“You know what? I think I’m done for today,” she fumed quietly, grabbing her bag from the ground behind her and sparing only one look to the now-gawking crowd as she stormed away.
Unwilling to let a little public confrontation end our first day on a sour note, I followed her, only managing to catch up at the entrance to the locker room.
“Callie! Wait!” I grabbed her shoulder to turn her again, but this time, there was no zap—only a shake to knock it loose.
“I said I’m done for today.” Her face was serious and unrelenting. End of discussion.
I softened my voice and my eyes and tried to understand why she was so averse to advice. Granted, I hadn’t exactly executed the smoothest of deliveries, but when it came to tumbling I knew what I was talking about.
“I’m just trying to help.”
Her face broke slightly, but the words she spoke next didn’t have so much as a crack.
“You said it yourself. I’ve been doing this my entire life—at this level since I was a seventeen year old kid.” Locking her body tight, I watched as she forced the words to clear her throat. “Where were you?” She paused for the briefest of beats and then answered her own question. “Watching me. Maybe I’m not the lazy one after all.”
Then she was gone. Around the corner and into the locker room, safely ensconced in a place where I couldn’t follow her.
I wanted to. But I couldn’t.
Nearly numb from the unexpected encounter, I turned on my heel and stalked across the gym toward the office. Her father, Frank, had requested a meeting after I finished with Callie for the day. An assessment of sorts to see if I was really going to work out.
He had a personal hand in Callie, and despite what I’d told her, the decision to keep me as her coach wasn’t exactly final.
Today was meant to be a trial of sorts.
I ignored the stares of the other coaches, and instead focused on using deep breaths to calm me down.
I couldn’t explain the rapid beat of my heart or the intensity with which I felt her comments. The difference in what she saw me as and what I was niggled at me, itching the voice box in my throat and tempting me to go back and have it out with her. We both reacted too strongly for having just met each other, and as much as I couldn’t fathom an argument feeling welcome, with her it had. Because I could feel the way she felt mirrored in myself. Defensive and apprehensive and passionate all at once. So many emotions all swirled together canceled each other out. All that was left was confusion.
Still, I didn’t need to be worked up when I went into his office, so I took the confusion as a godsend and embraced it. Because I didn’t have enough time to dissect all of my complicated feelings either.
All I knew was that I should have been mad. If someone else had spoken to me the way she had, insinuated the things she had, I would have been furious.
But I wasn’t angry. Not at all.
I was just interested.
I knocked on the office door, and it opened immediately. A smirk lined the cheek of Frank’s face, and it took seeing it for me to realize that his office had a window that looked over the gym. He’d no doubt had a front row seat to our display.
Though, I wouldn’t have exactly expected his reaction to be a smile.
He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, so I sat, crossing one foot over the other leg.
“So you met Calia?” he started nonchalantly, grabbing a bottle of water off of his desk and taking a swig.
“Yes, sir.” Obviously.
“She give you a hard time?”
The way he smiled put me on edge, and I wasn’t sure why.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t given me a hard time. She most definitely had.
I was pretty sure he’d witnessed it just like everybody else in the gym.
But her emotion had been honest and real and completely uncontrived.
Something about the way his tone resonated felt belittling of that emotion. Almost how I imagined you’d view a child throwing a tantrum.
But Callie wasn’t a child, and that judgement of her felt unfair on a basic level. It didn’t take into account the muddy waters that churned inside her beautiful skin. Everything I knew said it’ was impossible to keep from being rough on the outside when you’re ragged underneath.
And Callie was. I didn’t know what drove each impulse, but I knew she had some kind of deep-seated issue. Whether it was an actual catalyst or self-sustained demons, she was fighting something. Something I guessed she’d been fighting a while.
I measured my words carefully. “She was…resistant.”
“Ha!” he barked through a laugh. “Resistant.” He shook his head. “I usually call it stubborn. Like hell resisting an ice storm.”
I fought the urge to cringe, smoothing the edges of my mouth carefully. His bark held no bite or malice, but for some reason I was being overly sensitive about a woman I’d just met. He’d known her for her entire life. The rationalist in me knew I had to defer to his knowledge on this one, so with one deep breath, I forced myself to let the indignation go.
I cleared my throat slightly and shifted my right ankle further across my left knee.
“If you don’t mind my asking…” He raised his brows. “Why me?” His chin jerked back slightly.
This wasn’t the kind of question people normally asked. Something about looking directly into the mouth of a gift horse.
“There are a ton of other coaching options out there for someone as talented as Callie.”
He smiled more deeply at my use of her nickname. Like he got the answer to some sort of question he’d been waiting patiently to ask—without actually asking it.
“You could have past Olympic team coaches here, and instead you’ve got a power tumbler like me.”
He leaned casually into the edge of his desk and crossed his feet at the ankles. The look on his face made me want to stop talking, but this far into my speech, I had no choice but to continue.
“No offense, but I don’t get it.”
He pursed his lips and grabbed his chin, but there was no contemplation. He already knew exactly what he was going to say.
“Let me ask you a question, Nik.”
Okay.
“How many people do you think there are in this gym who call her Callie?”
Of all the things I thought he would ask, that wasn’t one of them.
Women’s gymnastics experience, recommendations from other people—those were the things I thought he’d want to know.
Struggling to calculate based on a rough number of pupils I thought attended, I started to lob out a random number.
“Uh—”
He chuckled, and then saved me from my ignorance. “Three.”
“Three?” I questioned.
“You, her mother, and me.”
I didn’t understand.
A shrug hefted the weight of his shoulders up around his ears. “Call it a hunch, but I think she’ll relate to you better than some old fogey of a coach with no concept of a young adult’s reality.”
I didn’t hide my recoil thinking about the way we related today.
He just laughed.
“It’s like I can see the thoughts as they run through your mind.”
Hopefully, that was a limited time thing. I didn’t need him reading my thoughts when I was picturing naked women.
Or thinking about picturing naked women.
Shit.
“Your interaction today was passionate, sure, but you’re one up on everyone else.”
“Sir?”
“You interacted. Period.” He shrugged. “She ignores everyone else.”
“We caused a little bit of a scene.”