“Are the other gymnasts nice?” Amanda added.
I took a minute to think about it. “It’s kind of the same as every other meet,” I said. “Sure, there’s pressure, but there’s always pressure. And yeah, I’ve never met anybody there who isn’t nice.”
As I spoke, I felt Nik come up behind me. He kept his distance, and all accounted for, the group started to walk. My dad started up a conversation with him, but I found it virtually impossible to pay attention to them and the girls at the same time.
“But isn’t it weird not to have your teammates there yelling for you and stuff?” the final one asked, speaking for the first time.
Almost at a loss, I tried to make the answer as upbeat as possible. “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t competed with a team there to root for me in a while. I guess it’s probably a little different.”
“We’ll root for you!” Amanda promised immediately.
“Yeah!”
“Totally!”
The others agreed. “We’ll make sure we yell real loud for you and everything,” Amanda promised.
Overcome with emotion, my eyelashes fluttered with an unstoppable series of blinks and my throat tightened noticeably. Maybe because I hadn’t expected it or I’d grown accustomed to going without it, but for some reason, the feeling of not only acceptance but friendship was so overwhelming it nearly brought me to my knees. I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been about everything and everyone and the way I related to them.
And it kind of made me wonder what else I’d so strongly thought was right, was really all wrong.
Somehow, I forced a smile. “Thanks, guys. That’s…Well, that’d be really great.”
“You got it, Calia!”
Finally to our gate, they settled into their seats and my dad ended his conversation with Nik on a handshake. My mom settled in next to the girls with a book, and my dad headed off to the bathroom or to get food or something.
Nik came and sat next to me.
“What did my dad say to you?”
He could tell I was worried and shook his head. His voice was low. “He just told me that he sees a difference in your gymnastics. Thinks I’m doing a good job.”
“Wow.” I frowned a little. “He didn’t say anything to me.”
He usually didn’t though. He believed in punishment and critique but not so much in praise. I always kind of felt like it should be the other way around.
Nik tried to comfort me, doing so without touching me because of all of the prying eyes. “Hey.” I looked back to him. “He noticed, right? And now I’m telling you what a good job you’re doing. You don’t need him to say it to you.” He pushed his hands down the line of his thighs and sat back. “In fact, you don’t need me to say it to you either. All you need is to say it to yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Besides,” he smirked. “I hear you got yourself an enthusiastic cheering section of eleven and twelve year old girls.”
“You heard what they said?”
“Couldn’t have tuned them out if I tried,” he laughed. “High pitched.”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s a twelve year old thing too.”
He pretended to ring his ear with a shaking middle finger.
My dad moved to his seat beside my mom as our conversation came to a close, and with it came a change in our interaction. He kept his body angled away from me and the topic turned strictly to business.
He reminded me of all the skills I’d been doing really well with and what he thought to be the reasons, and I picked his brain on the things that seemed to give me trouble. My tumbling had been making steady improvements since I’d started tumbling with him at night. He had the best pointers and did a great job of explaining.
And when I was open to suggestion, he became endlessly patient. He didn’t expect me to get it in one go, and he didn’t get mad when I messed up.
He only did that when I stopped remembering who I was talking to and foolishly thought I knew better.
The sound of the gate check agent starting boarding forty-five minutes later was like music to my ears. I’d played it down with the girls, but the truth was, I was nervous. Big time.
People had expectations of me, and I had plenty of myself. This was my last shot at everything. My last Olympic trials, my last chance to do the best I possibly could.
I wasn’t eighty, but my time was up. My body didn’t have four more years to give, and more importantly, I didn’t want it to.
Once on the plane with Nik seated next to me, I relaxed. My dad was on the other side of the cabin several rows back, and I finally felt like I had some time to decompress. I wanted to be able to lean on Nik physically and emotionally, and for now, I had to do it in secret.
Nik leaned forward and reached into his bag, pulling out a smaller brown paper bag from inside. When he sat back in his seat, he turned to me and smiled his most boyish smile.
“What?” I asked, knowing something was up by the way he was acting.
“I got you something. Just…for a little extra good luck.”
My face pinked with excitement, and the bag landed in my lap with a thump as he dropped it there. “It’s not much, so I don’t want you to get overly excited.”
“Shush,” I demanded, unrolling the top of the bag and digging around until I came out with one of the items.
Bandaids. All purple.
Skepticism ripened my face and puffed the very tops of my cheeks as I dug around for the next item.
A keychain with miniature grips.
I smiled, thinking they were cute, but not knowing the reasoning behind them and good luck.
I shook the bag and still heard a rattle, and he nodded in confirmation that something was left, so I reached inside one last time and pulled it out.
A tiny bottle of New Skin Liquid Bandage.
My eyebrows pulled together in question.
He cleared his throat and shrugged. “Just stuff for your battered hands.”
My eyes met his as he socked me with one of the most powerful gifts anyone had ever given me.
“So you can keep fighting and clawing and scratching. That stuff—and I—will be here to take care of you when you’re through.”
“Nik,” I breathed out in a heartfelt whisper.
“Oh, wait,” he called as if he’d just remembered. “There’s something else too.”
Confusion clouded my face. The bag had been empty after the New Skin. I knew it had.
Reaching over and grabbing that very item out of my hands, he twisted off the cap, and pulled out the handy little brush that was attached.
“Turn over your hand,” he instructed, waiting for me to place my palm up in front of him. I did as he asked, smiling at the feel of his hand as it cradled the back of mine, and the precision with which he painted the thin layer of clear coating onto my skin.
But when I looked down, it wasn’t clear—at least not entirely—a pretty purple glitter glinting out of the coating and off of my hands as the bandage dried.
“What…” I started unable to finish.
He shrugged both of his broad shoulders and pressed his palm to the still tacky surface of mine. When he pulled it away, the a shiny, glittery layer of new skin covered both of our palms.
“Just a little extra magic.”
And better yet, when I looked at it, I could imagine his hand on—
Mine.
She was mine, and I was hers. The way she’d looked at me thanks to a few stupid gag gifts had nearly blown my mind.
So much so, it had made the trip to Michael’s first thing that morning to buy purple glitter more than worth it.
But I had to be on my very best behavior now. She’d been through five or six press interviews before this and was finally finishing up her last one. They all asked her the same stupid questions about being too old and too greedy, and at the repetition of them all, it wasn’t hard to see why she’d formed such a skewed view of herself in the first place.