I knew I’d done the right thing.

She waved it off. “I wrote a paper once.”

Awkward and uncomfortable we stared at one another as she rubbed the fingers of her hands together in anxiety.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning to leave without a touch or a hug or a kiss on the lips.

I’m not.

I couldn’t change what was happening, but I wouldn’t even if I could. Every moment with her was just a piece of the ultimate puzzle that we’d eventually get solved.

I didn’t try to stop her, knowing this wasn’t the end.

It wasn’t for her, and it wasn’t for me.

It was just a pause in time.

Just a little time—

Off.

My gymnastics, my mood, my rhythm and tempo, and the way I tumbled—all of it had turned straight to shit.

Even Beam was feeling and looking wrong, several falls a day clouding my vision and throwing me for a complete loop.

And Coach Banning, the Olympic Team Coach, had noticed. But she wasn’t the type to yell and demand, and for that I was thankful. Instead, she’d pulled me aside with a kind word—and a kick in the pants. Get doing or get gone. She wasn’t mean, but facts were facts. Girls were lined up across the country just waiting to take my spot, and if I wasn’t cutting the fucking cake, there was no reason to keep me.

Still, as nice as she was, I didn’t end my talks with her feeling uplifted at all. I felt down and out and on the last leg of survival.

I always found that to be one of the most interesting things of the Olympic system, having to go from training with someone you know and trust to a stranger for one of the most important events of your life.

It was practical, that I knew, the impossibility of every individual team member bringing a different coach to the table nearly undeniable, but I still wasn’t a fan.

The way I felt right now and the intensity with which I wanted my own coach reinforced it—I seriously wasn’t a fan.

I missed Nik on all of the expected personal levels, but I truly missed him professionally too. He had become the strongest pillar of my support system and my go-to guy for advice. He had a head for the sport—both mentally and physically—and I trusted his instincts implicitly.

And, as a result, camp as a whole was a struggle.

I was grouchy and introverted and sullen at all the wrong times.

Which basically meant all the time.

The other girls noticed, since living and training and eating and sleeping together made it hard not to, and they tried their best to help. But without the ability to explain, without the comfort of his voice, I hadn’t been able to find any kind of composure. And without those things, they hadn’t been able to find a way through my brittle fucked-up shell.

There wasn’t enough time for me to have a meltdown and do what I was supposed to do—which meant I needed to pick one.

We had a week to get to know one another, to mesh and jive in a way where our support was unconditional. We were used to competing against each other, but we’d be expected to be cohesive in the team competition and lift each other up.

But I didn’t even want to be in the gym anymore, each day feeling like nothing more than a rigorous chore rather than the absolute privilege it was.

I thought again to the country-long line of muscular, vertically challenged individuals.

A ridiculous amount of girls would have traded all of their worldly possessions to be here, and I couldn’t even find it in me to be thankful.

That kind of selfishness disgusted me even as I couldn’t stop it.

“What’s going on with you?” Jillian asked when I slammed my hand into the chalk bucket for the fourteenth time.

I hadn’t exactly been a Chatty Cathy with any of the girls, but Jillian was the first to cross that dreaded line into crazy person territory. There was only one current resident.

And that was me.

My head dropped forward and pulled at my shoulders. Eyes clenched closed tightly, I took a minute to take a deep breath so that I wouldn’t snap at her.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked her, looking up from the chalk into her twenty-one year old face and the blond hair that surrounded it. Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head and pieces fell out from the gathering, splaying and curving down each side of her face.

A smirk pulled at her lips, skewing her features to one side and immediately cluing me in to what kind of person she was.

“Only if you’re the chalk bowl. Or watching you. Or in the same building. Or, I guess,” she shrugged, “alive.”

A smart ass. She was a total smart ass.

For the first time all week, I smiled, the sound of someone poking fun at me like music to my ears.

I laughed. “I just…have some stuff going on in my personal life.”

I wanted to talk to someone about it, but I knew I couldn’t tell her. The very last thing I could do was tell anyone.

“You have a personal life?” she scoffed as her body went back on a step as though I’d shoved her.

A startled laugh nearly turned into a chortle before I got control of it. She’d somehow hit the nail on the head without actually knowing any real information at all.

“Wow. I guess you’re right. The problem is sort of in wanting one.”

Her gray eyes narrowed, and I could practically see the wheels turn in her head as she calculated.

“Well, today’s almost over. You should probably just give up,” she suggested, ripping off the velcro of her grips and tucking them into one another. “I’ll give up with you. We can go condition instead.”

I turned to face her fully, smiling with my eyes and letting one corner of my lips pull up in solidarity.

“I don’t think, in all the speeches I’ve ever received, anyone’s ever suggested that giving up is the answer.”

She waved it off with both hands. “They obviously haven’t seen you in this state.”

I shook my head and looked to the other end of the gym where Coach Banning worked individually with one of the other girls. The decision didn’t seem possible, the fact that I was already walking a pretty thin line with the coach and committee weighing heavily on my mind, but in the end Jillian made it for me. She packed her grips away and gestured that I should do mine, and then began the walk over to the floor.

She pulled a mat over, crab walking it from side to side in order to be able to manage it herself, and slammed it down, the crack echoing and rippling through the gym until everyone looked on. She ignored them beautifully.

I needed her to teach me how to not care what people thought.

I was constantly considering what my parents and coaches and the media would think, often going beyond consideration and caving as a means for cohesion. And when you let people grow accustomed to compliance, it’s virtually impossible to escape that expectation when you finally decide to have a mind of your own.

I was learning that the hard way.

Gesturing for me to go on one side, she went on the other.

“Come on,” she demanded with a wave of her arm, sinking into an oversplit with ease.

I smiled again, a small bubble of laughter just peeking out from the opening of my lips. “You’re demanding.”

“I’m your friend.”

Nik’s words rang soundly in my head, the idea of giving in to Jillian and her friendship kind of the same as the way he told me to think about love.

Calmly, I sank down on the other side, settling into the splits both figuratively and literally, and this time I didn’t feel the need to go slow.

Because I’d been warming the muscles for a while now, and the stretch didn’t seem to burn nearly as much.

I could have a friend here. I could have Nik at home.