It was a hard thing to change, but after the Olympics four years ago, with the help of therapy, she’d started retraining herself. She’d had to pick herself up and put herself back together after the embarrassing defeat in the thirty kilometer and poor showings in the other Olympic events. What she’d needed from her dad was for him to be a dad, not a coach or consultant or ski support. She’d brought Coach Karlsson on board as her main coach, working with him through phone calls and texts when they weren’t in the same place. His voice was the one she wanted to hear when it came to skiing. Coach Karlsson’s voice and her own.
Her dad hadn’t forgiven her for it. He didn’t seem to know how to be a dad without also having a say in her skiing.
“Have you spoken to your agent this week?” he said before he’d tasted his coffee. He was wearing a Team USA–branded beanie. “Now that you insist on paying that fancy agency, they should have you booked and busy. I heard Kirby Bonham filmed two commercials last week.”
Mara forced floaty blankness to take over her brain. It was the only way she managed speak to her father these days.
He was a bulldozer. He had always been her biggest supporter and her most aggressive critic.
She loved him. It was complicated.
She passed him a packet of sugar to pour into his coffee. She took a sip of her smoothie. The coffee shop they’d met at was busy. She’d already had to sign several autographs, which only happened to her in big European cross-country skiing hubs or at the Olympics. She occasionally got recognized in Anchorage, but Alaskans typically gave her space. Liking their space was baked into most Alaskans’ DNA.
“We filmed all my sponsorship stuff weeks ago. I wanted to take these past few weeks to focus on training, not commercials.”
How he knew about Kirby’s filming schedule was anyone’s guess. He probably followed her Instagram account. Hell, he probably had Google alerts set up for Kirby’s name.
Mara had deleted social media apps off her phone after the first impulse to look at Kirby’s TikTok after their hookup.
Kirby posted every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Mara had wanted to see if Kirby had seemed happy in the posts following the sunglasses incident. Had she seemed as dazed and anxious as Mara felt?
But she didn’t have the time or the mental energy to obsess over it. So she’d removed any and all online temptation.
Instead, she just looked and looked and looked at Kirby every time they were in the same space. For two days. No words exchanged. No recognition.
Which was good. That was for the best.
“What interviews did KB get booked for?” her dad asked, snapping her out of a spiral.
“How would I know that?”
“Well, don’t you talk?”
Mara tried to keep her face from changing but failed.
“What, Mara?” her dad asked loudly. “Have something to say?”
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Of course I don’t know Kirby Bonham’s interview schedule. I’m assuming she got a lot of the same calls I did. The pre-Olympics press day was yesterday. I took questions on my own.” She was sure it had been the most boring press conference ever, and she’d actually missed being there with the full team. “We filmed an interview with Janette Collins together.”
It was better to give him a heads-up to hopefully decrease the eventual reaction. Because that interview had not been boring.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, his voice incredulous. Honestly, that was a fair question.
“I wanted to.”
It was more complicated than that. She’d been asked to, and it had felt wrong to say no. It was hard to turn down a primetime interview with a premiere Olympics correspondent.
But also, she’d wanted to take advantage of the legacy-building opportunity, the chance tobethe princess of cross-country skiing. It had been a tactical error.
“How was the interview?”
“Interesting.”
“Hmm. Okay.” He gave her that judgmental once-over she was so used to. “Have you seen this?” He held up his phone. A Facebook reel started playing with no sound.
