“I’m taking a walk.” I sling my athletes’ credential around my neck and leave, not waiting for a response.
They built the Olympic Village on an inlet of Tokyo Bay, and the sticky humidity in the air combined with the water traffic and the planes going overhead really does remind me of home. I want to text my parents, but that would require looking at my phone, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t need one more ounce of negativity right now, and there’s no escaping that on social media. Even random people who have my number won’t hesitate to let me know exactly how they feel about what went down today.
Maybe just one message, though.
Can you get here?
I drop a pin and then shut my phone off, burying it in the pocket of my jacket.
Making it down to where the edge of the village meets the water, I sit on one of the benches.
The horizon beckons in the distance. Coronado’s five thousand miles away. Home is more than eight thousand. I’m at the Olympic Games, the thing I’ve been working toward my entire life, and all I can think about is how I want to crawl into my bed back in Queens and let the sounds of cars and ambulances and airplanes and people outside on their stoops and kids playing in the alleyway behind our house drown out everything else. I want to inhale the scent of the laundry detergent my mom uses on my sheets and the aftershave my dad uses in the bathroom.
I want to go home.
The tears come unbidden, not a steady stream, but one at a time. I want to go home. I want all of this to go away.
I’m this team’s captain, a title I didn’t earn and definitely don’t deserve, and the team is crumbling. I have no idea what to do to fix it, and my only solution is to run away.Great leadership skills, Audrey. Really fantastic.
“Hey, there you are,” Leo says from just a few feet away.
I reach up quickly, wiping away the remaining tears from my cheeks, but he saw them.
“Can I?” he asks, motioning toward the open spot beside me on the bench.
I nod. That’s all I’m capable of right now.
“I keep thinking about how this is the same water we left behind at home,” he says, nodding out to the inlet.
“Yeah, the ocean is big,” I retort and then cringe at the sarcasm laced through each word. He doesn’t deserve me lashing out. I asked him to come, and he came. He’s done nothing except be there for me, despite, you know, knowing me for, like, five whole minutes. “How did you get into the village?”
“I bribed the guard.”
I finally turn to look at him, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“No, I had my mom sign me in as a guest,” he says, heaving a sigh and sliding a little closer. He doesn’t reach out for me, so instead I do, leaning my head against his shoulder. He laces his fingers with mine, holding my hand and pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“Thanks for coming so fast. I’m sorry … I can’t … I can’t tell you what happened. It’s not my secret to tell. I just … I don’t know if I can do all of this anymore.”
“Whatever it is, I know you can,” he says without hesitation, and that surety, that confidence he has in me, is what makes me snap.
“I can’t!” I shoot back, leaping up from the bench and whirling on him. “My brain has been going a mile a minute since trials. Like I didn’t even have a minute to process any of it and then we got here and now there’s way too much time to think and I go over and over it in my head a million times and I haven’t even begun to think about what could have happened to me with Gibby if Dani hadn’t stopped him and now Emma …” I trail off before I reveal too much. “They were depending on me. I was supposed to be their captain, and I can’t … I can’t think …”
“So don’t think.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I shoot back and throw my hands out in frustration. “It’s not. The only time I can’t think is when I’m doing gymnastics, and what if that won’t work anymore, because now gymnastics means losing?” My voice cracks, and I’m close to tears, but I don’t want to cry. I want to fix this.
“I’m sorry about what happened today. You deserved to win. You deserve every good thing in this world.”
That’s when something inside me breaks. Maybe like it did for Emma today during the competition. It’s all finally too much, and I burst into tears.
He lets me cry for I don’t even know how long, but it’s a while before my breathing evens and the tears stop coming.
“I’m such a mess, and I’m always crying on you. I’m sorry. I need … I don’t even know what I need. A distraction, maybe.”
Leo raises an eyebrow and stands, holding his hands out to me. “Fine, then I’ll distract you. Dance with me.”
His totally random suggestion actually makes me stop spiraling. That was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. “That’s not, like, a euphemism for …”
