“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.
I watched her rub chalk into the palm of each grip, clap her hands together, and then start over again, and I watched all of it with rapt attention as if she was doing something worth watching.
One final breath, she moved to the front of the Bars, waiting to be prompted for that all important salute.
Her hands flashed above her head and a genuine smile painted the line of her lips.
I held my breath as she started her first skill, kipping and casting and hooking her feet to the low bar for a nearly full rotation that catapulted her to the top.
Her casts were precise and the placement of her hands was dead on. Not even a sheet of paper could fit between her trim legs, the muscle perfectly and calculatedly pressed together in a showing of excellent form and concentration.
She was killing it, making my heart beat a mile a minute and painting a smile so ridiculous across my face, I was glad no one but Connor and Carli could see me. Each time she hit her handstand at the top of her rotation it was like she was made to do it—like a string pulled taut at just the right moment and yanked her perfectly pointed toes straight to the ceiling.
She was doing it—what she’d set out to do—showing the world and herself that twenty-six wasn’t too old. It wasn’t past the prime.
She had never been better.
Knowing what was coming, I eased myself up off the couch and paced toward the TV, preparing myself nearly as much as she had to be. As her hands left the bar for her Piked Tkatchev, I held my breath knowing she’d be going straight into her Deltchev immediately after.
But it didn’t come.
She left the bar beautifully but traveled too far to form a comfortable grip on her return, and I could do nothing but watch as her fingers stretched to hang on, prolonging her swing and changing the angle of her body.
I reached for her as though I could actually catch her through the TV, but her fingers left the bar unplanned and unhindered. She tucked into herself like someone practiced at falling, but the momentum was too much to combat, and the very apex of her neck and spine struck the ground with a brutality that nearly made me sick.
Her body crumpled into itself before slowly unraveling into a state of stillness I’d never seen it take on before. Her lifeless legs lulled open and her empty, grip-covered hand fell to her side and unfurled.
Every normally vibrant indicator of consciousness was absent, and the immediate silence of the crowd and announcers settled hauntingly into my bones.
My first instinct was to go to her immediately. Just drop everything, run straight out the fucking door, and not even bother turning back.
Thankfully though, I gave myself just a moment to think it through and realized that would be about the dumbest thing I could do.
Carli grabbed me on one side and Connor took the other, chaining me like a wild fucking animal, but I’d already figured it out on my own.
Reasoned it in my head and heart and fucking accepted it just like I did every-fucking-thing else.
“Cal,” I whispered to myself, watching her on the screen and sinking to my knees in order to pray for a miracle. All I could do was ask for everyone that was there to help her. I couldn’t ask them myself, so I asked God to deliver a message for me. I didn’t pray often, and I didn’t use language He would be proud of, but I believed. In that moment, I believed and I did it as hard as I could because I had to.
I was helpless to do anything more.
She was in Brazil, for fuck’s sake.
I scrubbed angry hands down the tears on my face.
It wasn’t like I could be there for her now, in this instant. It was going to take me at least a day to get there. Guaranteed. Between getting on a flight, getting to the airport, actual travel time, and finding my way to her once I got there, I had a long road ahead of me.
One I fully intended to traverse, but I’d rather do it with some information.
Stepping closer to the TV, I watched as a crowd of people worked on her, willing her to give me some sort of sign, some sort of indicator that she was okay.
“Come on, little Pea. Give me something. Move. Please move.”
Mindless of distance and futility, my fingers sought the skin of her wrist, touching the highly pixilated virtual depiction of it lightly. I willed her to feel me despite impossibility, to give me just one fucking thing I asked for.
She didn’t.
Disregarding the past had done me no favors. History—despite hope and mental sorcery—