felt good. Felt alive.
“I did tell you not to push it.”
“I didn’t push it.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me you did the 400 IM in 4:06 without pushing it?”
“I didn’t think about the time, honestly. I just swam.”
Adam laughed. “Keep it up, kid.”
TIM WATCHED Isaac’s heat from a TV monitor near the diving pool while he waited for his practice time. In the distance, he could hear the Chinese coach yelling at his divers, which irritated Tim because they were already pushing everyone else’s practice times later. The silver lining was that for lack of anything else to do, Tim got to watch Isaac swim.
The race was incredible. And it was a prelim. Isaac seemed to fly through the water. Tim had seen him race before; he’d watched Isaac’s first two Olympics on TV. But it was a different experience knowing Isaac the way he did now and knowing what Isaac had been through.
“That’s why he’s the best in the world,” said Jason, watching from behind Tim.
“Yeah.”
“I wanted to be him when I joined the swim team in college, but I never quite swam fast enough.”
“You wanted to be Isaac Flood?”
“Here. Comes. The. Flood!” Jason shouted. “Yeah, I did. That guy was the coolest, if you were a swimmer.”
The Chinese team did another perfectly synchronized dive, which somehow still angered their coach, and they finally cleared off the platform.
Then a reporter showed up.
The press had been in the booth all day, watching practice dives, occasionally coming down to confer with the divers and coaches about which dives they were planning for Monday’s final. A lot of the commentators were former divers and came to many of the international competitions; they had a good rapport with the athletes and also knew when to keep their distance. But this reporter was not one of the regular commentators. She immediately got Tim’s back up.
“We’re up,” Jason said.
Tim nodded and walked over to Donnie. “There’s a reporter here.”
“Okay. I’ll send Rudy to get rid of her. Get to the top of the platform. Let’s start easy with dive number one.”
As Tim climbed the stairs to the top of the platform, he heard Rudy, Donnie’s assistant, arguing with the reporter.
“What does she want?” Tim asked Jason.
“No idea. Well, I mean, probably to talk to you.”
“But why?” Tim knew she could want to know about what dives he had planned, but he sensed she was here to ask him nosy questions he didn’t want to answer.
“Forget about it, Tim.”
But Tim could still hear Rudy’s adamant refusals to grant her an interview. He felt sick to his stomach as he stood at the edge of the platform with Jason. He pushed it aside, looking forward to the dive but still distracted. Donnie blew the whistle, indicating they should go. The dive was a forward pike, low difficulty level, a slam-dunk dive any novice diver could do, meant to show synchronization more than anything else. They got into position. Donnie blew the whistle again.
And Tim totally whiffed it.
He came off the platform and got enough height to pull himself into formation, but he knew his legs weren’t straight, and then when he kicked his legs up to enter the water, he kicked too hard and rotated past vertical. The backs of his legs slapped the water as he entered.
Fuck.
The worst part was that the fucking reporter still stood right fucking there when Tim got out of the water.
“The hell was that?” Donnie said, seeming more mystified than angry.
“She wants to talk to me,” Tim said, gesturing toward the reporter.
Donnie turned the full force of his wrath on the poor woman then. “Lady, you need to get out of here. You’re distracting my divers.”
“Timothy!” she shouted. “Timothy Swan. How much is your breakup with Patterson Wood affecting your performance here?”
Tim started to panic. He had to get this woman out of here. He couldn’t talk about Pat. He didn’t want to talk about Pat. Not here.
Diving had always been his sanctuary. On the platform, it was just him and the air and the water. It was his safe place. And this woman had invaded it.
“Have you faced any homophobia here in Madrid?” she shouted.
Tim looked at Donnie. Donnie looked just as panic-stricken.
“There’s a rumor you and Patterson Wood are back together. That he’s in Madrid to watch your dives. Can you tell me if it’s true?”
Pat? Here in Madrid? No, there was no way. They’d been broken up for weeks. Why the hell would Pat be