice to me was a game for him. And why does the thought of him sleeping with a girl hurt more in my heart than my brain?

  It’s almost as if the air is sucked out of the room and I’m left to my own devices to figure everything out. Except I’m not thinking the expected thoughts like making sure she doesn’t talk to the media and how to get her out of the building. No, my head is filled with worries that he obviously didn’t experience the same connection I felt we had yesterday. Sure, it wasn’t necessarily a romantic connection, but I didn’t think I’d find someone in his room this morning.

  “Get the fuck out of my room. I’m going to call security.” The girl, her shirt still only half buttoned — it doesn’t seem like she’s working very hard to close it up — walks by me, leaving the room.

  Worse, she doesn’t even attempt to hide her smile as she walks past. Like she knows what I’m feeling inside isn’t good.

  “Kenny, it is not what it looks like.” Oliver tries to approach me again and I take a step back.

  Finally, my damn public relations brain kicks in. I’m here to keep him out of trouble not get a crush on a snowboarder. “It doesn’t matter what it looks like. As long as whatever you two did was consensual, I don’t care. The last thing any of us needs is some kind of sex scandal.”

  “It wasn’t consensual!” he yells, and I flinch. “I mean, nothing happened. There was nothing to consent.”

  I tear off the top sheet of my clipboard — today’s event agenda — and hand it to Oliver. It gives my hands something to do so I don’t slap him.

  “Whatever, Oliver. I’ll meet you at breakfast. You need to
hurry up and finish getting ready so you don’t miss practice.”

  “McKenna, wait!” he yells down the hallway to my back as I walk to the elevator, working to stay as calm as possible. “I can’t believe you can do this.”

  He can’t believe? Asshole. I stop and turn back. “Don’t be late to breakfast and try not to fuck anyone in the hallway on your way there.”

  “McKenna!” he yells one last time, but it’s too late. I’ve already reached the stairwell. There is no way I’m waiting for an elevator to get here.

  I charge down the first flight of stairs, my thoughts too angry and hurt to make sense. By the second floor, I’m running out of oxygen and have to choose between breathing or huffing and puffing. Thank God the cafeteria is only another flight down. I take the last set of steps slower, giving myself time to think.

  Obviously it’s not like Oliver and I are dating or even in a relationship. I have absolutely no reason to care who he’s sleeping with other than how it will affect publicity. But I do. The thought I left him in his bedroom and then he immediately went out and found someone to sleep with disgusts me. How can men do shit like that? Don’t they have morals? Aren’t they raised with some kind of standards?

  Shouldn’t you at least buy a girl dinner before you stick your penis in her? I’m not letting someone in the happy hole unless he’s at least bought me a cheeseburger.

  Really, it’s all stuff I already knew. This is nothing but more proof that athletes are dickheads. Selfish. Crazy. Sex crazed. He probably has a roster of girls he calls up whenever he needs to get some. I wouldn’t put it past anyone here. There’s a rumor going around the bobsledding team and some of the speed skaters had an orgy in someone’s room. Of course nobody will confirm or deny it. Even us public relations people keep gossip from each other. Nobody trusts anyone.

  The door to the floor I need comes into view and I pick up my pace for the last few steps. The whole place is crazy. And I am too for working here. I don’t know why I stuck around so long. It’s time for my crazy period to end. I don’t want to be here until the closing ceremonies and I certainly don’t want another two-week debriefing period in New York. All I want… no all I need is to get home to California and be surrounded by my own belongings and friends and heat. Some damn sunshine. I never want to watch another athletic event ever again. I don’t even want to see an athlete give an interview.