Who Do You Love

by Jennifer Weiner

  Andy signaled for the check. Maisie smiled in approval as he pulled out his credit card—between his generous stipend and the bonuses the sneaker company paid him for his wins, he had money to spend. Maisie didn’t even try to reach for her wallet, the way Rachel always did. They strolled back to the hotel in an expectant silence. In the lobby, she looked into his eyes.

  “Do you think I could come up for a glass of water?”

  A voice spoke up in his head. Not Rachel’s voice, not his mother’s, not a voice belonging to any one of the coaches he’d had through the years, but Mr. Sills’s voice, asking him, very seriously, Is this the kind of man you want to be?

  Feeling like the biggest jackass in the world, Andy took her hand and folded it in his. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, “and I’m probably going to regret this for the rest of my life. But I’m not exactly single.”

  Maisie gave a pout that caused Andy to think that whatever she did when she’d finished modeling, it probably wouldn’t be acting. “Shit,” she said. Andy tried not to flinch. He didn’t like cursing, never had; it reminded him of Lori, when she’d been drinking. “Why are all the good ones either taken or gay?”

  “Come on,” he’d said, giving her a tripod-style hug, careful to keep anything below their shoulders from touching. “You could have any guy in the world.”

  “But what if you’re the guy I want?”

  Andy didn’t answer. He just wanted to get up to his room, splash some cold water on his face, and call Rachel. But Rachel didn’t answer. The cold water didn’t work, so Andy took a cold shower and masturbated briskly, like it was the sexual equivalent of clearing his throat. Still, it took him two hours to fall asleep, and when the alarm shrilled, he woke up with a groan, still feeling tired, thinking that if he blew the race Rachel would be to blame.

  That afternoon, crouched and waiting for the pistol, exhaustion dragged at him, and he felt frustrated and angry. Poised at the starting line, his body curled and ready to spring, all he wanted to do was go back to the hotel and sleep. Instead of being nervous, the way he usually was, so tense that sometimes he’d throw up right before a race began, he felt tired and calm almost to the point of boredom . . . and then, when he started to run, a weird thing happened. He felt almost airy, like his body was made of something less dense and more durable than flesh and blood. Leaning into the turns, arms swinging smoothly, he knew he was setting up for a PR, maybe even a course record . . . and then what? Would Maisie be waiting at the finish line? Would Rachel call his cell phone, wanting to congratulate him?

  Be your body, he thought. It wasn’t one of his official mantras—light and lean, he’d taught himself to chant, or no pain—but, as he finished his first lap, that was what he told himself. He knew what this victory would mean—that Athens was a certainty, that he’d have his shot at the gold. With every step, he put more and more distance between himself and the guy behind him, breathing easily, moving effortlessly, thinking that he could run a marathon if he had to, that he could run forever.

  He broke the tape, and then his coach was hugging him, shouting an unbelievable number in his ear. Andy looked up at the Jumbotron to confirm it, and there were TV cameras swinging toward his face, and there was Maisie, Maisie looking lovelier than he remembered, and he reached for her without thinking and pulled her into his arms.

  Of course the pictures had ended up on the Runner’s World website. Of course Rachel saw them. When he picked up his phone he saw that she’d called six times, and when he got back to the hotel to call her back she hadn’t wasted a second before she’d started in on him.

  “Rachel, it’s nothing. It’s just some girl. I met her in the gym, she’s a runner, too, and she asked if she could come to the race, and I had no idea any of that was going to happen.” This was technically mostly true, even if it left out several salient facts, including their dinner together the night before.

  “So, what, someone shoved her into your arms and made you hug her?”

  Once he’d started running he’d never been interested in ball sports, but he knew what they told the guys on the football team—the best defense is a good offense. “If you’re so worried, then why didn’t you come out here with me?”

  She made a disgusted noise. “So I could sit in a hotel room all day, then watch you run for eight minutes, then spend all night at a party listening to people talk about how their eight minutes of running went?”

  Andy was hurt. “I haven’t run a three thousand in over eight minutes since my junior year at Oregon.”

  “Who cares?” Rachel shrieked. “And stop changing the subject! I don’t care how fast you can run the three thousand. I care about you hugging random women!”

  “Nothing happened,” he said, already starting to regret that it was true.

  “Do you even know her name?” Rachel demanded.

  “Maisie,” he’d said. “Maisie Guthrie.” And then some impulse he didn’t understand made him blurt, “She’s a model.”

  “Oh, a model,” she said. “Well, I guess you’ve hit the big time now.”

  Andy, who’d expected to at least get some congratulations on his personal record, was getting angry. “Would you let it go? She’s someone I met, and she came there to watch me, to cheer for me, which was nice, so I hugged her. End of story.”

  There was a seething, crackling pause. “Are you saying,” Rachel began, “that if I came to cheer for you, you wouldn’t have felt the need to embrace models at the finish line?”

  “Maybe!” Andy yelled. “I don’t know! It’s not like I’ve had a lot of experience with you coming to cheer for me!”

  Instead of yelling back, Rachel spoke even more softly. “You want me to be the bad guy, don’t you?” she asked. “You want me to be the bitch who won’t go to your races so you’ll have an excuse to be with Cindy Crawford. Only guess what?” Her voice was a poisonous whisper. “I’m not your mother. I actually do go to your races.”

  “You come and you sit there with a book. You barely look up. You barely look at me.”

  Another icy pause ensued. Finally Rachel said, speaking softly, “I am not your cheering squad.”

  “I know that,” he muttered.

  “I’m my own person.”

  If you keep eating the way you do, you’ll be your own two people, Andy thought, but all he said was, “I know.”

  “I think that maybe moving in with you was a mistake.”

  He felt her words like a hard shove in the chest . . . but, if he was honest, there was also the tiniest undercurrent of relief. “It wasn’t a mistake. I want you with me.”

  “But we’re not on equal footing, are we? You’re working. Quote-unquote. You’re making money. I’m not doing anything.”

  “But once you get your degree, you’ll get a job.” Rachel had been taking classes toward a social work degree at Portland State and had just started working at FAS’s new West Coast office. “I hate not having my own money,” she’d say when he’d buy them dinner or she’d use his credit card to shop for clothes. She did have money—her parents had paid for college, and she’d saved every birthday check and bat mitzvah gift—but it wasn’t money she’d earned, and she felt that acutely.

  “I think I need to go back to New York. Amy said she’s got a job for me. There’s work there I should be doing.”

  “Rachel.” This was all happening too fast, like he’d pulled a loose shingle off a roof and now the whole house was falling down. “I don’t want you to leave. I’m sorry I got mad.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said, in a small voice that hurt him more than her yelling had. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always wanted the new thing, right? No secondhand coats for you. I’ll bet Miss Maisie doesn’t have any nasty scars on her chest, right?”

  “Rachel.” He could hear her crying, and he didn’t know how to comfort her, didn’t know what to say.


  “And she’s probably not spoiled. Pulled herself up by her pretty little bootstraps, I bet. Not like snobby Rachel and her snobby sorority friends, right, Andy? Be honest. I was never good enough for you, and no matter what I did, I was never going to be.”

  She hung up the phone, and wouldn’t answer it for the next two hours, at which point his teammates came by, rowdy and shouting and wanting to know why he wasn’t at the bar. He went down, thinking that he’d have a few beers and try Rachel again. But there was Maisie, in a short dress that left her long legs bare. This time Andy didn’t hesitate. He gulped a Scotch, grabbed Maisie around the waist, pulled her into a hug, and whispered, “Want to see my room?”

  They’d started kissing in the elevator. Then they’d raced down the hall, hand in hand, with Andy fumbling for the key card and Maisie whispering, “Hurry, hurry.” Once they were in the room, he pushed her back against the wall and kissed her hard, almost angrily, until she wriggled away. “Let me use the little girls’ room,” she said. Andy lay on the bed, still dressed, waiting, until she came out in nothing but a bathrobe, standing in front of him barefoot. “Hi there,” she whispered, letting the robe slip off her shoulders, and stood there naked except for panties that were just a scrap of black lace.

  “Like what you see?” she whispered. And oh, God, she was unbelievable. Like something out of a movie or a magazine. Her breasts were small and perfectly shaped, topped by taut nipples big as blackberries. He yanked her toward him, and bent and sucked.

  Unreal, he thought, as his hands skimmed the curve of her hips, then cupped her ass. It was like she was a different species from Rachel, her waist so slim, her bottom so perfectly firm and round. Her pubic hair had been trimmed into a triangle that looked like an arrow directing him down. She was wet when he touched her, and she came almost as soon as he’d pushed himself inside, throwing her head back and sighing. “Handsome,” she whispered. “Oh, you handsome man.”

  The next morning, he’d woken up to the sound of running water. He’d rolled onto his side in the fragrant, rumpled sheets, deciding how he should feel, if he was supposed to hate himself or feel like he’d gotten away with something, and who at the bar had seen them leave, and whether everyone knew. The water turned off, and the door opened, sending a puff of steam and the smell of soap into the room. When Maisie, wrapped in a towel, walked toward him, Andy braced for a scene, thinking that she would want promises, assurances that what they’d done had meant something, and that they’d see each other again. Instead, she’d kissed him lightly on his forehead. “Early call time,” she’d whispered. “Here’s my number.” She put a scrap of paper on the nightstand, twisted her wet hair into a bun, pulled her dress on over her head, slipped on her shoes, and sashayed out the door. There had been no talk of fate or destiny or how they were meant to be together. She just gave him a smile, a last look at her perfect body, the beautiful angles of her cheeks and chin, and then she was gone.

  When he’d gotten back to Oregon, all he found was the note that Rachel had left him. I wish you all the best, it said. By then he did feel guilty—a one-night stand was one thing, a breakup was something else. For two weeks he called her every day, morning, noon, and night. She never answered. He would have flown to see her, but he was in the most rigorous phase of his pretrial training—as Rachel knew. Then one afternoon his phone had rung, and it was Maisie, saying she was out in Vancouver, shooting editorial for a fashion magazine, and could she visit when she was done? Andy had said, “Sounds great.”

  At his apartment, which he’d carefully purged of all signs of Rachel, Maisie told him about the shoot. “It’s a big spread on some dead lady writer, so they’ve got, like, a bunch of important male writers being, like, Henry James and diplomats and architects and whatever.”

  “Who are you supposed to be?”

  “Edith Wharton,” Maisie said proudly. “Remember that movie Winona Ryder was in? With all the great costumes? Edith Wharton wrote the book that was based on.”

  “Why didn’t they get an important female writer to be Edith Wharton?”

  Maisie shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe they’re all cows. I think the guy who played Henry James was hitting on me,” she giggled, reaching for Andy. “Is that your jealous bone?” she’d whispered, sliding her hand down his pants. She’d stayed for three nights, during which Andy had enjoyed his teammates’ approval and envy. At least most of them were approving. “Nice upgrade, man,” said James Leonard, a sprinter, and Gary D’Allesandro, who ran the 1500, said, “If she’s got a sister, I’ve got dibs.”

  Only Mitch had been dubious, Andy could tell. He missed Rachel. He never had much to say to Maisie when she came to watch them practice, and he’d find ways to be elsewhere when Maisie was at Andy’s place. “She’s beautiful! She’s great!” he said when Andy finally asked if he had a problem with her. “Maisie’s fantastic. I just . . . you know,” he’d said, staring at the ground, “Rachel was great, too.”

  Andy agreed. He missed her . . . but by then it was too late. She was in New York City, back to what he bet she thought of as her real life, and that knowledge felt like a stone on his chest, something heavy that had fallen and that he’d have to carry for the rest of his life.

  •••

  Summer came, and he flew to Sacramento for the Olympic tryouts. Even with his life in turmoil, his times kept getting better, as if pain was pushing him around the track, narrowing his focus until he couldn’t see anything but the finish line. He wanted to call Rachel when he was named one of the two runners who’d represent the United States in the 5000-meter race in Athens, but Maisie had been there, hugging him, holding his hand, smiling for the photographers, almost like she was trying to make sure that she’d be in every shot. If Rachel saw the news, she probably saw Maisie, too.

  He bought plane tickets for his mom and Mr. Sills, sending them to Greece three days early so they could get settled in, see the ruins, treat it like a vacation. Maisie paid her own way. “See you at the finish line,” she’d said. He knew the drill—how the athletes would be bused from the airport straight to the Olympic Village, where they’d sleep, eat, and, in the case of the single men and women, hook up. Andy wasn’t interested in any of that. When he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was running the race in his head, imagining his competitors, picturing himself powering past them in the first lap and leaving them farther and farther behind.

  Thirty-five men ran the two heats for the 5000. Only fifteen of them qualified for the finals. Andy’s time, thirteen minutes and twenty seconds, put him right in the middle of the pack, which was perfect—he hadn’t burned himself out and run his best race in the qualifiers; he still had something left for the main event.

  “Good luck, brother,” said Tim Fine, the other American runner who had just missed qualifying for the finals. The rest of the field were Kenyans, Algerians, Moroccans, Ethiopians, guys who were twenty-one or twenty-two, tiny and light and looking like they’d been created specifically for speed. At five-ten and 160 pounds, Andy felt like a giant at the starting line, and was one of only three men in the field who hadn’t been born in Africa. Then he’d shut down his mind and focused entirely on his breath. The sunny, slightly breezy day didn’t matter, nor did the people in the stands, or his coaches, or his teammates, or all the memories of what had driven him to this place. When the gun went off Andy came charging onto the tracks, and the only thought in his head was I will not be denied. Hicham El Guerrouj, the presumptive favorite, hung back in the middle of the pack, biding his time until the last half mile, when his kick took him right to Andy’s heels. He stayed with him up until the last two hundred meters, when, with his legs on fire and his body screaming at him to stop, Andy pushed even harder and crossed the line first, a mere fifth of a second before El Guerrouj. The whole race had taken just under ten minutes.

  The rest of the day was a blur. His coaches shouted praise in his ear and someone handed him an American
flag, which Andy wrapped around his shoulders as he trotted his victory lap. He hugged El Guerrouj, who was crying, and someone led Maisie and Lori and Mr. Sills down to the edge of the track to watch as the winners mounted the rostrum and were crowned with wreaths, and the medals were placed around their necks. Andy touched the medal, running his fingers over the engraving. He still couldn’t believe that he’d done it, that he’d gotten what he dreamed of, that he’d won. He felt like he was made of light and air, untethered from all his old shames and sorrows, like he’d been elevated to some plane above other people, with their everyday jobs, their little joys and frustrations, and he’d never have to come down and live in the world again . . . and then, in that moment, a malevolent voice spoke up in his head, in a whisper that sounded like the rattle of old pennies in a beggar’s cup. What if it isn’t enough?

  He shuddered as he felt the day suddenly turn cool, and the applause from the crowd turn into a dim, muffled sound, like waves slapping senselessly onto the sand. His body became flesh again, leaden and heavy and pebbled with goose bumps, and the familiar sorrow rose up to engulf him. He had taken every ribbon, won every prize, even this one, the ultimate, the gold medal. He had sacrificed so much—love, friendship, leisure, ownership of his own body and time. And now? What if not even all that was enough to quiet that voice, which sometimes sounded like his mother’s and sometimes like the father he’d never known, the voice that said, You’re not worthy, you don’t deserve it, nothing you do will ever be enough.