Her face was hidden but her hunched shoulders expressed every vivid detail of her emotion as though they were wired directly to it. I didn’t bother to hide my smile knowing she wouldn’t see it, but I did manage to stop myself from pointing out that she had yet to complete even one skill on Bars before leaving. I knew she wouldn’t want to hear it, and I knew she needed to release some steam out of the valve of my unintentional pressure cooker.
What I didn’t know was her. What made her tick and smile and what I could do to enhance it. And something in me burned to change that.
I didn’t know what it was. If I felt like I had something in common or if the buttons in her personality just felt instinctually like they lined up with the holes of mine.
It was human nature to wonder and ponder and work at sorting it out. But you couldn’t find the answer when you didn’t even know the exact question.
“What’s with the pariah status you have going?” I asked as she walked in front of me, changing the subject and looking everywhere but at her in order to keep my thoughts professional.
Her body was spectacular—something I wasn’t surprised by given she spent thirty plus hours a week in the gym completing rigorous physical activity—but something else about the way she carried herself had my eyes itching to take a closer look. At the line of her back. The curve of her hip as it settled into her perfectly tight ass. The rock-solid definition of her thighs.
Okay. So maybe I’d looked a little.
“What?” she asked, whipping her ten inch long, glossy ponytail over her muscular shoulder once more. It was obviously a signature move. At least around me.
When her chocolate eyes met mine they sparkled with something unmistakable.
Dislike. Strong dislike.
With thirty hours a week of togetherness ahead of us, I’d have to work on that.
“I thought Olympic medals made you into more of a celebrity than the vibe I’m getting here,” I explained, completely ignoring the stank eye and focusing instead on the lush lashes around it.
Two Team Silvers and an individual Bronze on the Beam, Callie was accomplished. I’d gotten lost in watching old YouTube videos of her, the memories of watching her when the games had aired on TV coming back as I did.
Her name might not be commonplace the world over, but anyone with any association to the sport of gymnastics knew it well.
But here in her world, she was like a solar eclipse. No one looked directly at her as we made our way across the gym. I didn’t know if it was for fear that it would burn out their retinas or something else.
She laughed, half with humor and half without it. There was acceptance in her voice, but it didn’t completely mask the bitterness and burn.
“They fan-girled between Olympics one and two. Once they knew I was hoping for a third, my appeal kind of died out. Turned into much more of a resentment cocktail.”
“Really?”
That surprised me.
She pretended to shrug it off. “I was never much of a mentor anyway.”
Self-deprecation mixed with longing.
I’d never heard the exact combination before now. It sounded eerily calm but undeniably scratchy. Like it got caught in the back of her throat as she forced herself to spit it out.
Her body turned to shut me out, her part in the conversation done.
Instead of pushing what was clearly an uncomfortable subject, I moved on.
“Where are we headed?”
“Floor,” she answered shortly without turning around.
I nodded my head from behind her but held my silence.
Eventually, it got to her.
Another thing I’d have to remember for future reference because part of my job was to get under her skin.
Irritation instigates emotion, and emotion opens the door for change. Not at first—first comes anger. But anger eventually bleeds into reflection, and reflection breeds acceptance. And acceptance—that’s what leads to change.
“What?” she asked, turning to meet my eyes.
I shook my head with a smile, completely belying my innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I could hear you thinking,” she argued with a frown.
My smile deepened and my arms crossed easily across my chest in silent challenge.
“You could hear me thinking?”
Her face wrinkled slightly with contempt. “Don’t mock me. I know you know what I mean.”
“You know I know what you mean?”
“Stop repeating everything I say!” she snapped, throwing her grips bag to the ground and cinching her ponytail tighter before slamming both angry hands to her trim hips.
“Sorry,” I fake-apologized, leaning slightly toward her as I spoke for emphasis. “I was just making sure you understood what you were saying.”
The gap between her eyebrows narrowed meaningfully.
Settling my hands into my pockets, I felt my smile reach all the way up to my eyes. “Looks like you think we know each other just a little bit after all.”
“Great,” she mumbled to herself, turning back in the direction of the floor, jerking her bag back off of the ground, and talking as she walked. “An observant smart ass for a coach. Just what I’ve always wanted.”
“Better than a clueless dumb ass, no?” I called to her back as she dropped her grip bag at the side of the floor mat and walked to the far corner. Other coaches and gymnasts looked on with curious eyes, prompted by the volume of my voice, but I ignored them, focusing solely on the slight curvature taking shape at the corner of her mouth.
That tiny change in shape, that small token of humor gave me hope. I’d have her liking me before long.
Surprised at the intensity of the feeling, I jumped when the warmth grew in my chest at the prospect. I hadn’t thought I would care if she liked me, one way or another, as long as she got the training she needed and I kept my job as her coach. But only one conversation in, I found myself wanting it a lot.
And I wasn’t quite sure why.
Waiting her turn in a line of much younger gymnasts, she watched as they took turns tumbling in a cross pattern. It was one in a long list of rarely spoken rules in the world of gymnastics. Put into practice informally at every gym across the country and national competitions alike, each corner took a turn tumbling diagonally from one corner to another. Staggering back and forth from opposite corners gave ample time for a gymnast to clear their corner after completion of their pass with little to no downtime.
Glancing occasionally at the sloppy form of a newly seasoned, almost unbearably young Level Eight gymnast on their full twisting layout, I focused primarily on Callie and the way she watched and waited.
Gymnastics was largely a young person’s sport, and it was that way for a couple of reasons. Not only did the unmarred minds of the youth recognize and react less to innate fear, they also vibrated with unconfined energy. Their bodies drove their young minds to complete each task.
Conversely, Callie’s practiced mind forced her largely uncooperative body.
Leg extended and toe pointed with precision, it reached out in front of her tapping the ground in preparation before her pass.
Her steps were that of ease, but the power of her thighs did undeniable work as she lunged into her round off, whipped through her back-handspring, and set high and tight with her elbows by her ears for an easy and over exaggerated layout.
She was fun to watch, but I could tell she moved in half measures.
I called her over with a flick of a finger, smiling at the answering roll of her eyes. I’d never gotten quite so much enjoyment out of annoying someone before. In fact, I usually bowed down to the unbearable urge to people please.
I couldn’t figure out how this could be so different and yet feel so good.
“What?” she asked when she arrived. Her tone wasn’t one of excitement or avidity for learning. It was one of annoyance.
I felt a flutter in my gut.
Obviously something was wron
g with me. Maybe the Chinese food I’d had for lunch was bad.
I shook my head internally, carefully constructing the points of my advice to make sure it came out simple and organized and easy to follow.
“You’re not harnessing the power from one skill to use in another. You need to drive through your toes more, use the energy from your back-handspring to drive you up, rather than wasting it all through your flat feet into the ground.”
She shrugged her shoulder, waved me off.
“It was a warm-up pass.”
She turned to leave, but I wasn’t done, so I interrupted the movement with a gentle touch of my hand to her smooth shoulder.
Her eyes jumped to mine as though zapped by the contact, and a corresponding tingle ran all the way from my fingertips to the depths of my stomach.
I had to mentally coerce my eyes back to normal size and fight for concentration—forcibly remove my hand from her shoulder.
“It doesn’t work like that. Each pass you make forms a habit, and the amount of passes only grows over time. You’ve got a lot of both.”
She looked even more miffed, and at first I didn’t understand.
Then, I did. And I was the one rolling my eyes.
“I’m not saying you’re old. Jesus. I’m saying you’re experienced.”
“Experience is a good thing.”
“It is,” I agreed, which seemed to satisfy her. For about a second. “It can also work against you.”
“How’s that?” she demanded.
“Not all habits are good ones. In fact, a big fucking heap of them are the exact opposite—”
“Get to the point,” she interrupted.
Foregoing any further explanation and succumbing to the fact that she wasn’t going to let me cushion anything with pleasantries, I gave it to her straight. “You’re talented, but you’re completely wasting it.” She started to protest, so I threw up a hand. “Stop being lazy and put some power through your goddamn feet!”
Indignation fired her veins and reddened the brown of her irises. “You watch one pass and you think you have the right to call me lazy?” she nearly shrieked.
Heads turned in our direction. We both ignored them.
“You’re not lazy. Your tumbling is.” She drew in a quick, fury-filled breath, no doubt gearing up to let me have it. I didn’t give her the chance. “And I’ve watched you more than one time. I’ve been watching you since you were a seventeen year old kid competing in your first World’s. Your feet have been lazy the entire damn time.”
“You know what? I think I’m done for today,” she fumed quietly, grabbing her bag from the ground behind her and sparing only one look to the now-gawking crowd as she stormed away.
Unwilling to let a little public confrontation end our first day on a sour note, I followed her, only managing to catch up at the entrance to the locker room.
“Callie! Wait!” I grabbed her shoulder to turn her again, but this time, there was no zap—only a shake to knock it loose.
“I said I’m done for today.” Her face was serious and unrelenting. End of discussion.
I softened my voice and my eyes and tried to understand why she was so averse to advice. Granted, I hadn’t exactly executed the smoothest of deliveries, but when it came to tumbling I knew what I was talking about.
“I’m just trying to help.”
Her face broke slightly, but the words she spoke next didn’t have so much as a crack.
“You said it yourself. I’ve been doing this my entire life—at this level since I was a seventeen year old kid.” Locking her body tight, I watched as she forced the words to clear her throat. “Where were you?” She paused for the briefest of beats and then answered her own question. “Watching me. Maybe I’m not the lazy one after all.”
Then she was gone. Around the corner and into the locker room, safely ensconced in a place where I couldn’t follow her.
I wanted to. But I couldn’t.
Nearly numb from the unexpected encounter, I turned on my heel and stalked across the gym toward the office. Her father, Frank, had requested a meeting after I finished with Callie for the day. An assessment of sorts to see if I was really going to work out.
He had a personal hand in Callie, and despite what I’d told her, the decision to keep me as her coach wasn’t exactly final.
Today was meant to be a trial of sorts.
I ignored the stares of the other coaches, and instead focused on using deep breaths to calm me down.
I couldn’t explain the rapid beat of my heart or the intensity with which I felt her comments. The difference in what she saw me as and what I was niggled at me, itching the voice box in my throat and tempting me to go back and have it out with her. We both reacted too strongly for having just met each other, and as much as I couldn’t fathom an argument feeling welcome, with her it had. Because I could feel the way she felt mirrored in myself. Defensive and apprehensive and passionate all at once. So many emotions all swirled together canceled each other out. All that was left was confusion.
Still, I didn’t need to be worked up when I went into his office, so I took the confusion as a godsend and embraced it. Because I didn’t have enough time to dissect all of my complicated feelings either.
All I knew was that I should have been mad. If someone else had spoken to me the way she had, insinuated the things she had, I would have been furious.
But I wasn’t angry. Not at all.
I was just interested.
I knocked on the office door, and it opened immediately. A smirk lined the cheek of Frank’s face, and it took seeing it for me to realize that his office had a window that looked over the gym. He’d no doubt had a front row seat to our display.
Though, I wouldn’t have exactly expected his reaction to be a smile.
He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, so I sat, crossing one foot over the other leg.
“So you met Calia?” he started nonchalantly, grabbing a bottle of water off of his desk and taking a swig.
“Yes, sir.” Obviously.
“She give you a hard time?”
The way he smiled put me on edge, and I wasn’t sure why.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t given me a hard time. She most definitely had.
I was pretty sure he’d witnessed it just like everybody else in the gym.
But her emotion had been honest and real and completely uncontrived.
Something about the way his tone resonated felt belittling of that emotion. Almost how I imagined you’d view a child throwing a tantrum.
But Callie wasn’t a child, and that judgement of her felt unfair on a basic level. It didn’t take into account the muddy waters that churned inside her beautiful skin. Everything I knew said it’ was impossible to keep from being rough on the outside when you’re ragged underneath.
And Callie was. I didn’t know what drove each impulse, but I knew she had some kind of deep-seated issue. Whether it was an actual catalyst or self-sustained demons, she was fighting something. Something I guessed she’d been fighting a while.
I measured my words carefully. “She was…resistant.”
“Ha!” he barked through a laugh. “Resistant.” He shook his head. “I usually call it stubborn. Like hell resisting an ice storm.”
I fought the urge to cringe, smoothing the edges of my mouth carefully. His bark held no bite or malice, but for some reason I was being overly sensitive about a woman I’d just met. He’d known her for her entire life. The rationalist in me knew I had to defer to his knowledge on this one, so with one deep breath, I forced myself to let the indignation go.
I cleared my throat slightly and shifted my right ankle further across my left knee.
“If you don’t mind my asking…” He raised his brows. “Why me?” His chin jerked back slightly.
This wasn’t the kind of question people normally asked. Something about looking directly into the mouth of a gift horse.
“There are a ton of other coaching optio
ns out there for someone as talented as Callie.”
He smiled more deeply at my use of her nickname. Like he got the answer to some sort of question he’d been waiting patiently to ask—without actually asking it.
“You could have past Olympic team coaches here, and instead you’ve got a power tumbler like me.”
He leaned casually into the edge of his desk and crossed his feet at the ankles. The look on his face made me want to stop talking, but this far into my speech, I had no choice but to continue.
“No offense, but I don’t get it.”
He pursed his lips and grabbed his chin, but there was no contemplation. He already knew exactly what he was going to say.
“Let me ask you a question, Nik.”
Okay.
“How many people do you think there are in this gym who call her Callie?”
Of all the things I thought he would ask, that wasn’t one of them.
Women’s gymnastics experience, recommendations from other people—those were the things I thought he’d want to know.
Struggling to calculate based on a rough number of pupils I thought attended, I started to lob out a random number.
“Uh—”
He chuckled, and then saved me from my ignorance. “Three.”
“Three?” I questioned.
“You, her mother, and me.”
I didn’t understand.
A shrug hefted the weight of his shoulders up around his ears. “Call it a hunch, but I think she’ll relate to you better than some old fogey of a coach with no concept of a young adult’s reality.”
I didn’t hide my recoil thinking about the way we related today.
He just laughed.
“It’s like I can see the thoughts as they run through your mind.”
Hopefully, that was a limited time thing. I didn’t need him reading my thoughts when I was picturing naked women.
Or thinking about picturing naked women.
Shit.
“Your interaction today was passionate, sure, but you’re one up on everyone else.”
These Battered Hands Page 2
