Not as her coach, or her mentor, or someone who’d taught her anything about gymnastics.

No.

As I watched her come alive in front of millions and millions of people, I felt it in my chest, in my connection.

Right in the heart of my pride and love.

Ironically, the heart of those two things felt exactly like the heart of me. Center-left in my chest, under the skin, muscle, and bone, and rooted permanently through a complex interconnected system to the rest of me.

“Nik,” Carli said from right next to me, her small hand settling gently onto my shoulder and applying pressure.

“It feels like me out there, you know?” I said, talking to her and myself at the same time as I realized the reason everything felt so mind-bogglingly powerful.

She shook her head slowly, a small frown of apology marring her normally proportional features.

I smiled and shook my head. “It’s just…an investment in her,” I struggled to explain. Her successes were mine. Not because I’d helped her achieve them, but because her success and happiness was what I genuinely wanted most out of life.

She nodded then, thinking she understood. “You put in a lot of time and effort coaching her. I’m sure her successes feel like your own.”

“No,” I disagreed strongly, shaking my head for emphasis. “It’s not that at all.”

I looked to the ceiling and back again, an ache in my chest making my hand float to the space above my heart without prompting.

“It’s…Callie was broken when I met her.” I smiled, forcing my jaw to unclench. “Beautiful, God, so beautiful, but without pleasureful purpose and drive and lost inside her own head. But the toxic thoughts that haunted her weren’t her own. They were the seeds planted there by everyone else who put her out in the fucking boat destined for the big show and left her to drift.”

I shook my head, my chest both tightening and lightening—a combination I’d foolishly long thought impossible—as I talked.

“A woman like her? She doesn’t know how to drift, to fucking wander, to dream and reason and find her way when nothing feels fun anymore.” I corrected myself. “Or she didn’t. But now she does, and not because I taught her how or did the leg work or any other fucked up thing. She’s that way because I told her it was fucking okay. That’s it.”

Carli hollowed her cheeks and sucked at her lips to keep a tear from escaping, and I clenched my jaw against the onslaught of tears of my own.

“Years of unhappiness and pressure gone.” I shrugged my shoulders and lifted one corner of my mouth. “All because I gave her permission to let it fucking go.”

Connor murmured low and slow in the silence that followed. “Dude.”

“It sounds messed up and twisted and, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I don’t know how to just be her coach, or just be with her, and instead they’re unchangeably locked together, but I’m so fucking proud of her I can hardly stand to be here watching her and not be able to tell her.”

Carli wiped away tears and turned directly to Connor with accusation. “Why don’t you talk about me that way?!”

His exasperated, pissed off eyes were just what I needed to break the tension, letting me turn back to the TV and watch with wonder as Callie got ready for Vault.

Chalk clung to her entire body at this point and a tiny line of concentration had formed directly between her chocolate eyes.

They looked directly into the camera then, holding it as if she were looking directly at me before lifting her hand to look at it.

I willed the camera to zoom in on the skin, to show me a mix of purple and pain, but it cut away and focused on someone else before there was even a chance.

A bar routine complete by someone else, the camera cut back to her, the back of Jillian’s blonde head taking up most of the frame. Callie laughed at something she said and I found myself smiling along with her.

I’d gotten ahold of myself at this point, so I scooted back from the TV, settling onto the couch and watching like a normal person.

She shoved Jillian like she normally shoved me, climbed the stairs to the platform, and started her routine of chalking the majority of her body.

The palms of her hands and the bottoms of her feet, as well as the insides of her legs. No friction was good friction, smooth and fluid motion the only way to go when competing on Vault.

Her ponytail swung playfully as she leaned her head back and forth to stretch her neck, doing several set and twist drills in a row.

Her face was a mask of concentration, and like always, her pink tongue came out to wet her lips.

With a salute she stepped onto the runway, double checked her spot and worked her feet until they were flat into the heels. With a push and a bounce to her toes she was off, running and lunging into her round off with precision, back handspringing onto the table and blocking perfectly through her shoulders.

With force and precision she forced her chest up to assist in rotation and looked over her shoulder and pulled tight for the two and a half twists.

The camera cut to the back of the Vault for her landing, three lines positioned on the mat to assist the judges and gymnasts alike. It made it easy for both of them to gauge the landing, to find their positioning on a landing that was blind.

Her toes curled into the mat and fought, forcing what seemed like the unstoppable force of her body to an immediate end.

The roar of the crowd was almost as loud as this living room, Carli, Connor, and I all yelling and screaming as if she could hear us.

A neighbor banged on the adjoining wall of their condo, but Carli just ran over and banged back, a roll of her eyes and a toss of her hair reminding me what being with Callie felt like.

“One more event to go,” I told the room at large, the USA in position to take first. I thought about the prospect of a gold medal for Callie, and I almost couldn’t stand how good it made me feel.

“How’s she on Bars?” Connor asked, interested and doing a good job of distracting me from missing being in person for Callie’s celebration.

You wouldn’t have been there anyway, I chided myself.

Individual coaches were treated like spectators at the team competition of the Olympics, sectioned off behind a wall with all of the others. And I had a feeling her dad would have taken that spot.

“She’s good on everything,” I told him, shaking myself out of my inner thoughts and watching her tighten the velcro on her grips.

Jillian went first as the leadoff, and Callie was meant to be the anchor. Much like swimming, coaches often stacked the lineup to set the tone they wanted. A leadoff was often the most consistent, not necessarily bringing in the highest or the lowest score, but reliably bringing one in altogether. And the anchor was meant to seal the results, to hold the team in place with a routine that built on the scores of the other gymnasts and ended on a high note.

All it meant for me, under these circumstances, was that I had to watch everyone else before I got to watch her.

Jillian impressed like always bringing in a solid routine and setting a positive tone for the event. Everything was on the line, and you needed a big hitter for big stakes. Jillian was it.

Being that this was the team final, there was only one girl in between selected to compete along with them for their total score, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t even remember her name.

On a normal basis, yeah.

While I was waiting to watch Callie compete her final routine in one of the biggest meets of her entire life—no.

I shook out the nerves as her routine came to a close and Callie climbed up onto the platform to take her place.

I watched with amusement as she chalked her hands, spitting into each palm on the international stage in front of millions upon millions of people.