But instead, I was just broken.
After everything that had happened between us, all of the push and pull that we’d fought and shoved through until this point, I’d thought we were past this. Yesterday, that work and fight felt justified. She’d given me real emotion and connection, and she hadn’t held back. The metaphorical parking lot had been entered, and the “Don’t Back Up Or Die” spikes were fully engaged.
I’d read the Warning Sign, but I couldn’t stop myself from being pushed back across them without consent.
My emotions were shredded nonetheless.
I understood the things that were at stake and the pressure she felt to live up to each and every one of them.
I got it.
I just wanted and hoped and believed the solution was going to come from a different direction than this.
My heart ached at the lack of a goodbye, but I knew with the way I was feeling, it probably was for the best.
He shoved a nearly identical agreement meant for me in front of the other one, and I was helpless to do anything to stop it.
“I’ll sign,” I barely whispered, the effort to squeeze any words through my throat, let alone those, greater than any physical challenge I’d ever faced.
I grabbed a pen from his desk, took the piece of paper, and did it without looking back as a furious and unrelenting sting attacked my nose. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, and I choked on the thickness of my saliva, but I ignored it.
The longer I lingered the harder it’d be, and if there was one thing I was interested in doing, it was making things easier for Callie.
“Good,” Frank muttered as I finished, grabbing the paper from my hands and putting it behind him on his desk. “Now get the hell out of my gym.”
“Gladly, sir.”
I pictured my dad’s hand on my shoulder, guiding me through one of the toughest moments I’d ever faced as a man.
A moment where I wanted more than anything to let all my anger out through punches and slurs and the behavior of a boy.
A moment where, for Callie, I needed to be a—
Good man.
It took twenty-six years and basically no looking—but I’d found one.
He’d practically fallen straight into my lap, and what a good thing that was since I had absolutely no time or prospects for meeting him or anyone else otherwise.
I was feeling good as I walked into the gym that afternoon, three batches of cookies baked contributing to a healthy amount of raw dough consumed.
It supposedly wasn’t good for you, and my father certainly didn’t approve, but I’d enjoyed every second of it.
Glancing back at Nik’s empty spot in the parking lot, I wondered what was keeping him.
As the glass door swung closed behind me, I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and headed straight toward the locker room to put my things away.
A few of the homeschooled gymnasts were scattered about the apparatuses, pointing and flexing and running at full speed depending on where they were.
Just when I got to the edge of the half wall that separated the front-of-house from the floor, my dad’s head popped out of his office door.
“Cal?”
His face was an unreadable mask.
“Yeah, Dad?” I asked, wondering how he’d known I was here so quickly.
“Come in here, would you?” he told me while pretending to ask.
Eager to get it over with and knowing Nik wasn’t there, I changed directions and headed directly into his office. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted and the last thing I felt like doing was having a sit down with my dad. My good mood would surely be ruined by all of the things I should be doing.
He shut the door behind me, gestured that I should sit down, and leaned up against the wood edge of his desk.
The fake leather of the chair I sank into was warm to the touch, and the air in the room felt oppressively hot.
My heartbeat sped up to compensate for the extra energy used to cool myself down, and I had to choke my way through several shallow breaths.
His eyes were watchful and assessing, and I got the distinct impression that his mood for this particular talk was anything but warm and fuzzy.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he didn’t say anything.
“Why don’t you tell me, Calia,” he said, using the full version of my name how parents tended to do when you were in trouble.
Searching my mind, I tried to put together some sort of a progress report, but it was hard when I didn’t know what I was looking for. “I don’t—”
“Sleeping with your coach!” he interrupted with a boom.
I shot back in my chair as though I’d been slapped.
While I sat stagnant, tongue-tied with surprise and the absolute worst kind of dread, he was the one to find his voice again first.
“Do you have any idea what kind of scandal this would be?” His voice was quiet in volume but sinister in intensity and meaning.
I tried to form words, to defend myself and Nik, but nothing I had to say happened fast enough.
“You’d be ruined,” he declared in my silent void. “The media would turn it into a fucking circus. You’d be slut-shamed and he’d be labeled an opportunist weasel. You might even be kicked off the Olympic team for misconduct, I don’t know.”
They couldn’t do that. Could they?
I didn’t know the exact rules, but I couldn’t imagine that a consensual relationship between two of-age adults was grounds for legal action. But the truth was, I really didn’t know. I knew what I thought everyone would think all along, that it was inappropriate and a precedent for crossing a very technically tricky line, but I had no clue when it came to the actual ramifications of our relationship from a rulebook standpoint.
My mind reeled and roiled, and my stomach’s behavior wasn’t far behind.
I felt sick, like I could ralph right there, right on the floor at his feet, and when I thought it couldn’t get worse it did.
Fear, foreboding and powerful, washed over me at the realization that Nik’s absence was so out of the ordinary, so unlike him, so something he wouldn’t do.
Not today, not any day, and not unless he hadn’t had some kind of choice.
“What’d you do to make him go?” I whispered, knowing it had to be true.
Knowing he wouldn’t have left unless he’d been forced to. Counting on it and waiting for confirmation because I needed it.
“Nothing.” My dad’s voice was like a whip, meant to lash and sting with every strike. “I explained the options, and he chose to go.”
“No,” I whispered, not believing that everything we’d been through, everything I knew about him, and all the things he’d helped me learn about myself could culminate in something as hypocritical as this.
He would have spoken to me. I knew he would have.
I shook my head, swallowed roughly, and blinked at a rapid pace. “He would have—”
A paper landed in my lap, unwelcome, just as my dad’s words overpowered my own.
“He signed an agreement, Cal. No contact with you whatsoever until the games and any subsequent contracts are through.”
I shook my head as I looked at his name, staring at me mockingly from the bottom.
My dad softened his voice and squatted down in front of me.
“Look at it this way. He obviously cares about your future a little, agreeing to start over so you won’t have to.”
Disbelief and hysteria swirled just under the surface until I couldn’t stand to sit still any longer.
When I jumped up, it forced my dad out of the way, his back hitting the edge of his desk, but that didn’t slow me down as I grabbed for my phone from my bag and pulled it out frantically.
I jogged out of the office without another word, my father calling my name behind me as I went and my hands shaking violently all the way.
I didn’t stop, unwilling to compromise and unwilling to believe Nik wouldn’t be waiting on the other e
nd of my call.
Pushing send as I shoved out the main door into the parking lot, I brought the phone to my ear and listened to it ring in time with a series of full body shudders.
Four rings and a click left nothing but disappointment to greet me on the other end.
From the top of my head to the bottom of my soles, every inch of my body felt alone and cold in a way it never had.
Because now I knew what it was like to have it.
And you never truly missed something until it was—
Gone.
As fast as my two wheels would take me, I flew down the road headed for nowhere.
Nowhere to go and nowhere to be, the loss of my parents weighed its heaviest since the day it happened.
I drove toward their old house without thinking, without considering that it wouldn’t do me any good, and with no regard for the laws of the road.
It was the only place that made sense in my heartbroken chest and rationale rattled mind, and I couldn’t think of a better idea than the three hours it took on my bike to get there.
Wind whipped and welcome rain stabbed me with its force.
Storms raged around me and within, the inability to make sense of going from feeling like I had everything to nothing in an instant, churning in my gut and mind like a Category Five hurricane.
My mind a mess of loss, I sat and watched the new family in my old house for a couple of hours like a creeper, pretending the lights going on and off from one room to another were the doing of my parents. I could picture Callie there, meeting them, laughing with them, and largely benefiting from their unconditional love.
But I didn’t have them, and I didn’t have her, and the vision of their meeting would never happen anywhere outside of my fantasies.
Numb from the overexposure, I didn’t even feel the rain as it beat into my already soaked clothes and my eyes stayed open in the world’s slowest blink.
I could see my father dancing around my mom with the technical skills of a professional dancer and the smile that would light up her face as a result.
But mostly I saw the freedom with which they lived their lives, so openly affectionate and obviously in love and unwilling to let anyone tell them they couldn’t have it.
They’d known what it was like to give up everything and start anew only to find they’d really had nothing to begin with.
What they had with each other—that was everything.
Frustrated with my delusions and ghost stalking, I finally gave it up, heading for the only place I knew I could.
With a few knocks on the deep burgundy door, feet padded and plunked their way down the hall to answer it and the barrier swung open to my friend Connor.
He hadn’t seen me in three months.
The disappearing act I’d pulled after selling my parent’s house had been a necessity at the time, and because of everything I’d had with Callie, I’d never regret it.
But I wasn’t proud of the way I’d skipped out on Connor.
“Nik—”
“Hey, Con,” I said, knowing I looked like hell and I sounded worse, and knowing that the simplicity with which I greeted him was far shy of what he deserved.
“Nik, man, it’s good to see you,” he told me with heart, his voice both of steel and affection at once. He turned the other direction so his voice would carry further.
“Carli!” he yelled to his wife. “Nik’s here!”
I heard a pot drop in the kitchen just before the sight of her rounded the corner.
Her violet blue eyes lit up and she barreled down the hall, slamming into me with the full weight of her body and making her long black hair swing out and around my shoulders like a curtain. She ignored the wet of my body and hugged tight, squeezing me like she meant it.
“I think she’s excited,” Con joked, smiling at me like I hadn’t been one of the shittiest friends on the planet. It felt good in a way I hadn’t even known I needed, lost in the lows of heartbreak, to know even when I felt like I had nothing, I still had people willing to give me their all.
“Listen, Con,” I said, setting Carli gingerly aside with a smile. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence, man!”
“Yeah,” Carli agreed, stepping away from me and into Connor’s side like I hadn’t just soaked the entire front of her body. “We saw you on TV at the Olympic Trials! I just about flipped my shit!”
She looked to Con and asked for confirmation. “Did I not just about flip my shit?”
“She flipped her shit,” he repeated by command rather than by opinion, smiling and fighting his hand on her shoulder as he did. She slapped him on his.
Memories blazed as if surged by an influx of gasoline.
Just that one move made me happy and sad at the same time, and I’m not too ashamed to say I almost cried right then.
“What are you doing here?” Carli asked with disquiet, finally connecting the dots between seeing me on TV and the fact that standing there with them was exactly where I shouldn’t be.
“It’s a long story,” I admitted, scrubbing a hand down my face and feeling bad for barging in on them.
Connor was the first to jump in to help me change my mind. “Well, come in! We’ve got chicken quesadillas and cake and a whole hell of a lot of time.”
Part of me didn’t want to stay, but the smarter part knew it’d do me good.
So in I went with a muttered ‘thanks’ and a smile, following them down the hall and into the kitchen like I did it every day.
I wished Callie were with me right then, her hand in mine as she trailed behind me.
Her laugh. Her smile. Her goddamn eyes.
All of it poked at me and pushed, and within a few minutes, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than tell Con and Carli everything.
There was so much to tell, so much to feel, and so much to miss.
But every step of it was worth it, every memory a reward for the burn, and I healed a little bit with each word I spoke.
Because I didn’t just remember the way I felt.
I remembered the way she did too.
There was a validation in that and a hope. A possibility that if I wanted it badly enough and fought for it, I still had a chance.
I wasn’t telling our story as me, and I wasn’t telling it as though there were an end.
I was telling it—
As us.
Each skill, each event—I lived all of it as an us.
It’d taken me the full week since he’d left to get here emotionally, but I’d finally done it. I’d gone through all of the stages of a meltdown; heartbreak and rage and giving everyone I encountered at any point in the day the finger.
It took the realization that I could still connect with Nik because I held a piece of him on the inside, trapped tight in the center of that big beating organ in my chest, to realize that I did absolutely no one any favors by not getting my shit together.
Not me.
Not him.
And most certainly not us.
Hands painted with New Skin glitter, I carried Nik everywhere with me and listened to him yell for me in my head as if he were there.
I told myself what I wanted to hear, that it wasn’t the end, but instead a hiatus, the reality that he wouldn’t have been able to come to Brazil with me anyway only helping a little.
Bodies bounded and flipped, skills being practiced and run-through all around me. Lights flashed off of cameras in the stands, and fans waved hand-made signs back and forth.
I was amazed at the presence of our support, a strong-hold of USA fans taking over nearly an entire section of the arena and deafening the rest of the crowd with their cheers.
Jillian warmed up next to me.
She was one of the only other girls competing on every event, the one person to place ahead of me at the Trials, and the pressure on us to lead and anchor the largely younger team was immense.
“Are you alright?” she asked, knowing I’d been a di
fferent person since team practices had started up when we arrived.
“Yeah,” I assured her. “No worries.” And I was okay. I wasn’t great, and I didn’t think this was the way I wanted it to be, but I was focused. I was ready to be what I needed to be for her and the team and for myself—all the years I’d put in needing to ultimately be worth something.
I laughed and gave her a playful shove, teasing, “Come on! We’re starting on Beam! It doesn’t get much better than that!”
“Oh. Yeah,” she grumbled. “My favorite.”
Genuine laughter drifted from my mouth to my ears, the absolute shock of it waking me up and putting me in a good mood for my routine. I hadn’t laughed like that since the falling out, and until then, I hadn’t even known it was possible.
I gave her a wink and a nudge as I climbed up onto the platform and she yelled slightly offbeat but encouraging advice from behind me.
“You got this! Don’t get your hands confused for your feet!”
“Float like a butterfly, stick it like a G!” And after little to no reaction. “You know? Like a knife? And a gangster?”
I laughed to myself as I rubbed chalk between my hands and onto the soles of my feet, bouncing on my toes and cracking my neck in anticipation of my salute.
My tongue flicked out to wet the dry cracks in my lips, and equally parched air seemed to catch in my throat. I tried to be cool, calm, and collected, but in some ways, I knew it wouldn’t be possible.
Not many people could say with certainty that this could very well be the last time they’d complete a routine for the world to see. But I could.
I’d decided that I was done at the end of the Olympics, no matter the outcome, no matter the pressure, and no matter the opinions of others.
And by done, I meant done. No endorsement deals, no showcase meets, no training on the side.
Tonight, I’d give all I had to give. And at the end of the Olympics, I’d officially retire.
There wasn’t any reason to hold back on the last exercise of the workout. It was the perfect time to give all of my energy—all I had—to being the very best I could be.
My arms flashed up over my head with a flourish and down again when prompted, and a smile stretched across my lips in perfect sync.
These Battered Hands Page 17
