Page 101

“Because it keeps being true.” I trace a slow line along his forearm, over the ink, the compass and the pocket watch I’ve memorized now, the way I’ve memorized everything else about him. “You’re allowed to be nervous. Doesn’t mean it won’t work out.”

“You’ve been quiet,” he says, eventually. Not an accusation. Just an observation, offered carefully, the way he offers most things that matter.

“Nationals stress.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t push it further than that, but I feel him watching me in the specific way he’s been watching me for weeks now. Patient. Careful. Tracking something he hasn’t named. I know he’s noticed. I’ve known for a while. And I know he’s choosing not to push, which is its own kind of gift and its own kind of unbearable weight, because some nights I want him to push. Some nights I want him to make it impossible for me to keep not telling him.

Tonight isn’t one of those nights. Or it is, and I don’t let it be.

“I’m okay,” I say. The line I’ve been handing everyone for three weeks, delivered with the specific practiced ease that’s gotten better every time I’ve said it.

He looks at me for a long moment. Something moves behind his eyes — not quite doubt, not quite acceptance, some careful place in between. “Okay,” he says. Like he’s choosing to believe it because believing it is easier for both of us right now.

We don’t talk after that. We just find each other the way we always do — slow, familiar, the specific comfort of two bodies that know each other completely even when everything else feels uncertain. His mouth finds mine and I let myself sink into it, let myself have this one uncomplicated thing in a week that’s had nothing uncomplicated in it. For a while I get to just be here, in this room, with him, without the weight of what I’m not saying pressing quite so hard against my chest.

Afterward, in the dark, his arm around me, his breathing slowing toward sleep, I get right up to the edge of it.

“Theo.” My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

“Mm.” Half-asleep already.

“Nothing.” I press my face into his shoulder. “Just — I love you.”

“Love you too,” he murmurs, already gone, already asleep. I lie there in the dark with the words I didn’t say sitting in my throat like something I swallowed wrong, and I feel the specific relief of the moment passing without costing me anything.

I hate that relief. I hate it more than almost anything I’ve felt in three weeks, because it means some part of me wanted the silence more than I wanted the truth. I don’t know what that says about me except that I already know exactly what it says about me.

I lie awake a long time after he’s asleep, listening to his breathing even out, counting the specific rhythm of it the way I count everything now, and I think about how easy it would have been. Three words. I’m pregnant, Theo. He was right there, arm around me, half-conscious, and I could have said it into the dark where nobody but him would ever have to hear it land.

I didn’t. I don’t know when I will. I only know that every night I don’t, the not-saying gets a little heavier to carry alone.

Saturday practice, the pyramid sequence, three weeks and two days out from Nationals.

We’ve been running the extension into the cradle catch dozens of times a week now, tightening it rep by rep. I’ve mostly stopped bailing early — Theo’s advice held, foot position and fundamentals, the boring stuff instead of the fancy stuff — and I’ve felt genuinely good about it for the first time in weeks. Coach Torres even said as much this morning, a rare unqualified good that I’ve been carrying around all practice like a small warm stone in my pocket.

Then, mid-toss, something in my body just isn’t there.

It’s small. A half-second of dizziness, the kind I’ve been managing all week with water and gum and careful pacing, except this time it hits at the exact wrong moment. Mid-air. Weightless. The specific vulnerable second where I’m relying completely on four people I can’t see to be exactly where they’re supposed to be. I feel it happen almost in slow motion. The world tilting a degree further than it should. My inner ear disagreeing with the rest of my body about which way is up. My vision going soft at the edges for half a heartbeat that feels like considerably longer.

My extension goes soft. My landing’s off by inches, not feet, but enough. Enough that I come down wrong, weight distributed badly. For one suspended, silent second I feel my ankle roll and my balance go. The specific cold drop of a body understanding it’s about to fall before the brain fully catches up. I hear myself make a sound — not quite a scream, something smaller and more startled than that — and I feel hands close around me before I’ve even finished processing that I need them.

Kara catches me.

Clean, fast, exactly the reflex she’s built over three years of being exactly where flyers need her to be. She absorbs the bad landing and steadies me before it becomes anything worse than a stumble. My hand grips her shoulder hard enough to leave a mark. My heart is going so fast I can feel it in my throat, a specific hammering that has nothing to do with the exertion of the stunt and everything to do with what almost just happened.

“Whoa.” Kara’s got both hands on my waist, holding me upright. “You good? That was close.”

“I’m fine.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is its own kind of terrifying skill at this point. “Lost my footing.”

“You never lose your footing.” She’s studying me, concern plain on her face, the specific worry of someone who’s caught me two hundred times before and knows exactly what my body is supposed to feel like when it’s under control. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m sure.” I step back, testing my ankle, which is fine, actually fine, just startled. “Water break. I need a water break.”

Coach Torres calls it, her eyes on me a beat longer than strictly necessary. The rest of the squad breaks off into their own conversations, into stretches, into the ordinary business of a practice that’s just had one small scare and moved past it. Nobody’s looking at me the way I feel like I should be looked at right now, which is with the specific alarm of people who understand what almost just happened.

I sit on the bleachers with my water bottle and my hands shaking slightly, and I let myself feel, for the first time in three weeks, exactly what I’ve been gambling with every single day I’ve laced up for practice.

It wasn’t a fall. Nothing happened. Kara caught me the way Kara always catches me, clean and fast and exactly on time.