“You don’t. Send a mass text telling everyone you appreciate it and go back to training.”
Tim nodded. “Or just shut the thing off.”
“Or that.”
Isaac did not swim in the first race, a backstroke semifinal, but there were two Americans in that heat. Ginny cheered her head off even though she didn’t know either swimmer, so Tim got into it too. Having a stake in the race—wanting specific swimmers to win—riled up Tim, and he got tense watching. Both Americans qualified for the final.
Then an official announced the 400-meter freestyle semifinals.
Isaac wasn’t in the first heat, but his training partner Luke was. So was another American, though Tim didn’t recognize the name. The swimmers came out and fiddled with things at the blocks for a few minutes before they were ready to race.
Luke won the first race. A Chinese swimmer came in second and a Brazilian swimmer was third. The other American took the fourth spot, but Tim had watched enough swimming to know that didn’t necessarily guarantee him a spot in the finals.
Ginny had cheered for Luke, but she went full-on bananas when Isaac came out.
Isaac took off his shoes and socks and slid out of his warm-up pants, though he continued to stand there in his coat for a minute. He stripped in a practical way; his purpose was to keep warm until the last possible second, when he’d get down to his swimsuit and jump in the pool. His mannerisms were practiced and businesslike—but there was something sexy about them too. Tim loved Isaac’s broad chest—which he’d barely gotten to explore during their quickie the night before—and seeing it on display now, both directly next to the pool and up on the big screen next to the scoreboard, was quite an experience.
“He’s so sexy,” Ginny said.
“Oh yeah,” said Tim, because why fight it?
The swimmers were told to get to their marks, so Isaac fiddled with his goggles and got up on the block. He did some weird thing with his hands that seemed to be more of a pantomime of getting ready to swim than anything real. Still, he cut a compelling figure, and Tim couldn’t take his gaze away.
Isaac bent forward. “Set,” said the announcer. Then a buzzer sounded and the swimmers were in the water.
According to the scoreboard, Isaac was in fourth after the first lap, but there were many more laps to go. Tim got nervous for him, though, his gut clenching as he leaned forward.
“He’s pacing himself,” Ginny said. “He doesn’t want to get too tired because he has to swim again later.”
By the third lap, Isaac had caught up and seemed to be swimming neck and neck with the two other leaders. By the fourth lap, he had inched ahead.
He was amazing.
Tim thought he might have shouted the loudest.
Isaac finished the race second, but had a good enough time to advance. Up on the big screen, Tim could see Isaac nod as if he was satisfied with that. The swimmers patted each other on the back or gave each other high fives or back pats—it all seemed very collegial—then they all got out of the pool and retreated toward the locker room.
Tim finally breathed.
“Wow, that was tense,” he said.
“I know!” said Ginny. “This is really exciting. I wish we didn’t have to train the rest of the week or I’d say we should come back every day.”
“We should take up one of those sports that has its whole event on the first day. Then we’d be done and could just watch other competitions,” Jason said. “Like shooting or archery or whatever. Those are all done pretty fast.”
“Can you do any of those sports?” asked Ginny.
“I did archery at summer camp when I was a kid,” said Jason.
“That totally counts as Olympic training,” said Kayla, with an eye roll.
They sat through another hour of races, with a lot of wait time in between. “It’s like golf,” Kayla observed after a while. “A lot of sitting for, like, three minutes of action.”
At one point Ginny squealed again. Tim thought Isaac had come back out, but she was looking at her phone. “Hey, look at this. There have already been three marriage proposals at the Madrid Games.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The first was on Saturday. The Brazilian women’s soccer team won their first game, and then the girlfriend of one of the players ran onto the pitch and proposed. The second was a fencer from Italy who proposed to his girlfriend after he secured