Have they? What is she suggesting? That they should have rolled out the red carpet and baked me a cake?
“I guess,” I say with a shrug. “I arrived late and everyone was scheduled for practice. Then my boot failed and...” More shrugging. This is so embarrassing. She’s giving me that shrewd look like she knows I’m holding something back, and I feel like she’s not going to let me leave until I tell her the truth. All of it.
“Austin looks good,” I say, because maybe a compliment will save me from having to explain the whole pole-whacking thing yesterday.
Adi nods, making more notes. “This is the first time you’ve skied with him since he was injured, isn’t it?”
She always says it like that. Since his injury. Since he was hurt. I always call it the accident. Talking about his injuries is too hard. Too scary. Too close to the even more terrible things that almost happened.
“How do you feel about him being here?” she asks.
“Great,” I say, forcing my smile forward again. “I’m happy for him. His recovery has been incredible. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Which means they’re not talking about you,” she says as she writes something down.
“What? No. I’m not jealous, if that’s what you’re saying.” If anything, it’s a relief to not be in the spotlight. I could be the story here. The sportscasters and commentators talking about my last-second qualification and what an uphill battle it’s going to be for me to win here. If they’d rather talk about Austin and his recovery from basically being a pile of disassembled Lego pieces in a hospital bed, let them.
“I’m not saying anything,” she says, in that infuriating therapist voice where she damn well is saying something but it’s not the thing that she’sactuallysaying. Subtext. Therapists love subtext. They love making you say the hard thing, then repeating it back to you without all the hedging and stammering it took for you to set the thing free from your brain in the first place.
“It’s not jealousy,” I insist. “If he wants to be the team poster boy, good for him. I don’t care about that. I care about—” The admission gets stuck in my throat because while my feelings are surging ahead, my memory is still stuck on the mental image of Austin in that hospital room. Adi presses her lips together, waiting patiently. Fucking therapists. The only thing they like more than subtext is the value of a dramatic pause.
Well, tough shit. I look down at my hands. I can wait her out.
“You care about Austin,” she says softly, and when I nod, she continues. “You both underwent a significant trauma last season. We’ve talked about this.”
We have, but even now I’m still not sure I believe her. Sure, sitting in the snow holding him and panicking that no one would find us was scary. But Adi and I have been over that whole thing a million times. I walked out of that forest with nothing more than pins and needles in my foot from sitting too long. Austin’s the one who needed months of rehab and his own separate training program to get his body working again. All I had to dowas qualify for the Olympics in a sport I’ve spent my whole life training for, and I couldn’t even do it.
Also, I’ve never told Adi about that night. It didn’t seem right. Not that she’d tell anyone. Team gossip is more contagious than mono at a summer camp, but Adi’s a professional. But if I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Austin it happened, there’s no way I was going to tell a shrink. Besides, it’s a completely separate thing. Sure, the accident was traumatic. The night before? Best night of my life. Why would I need therapy about that?
“I’m fine,” I say for what feels like the tenth time since I walked into her makeshift office. The pause that follows is even heavier than the last. She knows I’m lying, but she can’t force me to say anything. I used to worry that therapists had sneaky ways to pry uncomfortable truths out of you, but the real truth is I’ve never said anything to her I didn’t want to. Case in point: she still thinks I’m hung up on Austin’s accident and not the fact he said he loved me and promptly forgot about it.
She says, “I’m only here to help you compete as well as you can. If there’s something standing in the way, we can talk about it.”
I pinch my lips together because I’m not ready to say the thing she wants from me. Not now. It’s too late now. I’m at the Olympics. There’s no room to deal with broken hearts. If I was going to tell her about that, it should have been months ago.
As I leave our appointment, an arm slips into the crook of my elbow.
“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It’s Tara the Terror. She smiles sweetly at me, but her grip on my arm says whatever is about to happen will be done her way. No delays from me. I’m used to competition weekends running on a tight schedule, but the Olympics are a whole new ballgame.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I need you and Austin on the bus in ten minutes. Can you do that?”
I can be on the bus in ten minutes. No problem. But with Austin?
“I’m not his keeper.”
She arches an eyebrow in an expression that is annoyingly similar to one Adi gave me not too long ago. It leaves me feeling like I’m made of tissue paper and everyone can see right through me.
“I heard about your little thing yesterday at practice. We can’t be having any of that in front of the cameras, hmmm?” The last sound curls up sweetly, but her fingernails on my sleeve are more like a cat about to strike.
“What cameras?”
Her grip tightens on my arm even further and I’m very close to getting scolded like a middle schooler in front of all the people who are now up and moving about. It’s not only the Canadian freestyle team staying here either. Australians, Norwegians and Germans. Pretty sure I saw a couple people in what I think is the national team gear from Luxembourg. They’re all moving through the central foyer of the hotel, carrying equipment and calling out to each other, but heads will turn when Tara starts yelling.
“It’s on the schedule,” she says instead, speaking through tight lips. Clearly she doesn’t want to cause a scene either and for that I’m grateful. At least with Tara, whatever she’s shuttling me and Austin off to, it’s probably something media related. We’ll smile and tell some journalist how excited we are to be here and that we’re taking it one day at a time. No big deal. No emotional confessions. That’s not what the world’s sports broadcasters expect from us.
