nearest swimmer, although Isaac couldn’t really tell who was where in the outside lanes.
Still, this should be no sweat. It was Isaac’s race to lose.
Isaac told himself he could only swim his own race. He got into position as Randy approached; then he jumped into the water when Randy touched the wall.
And he swam.
He pretended it was practice, that Adam and his damned stopwatch stood at the edge of the pool and not his teammates, that he raced against the clock and not seven other swimmers. He got to the turn and didn’t look. When he turned his head to breathe, he just breathed and didn’t try to see what was happening in the neighboring lanes. The not-looking approach had worked for him in the medley.
He came home, threw out his hand on the last stroke, and hit the wall.
When he surfaced, his teammates were whooping and hopping up and down. Luke reached down and grabbed his hand in a manly handshake. Isaac looked around in a daze. The scoreboard showed that they’d won by almost four seconds, and that Isaac had swum that lap in forty-eight flat.
You’re welcome, Adam.
Isaac was fucking tired now, though. His body ached. His limbs were jelly. His first attempt to get out of the pool ended with his arms giving out and him slipping back into the water. His teammates had to essentially lift him out of the pool.
They all got themselves collected before Mindy Somers in her pink polo snagged them. Her assistant arranged all four guys in the camera frame and gave them strict orders not to move.
“Hi, guys!” Mindy said perkily, glancing back at the camera. “Congratulations. How does it feel?”
She shoved her microphone at Isaac, so he said, “Great!” even though it took everything in him not to collapse.
Thankfully, she moved on to Luke. “This is your third Olympics, Luke. You missed the gold medal four years ago by hundredths of a second. How does it feel to be back on top?”
“Good, great!” said Luke, still panting.
“Randy, this is your first Olympics. Now you’ve got a gold medal. And on a team with legends like Luke Rogers and, of course, Isaac Flood.”
“I watched,” he panted, “the Olympics,” pant, pant, “when I was a kid.” Poor Randy really tried to draw in a breath, but he was also giddy enough to make that impossible. “I mean, I saw,” pant, pant, “Isaac’s first gold medal, you know? I was so inspired.” Wheeze, pant. “And now to be here with him?” Pant, pant. “Incredible!”
Mindy turned to Conor. “When Isaac Flood won his first gold medal, you were four years old.”
“Aw, don’t tell me that,” Isaac said.
Conor laughed breathily. “Yeah. Crazy, right?”
“Well, I have to kick it back to Nick and Dan in the booth. Thanks, guys! Congrats again!”
Isaac and his teammates stumbled back to the warm-up pool. Isaac hopped in to swim a cool-down, but he just floated there for a few long minutes as Luke swam a lap and came back.
“Are you dying now?” Luke asked.
“Pretty much.”
“That was an incredible thing you just did, by the way. I don’t think I could swim two final races in the same night.”
“I’m pretty sure my muscles are melting.”
“Come on, Flood. Do your laps, cool down your body, and try to keep upright when they put the big medals around your neck.”
Isaac groaned.
“You know what else this means, don’t you? Two gold medals in the same night?”
Isaac did know. Prior to his arrival in Madrid, he’d been toxic. Going into the previous Olympics, there had been glossy media profiles, interviews on all the network shows, commercials, piles of endorsement deals. His face had been in nearly every Olympics promo spot the network had done.
This year? Bupkes.
Oh, he got the gear guaranteed to anyone who made Team USA, and he wasn’t alone among his teammates in not having endorsement deals or sponsorships.
But he thought about that as he swam a slow lap in the warm-up pool, willing the burn in his body to fade. Phelps had still gotten endorsements for his last Olympics, and he’d had a DUI on his record too. But Isaac wasn’t Michael Phelps. He wasn’t as cute or charming. He wasn’t a leader like Phelps had been. Wasn’t really a team player. He’d cultivated a reputation for partying hard. The Bad Boy of Swimming, they’d called him, though he hardly thought he qualified as a bad boy. Aside from the DUI, he’d never gotten in trouble with the law. He didn’t have