I inwardly cringe at not having a better opener, and, like, what if I remember his name, but he doesn’t remember mine?
This could be bad.
A smile lights up his face, though, and I find myself matching it. “Audrey Lee,” he says.Oh, thank God, he knows who I am.“Careful. Don’t want you to lose your spot on the team for being clumsy.”
I let myself smile. “It might be worth the risk.”
What the hell, Audrey? Are you flirting? Must be the high from the competition, and it’s made you completely insane.
“Audrey!” Emma calls again from down the large corridor, her voice bouncing off the concrete walls. She frantically waves me toward her, but I hesitate. She and the rest of the girls are disappearing into the locker room.
It’s weird. I’ve entered some kind of alternate universe where the adrenaline is still numbing my pain and my gymnastics career might be about to end and there’s something totally liberating about that thought.
“I should probably …” I trail off.
“You should definitely,” he agrees, and I laugh.
“Ladies and gentlemen, in fifteen minutes we’ll be announcing the next USA women’s Olympic gymnastics team!” the announcer calls out.
I take a step toward the locker room and then another.Don’t look back, Audrey; boys are for a month from now, after you have an Olympic medal. Or two.
The door swings shut behind me. The rest of the girls are there, even Sarah Pecoraro and Brooke Cohen. They qualified last year as individual athletes. They’re going to Tokyo, but they won’t have a shot at the team medal like the rest of us—if we make it.
“Where were you?” Emma demands, dragging me over to two empty seats.
“Do you remember Leo Adams?”
“What?” she shrieks. “He’s here? Wait, how much longer until they announce?”
She’s all over the place, and I don’t blame her. She’s just won the Olympic trials, but she has to wait like the rest of us, and it’s not like I don’t need a distraction too.
“Fifteen minutes.”
My phone vibrates in my bag. There are a few thousand notifications waiting for me. Being on national TV during the trials process has made social media more than a little bit insane, but I’ve learned to ignore most of it.
It’s the last alert that catches my eye. A mention from @Leo_Adams_Roars.
I bite my bottom lip, trying to keep that same smile he prompted from emerging again as I open his account. The profile pic does him justice: the same freckles, the same smile, plus a set of dimples I somehow managed to miss moments before.
“Wow. He’s super hot,” Emma says, probably louder than she meant to.
“Who’s super hot?” Sierra asks, head whipping around from whispering something to Jaime.
“Leo Adams,” Emma supplies for her, pointing to my phone. In an instant, my brief little moment with Leo turns into the distraction we all need.
“Is that Janet’s son?” Jaime asks.
“No, there’s just a random guy with her last name hanging out in the tunnel during her award presentation, Jaime,” Sierra drawls with an eye roll.
“Is he a snowboarder?” Chelsea asks when my thumb hovers over a black-and-white picture of him sitting on a mountain— shirtless—with a board strapped to his feet, the sun rising in the distance.
“A snowboarder who appreciatesaesthetic,” Emma quips with a perfectly shaped ginger eyebrow raised.
“He won junior worlds last year,” I say casually, trying to pretend I don’t check up on his career pretty regularly. I mean, it’s not like it’s hard. We all post at least once a day, and he remembered my name, so odds are he knows the same stuff about me. Probably. Maybe.
Dani leans around Chelsea from her seat. “Boys who look like him should always walk around without a shirt. Look at those shoulders.”
I nearly have a coronary when Sierra reaches over and likes the picture for me. “Oh my God!” I pull my phone away way too late. I don’t have a ton of experience with boys—forty-hour weeks at training don’t exactly make for epic teenage romance—but I know enough to know that liking a picture from months ago looks incredibly desperate.
