I finish my reps and set the squat bar back on the rack. Breathing deeply, I catch my breath and wipe the sweat off my forehead with a towel.
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
I can’t let him distract me, no matter how much I wish he would.
• • •
It’s five days until Junior Nationals.
My first opportunity this year to get an Olympic trial cut and Levi’s first opportunity to prep for the trials in a long course meet. We both have a lot at stake.
Monday afternoon after practice, Coach calls me into his office to watch a video. He makes me sit in the chair behind his computer as he works the mouse beside me. Footage of a meet appears on the screen, but I don’t recognize any of the swimmers.
“Who’s this?” I ask.
“This girl won the Indiana 200 back state championship. You’ll be up against her at Junior Nationals.”
I watch the video. She’s on fire, tooling across the surface of the water, but her finish time was an entire second slower than mine!
The next day, Coach calls me in to watch another YouTube video. It’s another swimmer, the girl who won the Washington state 200 freestyle race. My time was half a second faster.
Coach keeps up this routine all week, including during our van ride to Huntsville. Seven of us qualified to compete in this meet, so it’s a rowdy trip with the guys telling raunchy jokes and threatening to moon other cars and Susannah and me yelling at them to stop. From behind the wheel, Coach tells me to look up a particular swimmer on YouTube who lives in California and did very well at her state championships. I watch a couple of her recent videos. My times are comparable to hers.
“Okay, I get it. I’m good.”
Coach Josh smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you believe it.”
When we get to Huntsville, Coach checks us into our hotel rooms and tells us to meet in the lobby in fifteen minutes for dinner and a team meeting. As far as hotels go, this one’s pretty nice. My bed looks comfy and clean. I should sleep well here.
After Susannah and I finish getting settled in our room, we take the elevator back downstairs. With so many teams here, there’s a lot going on and plenty of people to check out. Guys from other teams say hi to Susannah and me as we walk by. I smile, feeling more confident than I used to around boys. I’m not interested in hooking up with anybody—this meet is way too important to me, but my lessons with Levi paid off in terms of my confidence. Physically, I know what I’m doing with boys now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I keep a look out for Roxy. Then I shake my head and think about the videos Coach showed me and my new gold state championship medal for 200 free that’s hanging from the vanity in my bedroom. I’m not going to concentrate on her anymore.
I’m going to focus on the qualifying cuts for the trials: 2:02:39 for 200-meter free and 2:16:59 in 200-meter back.
On top of that, Coach Josh is putting me in the prelims for 50/100/200 in free and back, just to see how I do. I am pumped.
Coach drives us to a nearby pizza place for dinner, where the waiter is thrilled to serve a bunch of boys and girls who eat entire pizzas on their own.
While waiting for our food to arrive, Jason decides to conduct a Twitter poll on his phone. He posts: Which Speedo should I wear tomorrow?
• Red
• Black
• Purple
• Pink
We all get out our phones and start voting for pink. By the time our pizza comes, he has three hundred votes, and pink is winning at 90 percent.
Once we are carbed up for tomorrow, it’s team meeting time. Otherwise known as a lecture on common sense.
Coach looks at each of us one by one. “You’ve worked hard to get here. Don’t screw it up. Everyone better be in bed by nine o’clock tonight. I’ll be checking your rooms. And no sneaking out.” Coach looks pointedly at Jason, who’s rooming with Levi.
Back at the hotel after Coach does his room checks, Susannah climbs out of bed. She strips off her pajamas and wiggles into a black mini dress.
“Are you really going out?” I ask.
She slips on a pair of strappy black sandals. “Did you see that guy from Dallas? Jon? He is so hot. He said his team is sneaking out to a club.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait until the meet is over?”
“That’s four days from now! He might meet someone else.” She spritzes perfume on her neck and checks her lip gloss one last time. “Wish me luck!”
“You’re out of your mind!” I call as the door clicks shut.
Shaking my head, I turn off the lights, fall backward onto my pillow that I brought from home, and stare at the ceiling. Sleep. I want to sleep. But I’m totally amped up. I didn’t work out today and have way too much leftover energy. Maybe I should jump on the bed or something. Coach would probably say that’s an unsanctioned activity.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Levi: What are you doing?
Me: Lying here trying to fall asleep. Susannah snuck out.
Levi: Oh yeah? Jason invited some girl over and now they’re in bed.
Me: With you in the room?
Levi: He is an exhibitionist.
Me: Ick.
Levi: You’re telling me. It’s like Cirque du Soleil over here.
I cringe.
Levi: Can I come over?
His words shock me so much I accidentally drop my phone on my face. It hits me in the chin. Ow. I scramble to pick it back up. Does he want to come over to get away from Jason? Or does he want to spend alone time with me? The romantic part of me wants that; the realistic side says nope.
Dad always says “Don’t plan to serve a Baked Alaska when an ice cream sundae will do.” In other words, sometimes the simple solution is best. Levi probably only wants to get away from Jason’s sexual circus.
I text him back. Okay.
A minute later, Levi appears at my door, barefoot, wearing a comfortable gray T-shirt, track pants, and a ball cap flipped backward. He’s carrying his own blue pillow from home. I let him in. I’m in a stretchy tank top and pajama shorts. I notice that Levi goes out of his way not to look directly at me.
We’ve hung out alone in our hotel rooms on trips before, but not since we started hooking up. How do I make this less awkward? Offer him a snack from the minibar? Isn’t that how people come on to each other in movies? I can’t do that. Plus, when Susannah was rooting through the minibar earlier, she found plenty of options for contraception. I decide not to explore the minibar.
“Want to watch something on TV?” I ask with a thick voice, and he nods. I flick on the TV and scroll through the guide. I stop on Tangled, my favorite Disney movie.
We lie down on the bed next to each other, like we used to at his house. After tossing his cap on the foot of the bed, he stretches an arm behind his head, propping himself up so he can see the screen. I lie on my side. Two feet of space stretches out between us, but it’s not far enough. I can still hear his steady breathing. If I listened hard enough, could I hear his heart?
He yawns. I yawn. It’s eleven o’clock. This is way later than we normally stay up at home. It sucks that Jason and Susannah are messing up our schedule.
“I can’t sleep,” I say. “I need to get some rest or I’m gonna be a wreck in the morning.”
“Me too… C’mere,” he says, reaching out to me.
I stare at his extended arm. “What are you doing?”
“Let me try to help you get to sleep.”
We’ve done this before. When my cat died a couple years ago, Levi came over to comfort me while I cried, and he held me until I finally dozed off. We’ve napped together too. But this feels different. He’s not simply a human pillow. He’s a human pillow with whom I recently got very physical.
I curl up in the crook of his arm, resting my cheek on his warm chest, shutting my eyes.
“If you could be any Disney princess, which one would you be?” he asks softly.
“Ariel, obviously. I’d be a great mermaid. Which prince would you be?”
“Tarzan, duh.”
“Tarzan isn’t a prince.”
“But he’s a Disney hero. And he wears a loin cloth, just like me.”
I snort, and snuggle closer to him. A few weeks ago, I would’ve been taking off his clothes and kissing his neck. This would have been our first time alone in a hotel room since I propositioned him. I probably would’ve been thinking about bananas and condoms from the minibar and whether I was ready for that.