maintain control. He used his core strength to pull into the tuck, hurled himself around twice, pulled out into the twist, caught sight of Jason again—who was right there beside him—sighted the water, and went in.
He’d gone in straight. The dive felt good. No major mistakes.
When he surfaced, Jason was screaming.
“Oh my God!” Jason said. “Oh, my God, we did it!”
What they’d done remained to be seen, but it seemed like they’d dived successfully. Jason knew as well as anyone that if you did it wrong, you could feel it.
They both swam to the side of the pool and got out, but Jason was still pumped, jumping up and down and shouting. He pulled Tim into a hug.
Tim slung an arm around Jason and walked him back away from the pool so they could wait for the score to come in. Donnie approached with a grin on his face. “Amazing, you guys. Just amazing. I’ve never seen you dive like that in competition. That’s gotta get you nines, at least.”
Jason turned toward the scoreboard. Tim wanted to ward off disappointment, but he turned as well.
Score for the last dive: 92.6. That put them at 494.8 for the day, which shot them into first place.
“Only the Chinese left,” Donnie said.
For a brief moment Tim pictured himself on top of that podium again, someone draping that gold medal around his neck. His pulse shot up, his heart pounded, and the image was so vivid, he felt like he could have reached out and touched it.
He watched on the monitor as the Chinese divers walked to the edge of the platform. Their dive had a slightly lower degree of difficulty, but it was tenths of a point, so if they executed it better than Tim and Jason had done their dive, the gold was theirs. They also started backward, hurled off the platform, pulled into pikes, did two and a half somersaults before pulling out into a twist and entering the water. They executed the dive as if they were mirror images of each other, the most perfect dive synchronization Tim had ever seen. And they went into the water perfectly vertical with impossibly small splashes.
“They’ll win the gold,” Tim said, feeling a little defeated.
“But you’ll win a silver,” said Donnie. “That’s not a small thing.”
It wasn’t. And when the Chinese score went up—94.5, giving them an overall score of 496.2 for the day—Tim tried to be excited that he and Jason were the second-greatest dive team in the world.
The final scores were posted, with Tim and Jason in silver-medal position, and Jason lost his goddamned mind, jumping and hopping and hugging Tim, and Tim found his enthusiasm so infectious that he forgot all about the Chinese and went with it.
He’d won a medal at the Olympics. Donnie was right; that wasn’t a small thing.
Chapter 12
THE DIVE team seemed reluctant to party until the early hours, since the women had their individual springboard preliminary rounds the next day, so Tim called it an early night. Besides, he and Jason had to get up early to go on TBC’s morning talk show. The car was picking them up at eight. Plus, now that the adrenaline had worn off, Tim was exhausted.
But when he got back to his room, he found a note slid under his door. “It’s not a gold, but I’ll accept it. Room 308. I’m there all night.”
“Well?” Jason asked.
“I’m gonna go see Isaac.”
“Good luck.” Jason winked.
“You won’t… I mean, if you hook up with that British diver, you won’t mention this, will you?”
“My lips are sealed. I promise not to tell anyone.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Tim gave Jason a hug again, congratulated him on the medal, and went upstairs.
Isaac opened the door with a grin. He held the door open for Tim this time instead of yanking him in for a kiss, which was a little disappointing, except the fatigue was starting to settle in. So Tim breathed deeply and took in Isaac and the room. Isaac wore a faded USA Swimming T-shirt and a pair of blue warm-up pants. He looked good, relaxed, a little disheveled.
“Did you race tonight?” Tim asked.
“Yes, but it was just a semifinal. I’ll win another medal tomorrow.” He grinned. “You, however, have won a silver in an event the guys on TV didn’t think you had a shot in.”
Tim balked. “Really? They said that?”
“I watched the American broadcast in the lounge between sessions today. Mostly they kept pointing out that Jason was untested at this level