Page 39 of Racing Hearts

Several rounds later, I’m still ahead. Adrian is nothing if not consistent—his score is nearly always around 200. The variance on my scores is much bigger. I don’t ever quite hit the 250 mark again, but I do get a couple near 220 and one under 200. This, it would seem, mostly has to do with our very different strategies. We both are remarkably consistent in form, it’s just Adrian never goes for the fifty. I do, but sometimes I miss.

“Bet you thought you were going to cruise to victory on the basis of having these machines at your disposal twenty-four seven,” I say as Adrian’s third ball of this set rumbles up the alley.

“You are unexpectedly good,” he says. “Although I should know better than to underestimate you. Is this your natural aptitude for anything competition-related?”

“We have a game room in the training center,” I admit.

He sends another straight up the middle. “Ah. So, you do occasionally let yourself have fun.”

“When it doesn’t interfere with training.”

“See, I think you have that backward.” His eyes cut to me like he’s about to say something else when my watch buzzes.

My stomach rumbles in response, and I realize I haven’t eaten since before the erg test. I drop to a knee and dig around my bag for my dinner: cold chicken, vegetables, and brown rice, all weighed and measured. I’ll have to get in one more snack tonight to hit all my minimum nutritional benchmarks for the day, but I’m nearly there.

“Mind if I eat?” I ask.

Adrian shakes his head with a smile. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be training and hungry all the time.”

“Good,” I say as I click open the plastic travel case holding my utensils. “Then you also know why I won’t share.”

Adrian eyes my meal with no hint of disappointment. “We have some leftover pizza upstairs if I get really desperate. So, tell me, does the training center’s game room have as much character as this basement?”

I snort. “What it lacks in character, it makes up for in massages and state-of-the-art training equipment.”

“Sounds nice.”

Homesickness washes over me as I saw at my chicken with a fork and knife. I can practically hear the gentle hum of the halogen lights in the dining hall, smell the faint musk of the lake when it’s heavy with morning mist.

“It is,” I say quietly.

Adrian cocks his head. “What makes it special?”

He once again looks like the man I met in the pasticceria and not the tyrant who has subjected me to his modern-dance interpretation of a training program.

I swallow my bite. “I can’t imagine you care.”

“I do, actually.”

Maybe because of the job. If Adrian gets the coaching position with the junior national team, he’ll move to Florida to head up a series of development and selection camps. It’s not exactly the same as my training center in Southern California, but I guess the setup is similar enough that he’d be curious.

“The facilities are incredible. The conditions are always basically perfect. But I think what I love most is…being surrounded by excellence, you know? Like, living there, I’m constantly inspired. The athletes, the coaches, the trainers, the chefs. It’s like, we’re all in it together, living and breathing the motto.”

“The motto?”

“The Olympic motto. Citius. Altius. Fortius. It means ‘Faster. Higher. Stronger.’ It’s like…always strive to be better. The goal is improvement. You’re never done, but also, you’re always getting somewhere.”

I take a deep breath, trying to push out the negative thoughts that this inspires, too. Until recently, I always felt like I was living that motto. Until I started going backward.

“Anyway,” I say as I lift a forkful of vegetables, trying to focus on what I can control, “it also has a game room, as I mentioned, and the best-stocked weight room I’ve ever used. I’m sure the facilities in Florida will be similar.”

Adrian smiles. “That does sound pretty epic.”

“Yeah? I didn’t peg you for a state-of-the-art-facilities type of guy.”

“You’re right,” he says, turning back to the game, “but I like what you said about having a team.”

“Is that why you applied for the junior team job?” I ask as I shovel up some rice. “So that you’d have other coaches working with you?”