“And that’s differenthow? She’s been getting under your skin for four years.”
“Not like this.”
He glanced at her. “What did Mara do?”
Kirby shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I want to beat her.”
“That’s a relief to hear,” he said very slowly. “I also want to beat the other skiers in my events. Glad to know you now realize how competition works.”
Kirby came to a dead stop at the top of a hill, and Apollo zoomed past, tucking in as he descended. It took him several seconds to realize she was no longer beside him. He snowplowed to a stop, then duck-walked back up to her.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“Teasing you.”
She looked up at the sky above them. It was robin’s egg blue with cartoonishly fluffy clouds. She adjusted her new sunglasses.
“If I want it, it hurts more if I don’t get it,” Kirby said.
Apollo nodded, his eyebrows tipping down. It was such a basic statement. One that most people probably reconciled when it came to their dreams before they made it through puberty.
“That’s the cost of hope, Kirb.”
She smiled. He was the only one who called her that.
“So what should I do?” Kirby asked.
“Hope. Try your best. That’s all you can do. All any of us can do. And stop running yourself ragged thinking about Mara May. She’ll beat you or she won’t. She’ll win a gold or she won’t. That’s not your trauma. Worry about your own story.”
“My story?”
“Yes.” He nudged her with his elbow and started skiing again. She followed.
“I’m not sure I know what I want that to be anymore.”
“Really? I thought the”—he waved a pole toward her—“you know, spectacle had a purpose. You told me you wanted to set yourself up for after the Olympics.”
“Spectacle.”
“The drama in the press with Mara. The TikToks. The everything. It’s purposeful. It’s a plan, right? You don’t want to tell US Ski and Snowboard’s story. You don’t want to tell Mara’s. Or the TV networks’.”
“Yeah. I guess.No, you’re right.”
They skied through the trees until they hit a clearing with a large vista of the beautiful mountains. Apollo stopped again and leaned on his poles.
“What happened with Mara? What did she say? I didn’t think she had given another interview.”
“Nothing. She just…”
Apollo stared at her. She stared at the mountains, not willing to give him an inch because everything would come tumbling out. It would be worse than if she talked to the sports psych.
Kirby slipped a hand from her pole strap and took off her sunglasses to rub a smudge off them. Black rims. Black lenses. They were beautiful. They felt so right.
“She’s nice, I think,” Kirby said. “Nicer than she lets on. But she makes me so mad. Every time I’m around her, I feel like I’m coming out of my skin. Like I can’t hold it together. And I’m already barely holding it together. It’s an additional, I don’t know, variable that I hadn’t planned on.”
“Well, you don’t have to be around her. You’re not friends. You rarely train together. She’s spent her career hiding from her fellow skiers. It should be easy enough to avoid her.”
