“I’m your biggest fan, I always will be,” he said. Ari laughed at his audacity, but he kept on going. “I get it, you’re stressed out and emotional. Two losses is a lot, but don’t take it out on me. I’m just trying to help, babe.”
“Don’t you have something better to be doing, like training?” she asked. The smile on his face immediately faded away.
“So, you think you’re better than me?” he said, the mask slipping right off as he took a step toward her. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not. A girls team getting this far is pretty cool, but don’t let it get to your head.”
There it was. Painfully predictable. Ari felt nothing but contempt. She’d spent so much of her life, and their relationship, tiptoeing. Choosing her words in a way that ensured nobody got upset with her. But she’d done enough of that for one day. The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted or repel what she didn’t ifshe kept trying to manage other people’s perceptions of her. So, she stopped.
“Why don’t you redirect your energy out of my business and into upping your game?” she said. “Word in the Village is,you’reon a losing streak.” She watched thunder cloud his expression and tried not to flinch.
“Fuck you,” he said. “You’re never going to be anything more than just a novelty.”
Ari sighed. This was who he’d been all along. She’d just been too caught up to realize.
“Lose my number. Leave me alone. For good this time,” she said, turning around, walking out of the office building, and stepping back out into the snow. She was never going to look back.
22Drew
DAY THREE OF THE 2026 OLYMPICS
Drew usually spent a few hours a day trailing Luiz around the Village. Luiz always knew where to find the most stunning wintry backdrops for Drew’s photo shoots and had intel on almost every team in the Village. But while Drew’s assignment was to work through the list of Zeus-sponsored athletes and take photos of them in the lead-up to and aftermath of their competitions, starting the photo diary of Ari had inspired him to make one of Luiz, too.
MESSAGE FROM:Zeus BTS team
Key people:Athletes at their second or third Winter Games
Key sports:Emphasis on indoor sports
Assignment:We have plenty of content showcasing first-timers and multimedalists, so we want to hear stories from those who’ve been to multiple Winter Games and know the culture inside out.
When he’d broached the idea of following Luiz around with a camera for the day, he’d expected to be met with resistance. Luiz was always busy fighting fires, hunting down tech equipment, and handling every minor emergency and major complaint the journalists in the press office directed his way. But it turned out that the only thing Luiz liked more than helping the people who spent their days working behind the camera was being in front of the camera.
“I’m a multihyphenate, really,” Luiz said as he leaned against the doorframe and tried to strike a casual pose as Drew recorded their conversation. “Press liaison officer, Olympic superfan, future world leader,” he continued as they took photos of his tour around the press office. “Remember, I don’t have a good side. They all are,” he joked. Drew shot candids of Luiz grabbing coffee for a team of journalists working atThe Korea Herald, caught a photo of him running to deliver extension cords for the producers of a CBC Sports special, and then captured a stop-motion of him reorganizing the infamously messy spare tech room.
Once they had enough photos, Drew found an empty desk next to a group of broadcast news runners, opened Photoshop, and got to work editing hundreds of photos for the editorial team at Zeus. There were a bunch of sports-specific photos he was proud of. Skiers midair and ice skaters elegantly gliding across the ice. But the photos he liked the most were those of the invisible moving parts that went into making sure the Olympics ran smoothly. The facilities team that woke up early to grit the paths, the ice makers who meticulously maintained the ice rinks in each venue, the bus drivers who shuttled spectators back and forth between competitions. People who the average viewer would either never see or notice onscreen. But those were the people Drew kept finding himself drawn to. He’d always been interested in taking photos of people on the margins of greatness. The oneswhose work behind the scenes made spectacles seem effortless. In college, he’d taken a photo of one of the men who cut the grass at Dodgers Stadium and gotten a small story about him published in the back pages of theLos Angeles Times. One of his favorite sophomore-year assignments was a photoset of ballet instructors holding flowers while they waited for their students in the wings.
He knew the team at Zeus probably wouldn’t want the photos he was taking of the random people he’d met across the Village. But taking photos of them was the closest he’d felt to the excitement of carrying his camera across LA back in college. He’d left it for good now, but he still missed the feeling of being in a busy city with stories at every turn. So, he decided there was no harm in capturing the people who caught his eye between assignments. He’d done it the night of the opening ceremony with some of the photographers in the press pit. All their cameras had been pointed out at the stadium, but Drew’s had been directed straight at them. Without putting too much thought into taking the photos, he’d managed to perfectly capture the atmosphere of the press pit. The focus, sheer determination, and quiet thrill each journalist got from capturing something that would one day become history. So, he’d made a habit of it. Each time he went to a competition or walked through a crowd in the Village and spotted someone interesting working behind the scenes, Drew quickly took a photo of them. Promising himself that he would find a life for them outside of his camera roll.
He was checking his inbox to see if he’d gotten any feedback from the team at Zeus about the last photos he’d sent them when he saw an unexpected contact at the top of his inbox. He read the subject line:SUSPENDING YOUR STUDIES—SUMMER SEMESTER. Drew sat up in his chair, his eyes widening with each new line of the email.
“Why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?” asked Luiz as he walked past the desk Drew was sitting at. “Has Zeus asked you to find twenty reindeer for a photo shoot with a snowboarder or something?” Luiz joked, well aware of the errands Drew had spent the past few days going on in pursuit of a good photo. But Drew just shook his head and angled the laptop so that Luiz could read it for himself.
“I thought you dropped out?” said Luiz in confusion.
“I did, at least that’s what I thought,” Drew said as he read and then reread the first line of the email.
We have processed your request to suspend your studies for the spring semester due to extenuating family/health circumstances. To reenroll for the summer semester, beginning May 18, please complete this form by the deadline stated above.
“You suspended your studies instead of ending them?” Luiz asked. Drew nodded and stared at his screen, perplexed. He was so sure he’d dropped out. He could still remember filling in the form and explaining his reasons. But as he read through the email, it became pretty clear that, according to USC’s records, he’d just taken the spring semester off. To them, he wasn’t a dropout, he was a student taking a break.
“Are you going to go back?” Luiz asked, curious.
“Of course not,” Drew said. It came out more defensively than he’d planned it to.
“So why did you click on the form?”
Drew looked over at Luiz and then back at his screen. He paused for a moment as he imagined taking a flight back to California. Moving back into a dorm and feeling the warm sunshineon his arms again. By May 18, summer would have begun. His days would be filled with talks from lecturers who saw the world in fascinating ways. Afternoons on the grass working with his classmates. Weekend barbecues and late-night library sessions with friends he’d barely spoken to since leaving. The memories of his time in college, and the vision of what life would look like if he went back, was alluring. The daydream pulled him in for a moment. But then he snapped back to reality. There was no way he could go back. Not now after spending enough time at home to know his grandma’s condition was getting worse. It would be selfish; he would regret it. But the idea of what could be stayed with him as he edited the rest of his photos, then took a shuttle bus with Luiz to get lunch. When they got to the restaurant they’d decided on, his sister was waiting for him at the front door.
“I think I’m going to die if I don’t eat a steaming hot bowl of pasta, some ribs, and a slice of cake in the next three minutes,” said Thandie, who he knew wasn’t going to order a single one of those things. Like all the other athletes, she was sticking to a strict Team USA–approved meal plan.
