She swings.
The ball goes approximately two meters, puttering gently off the edge of the platform.
I say nothing.
She tees up another one.
This time she misses the ball altogether, swinging wildly and only hitting the air.
I press my lips together.
“Laugh all you want,” she says.
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re trying so hard not to!”
“I genuinely don’t know what you mean,” I say, and she gives me a lopsided grin.
She tees up again.
I take the club from the next bay and we swing in a companionable silence for a few minutes, and the weird atmosphere that’s been sitting between us since the apartment starts to ease.
She’s swinging too hard. I can see it from here - too much shoulder, not enough rotation, compensating with force for what should be timing. I think about saying so but decide not to.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“You’re wincing.”
“I’m not wincing.”
“Mateo.”
“Your swing is fine.”
We swing in silence for a few more moments.
Then she starts talking, eyes straight ahead. “His name was Erik Lindqvist.”
I set my club down.
She keeps hitting balls - something to do with her hands while she talks.
“He started coaching me when I was thirteen,” she says. “Ten years. A decade of my life, every major competition, it was all with him.”
I say nothing. I just listen.
“It wasn’t - it didn’t start as anything other than coaching,” she says. “I was a kid. He was good at his job. Really good. He saw things in my skating that no one else saw and he knew how to bring them out. I trusted him.” She stops swinging. “And then somewhere along the way as I got older it became more. Gradually. So gradually that I couldn’t tell you when it crossed a line because by the time I noticed the line was already far behind us.”
“How old were you?” I say carefully.
“When it changed?” She thinks about it. “Nineteen, maybe. Twenty.” She picks up her club again. “Old enough that people would say I should have known better.”
“You were his athlete,” I say. “For ten years. That’s not a level playing field regardless of age.”
She glances at me. “No, it wasn’t.”
