at the table, I took a few sips, not bothering to argue that it wasn’t part of my diet. They wanted to celebrate my success, and I wanted to as well. And the omurice that appeared, an omelet slit open over a bed of rice and topped with beef gravy, was something I could only have a sliver of. Robert had ordered salads too, so I tasted more of that than the omurice, even though the molten egg concoction flooded my mouth with saliva, making me want twice as much as I’d had. Pulling away from it was just one reminder of how much I gave up to do what I was doing with my life.
There was nothing normal about what I did, nothing regular about the extremes I had to go to for the competition. I didn’t regret it. Not at all. But damn, some days, like today, when I just wanted to have what was the closest thing to a family meal as it got—complete with undercurrents and toxic undertones—it sucked.
“By the way, Nike and Puma are vying for you,” Robert inserted as I speared a cherry tomato on a fork and shoveled it down.
I cocked a brow at him. “Really?”
Though he was a busy man, I knew it gave him a kick to manage that side of things for me.
“I think Nike will win the bidding war,” he mused. “But we’ve had a lot of interest already. That was before you even won gold.”
“No business over the dinner table,” Anna chided, like she usually did.
As he usually did, Robert just shrugged. “These are exciting times.”
Was it?
I guessed so.
Excitement for me was different than it was for most people though.
For me, being under the water, beneath the surface, slicing through it, flying with its currents, that was exciting.
The rest was just a part of the routine.
But I needed the money for my future, so I turned to him and asked, “You’ll invest the funds from the sponsorship deals for me, won’t you, Robert?”
He beamed at me. “Of course. But you’re better off getting Adam’s input. You know what he’s like with picking big winners.”
I didn’t want to look at him, but I did. I just braced myself before I let my eyes connect with his, and as usual, it was like a kick to the solar plexus.
I could have melted into him. Literally could have puddled into goo at his feet.
“Best investment is property,” he muttered, wrenching his gaze from mine with enough force that I knew it had to hurt him as much as it did me to bust the tie between us.
“That’s staid. Conservative.”
Adam shrugged off Robert’s jeer. “Best way. Thea is conservative. She’ll stress if the money is put into places she can’t see, can’t control.”
He understood my past more than his parents, even if he didn’t really have a clue about the level of poverty I’d been raised in.
“I like the sound of real estate.”
“Houston is one of the best places to invest at the moment. Maybe Raleigh, North Carolina. But Austin for sure.”
Robert’s brows lifted. “Because of the new Apple campus there?”
“Fifteen thousand new jobs flooding the area?” Adam whistled under his breath. “Damn straight that’s a good place to be picking up real estate.”
Anna tapped his arm. “Maybe you and Thea should head down there, select some property for her.” With Adam’s main base still being Boston, I was certain she’d love it if I bought property in Austin…especially if I ended up moving there at some point.
Adam’s smile was tight. “We’ll have to schedule something.”
Anna didn’t notice his tension, but I did.
He might as well have said, ‘Fuck no. I don’t want to be anywhere near her.’
And it hurt.
Fuck, it hurt.
I wished it didn’t, wished that wasn’t the way things were between us, but that was how it had to be.
It grew harder and harder to maintain my smile over the course of the meal, and when Robert finally paid the bill and we climbed into the car, I was exhausted. More from our collision than the races.
I didn’t really take another breath until I was waving them away, standing outside the dorms where the U.S. Swim Team was being accommodated—my past driving off to their hotel, my future at my back.
I just stood there at the roadside, feeling the ground beneath my feet cling to me like an anchor. Dragging me down, weighing on me.
Tears flooded my eyes at how hopeless I felt when I had everything to aim for,