Head Over Heels

by Hannah Orenstein

  When the elevator doors slide open on the seventh floor, I step out in the cool, blandly carpeted lobby. There’s an array of kitschy beach-inspired decor hanging on the wall—shiny pink seashells, dried-out coral and starfish—alongside black-and-white photos of the Miami skyline. I should turn left and head down the hall to my room, but instead, I turn toward Ryan’s. I knock, but he doesn’t come to the door.

  I walk the long stretch of hallway back to my own hotel room. The maid has been here: the bed is freshly made and my jumble of clothes and extra shoes and phone charger are stacked neatly on top of my luggage. I kick off my shoes, flop diagonally across the bed, and try to resist the urge to check my phone. Instead, I stare at the white stucco ceiling for a few moments, ruminating on Hallie’s disastrous performance today and wondering if she simply had an off day or if I had failed to properly prepare her. Too depressing.

  I miss Ryan. I feel silly admitting it to myself, because I just spent the entire day with him, but I do. When we’re working, it doesn’t really feel like we’re spending time together—I can’t fully relax around him when I know other people are watching us. If I had to guess, he’s probably still with her, comforting her, and that makes me feel even worse: heartbroken for Hallie, ashamed over how I failed as a coach, depressed by what this means for my career, and self-indulgent for wishing Ryan could be here with me instead. I don’t want him to come over and analyze what went wrong today. I just want him here as my boyfriend.

  I get up to shower off the day, if only because there’s nothing else I really want to do (and everyone could benefit from bathing after spending time in an arena that smells like feet). The hotel room’s bathroom is outfitted in cream-colored tile with vanity lights over the mirror that feel like the height of glamour compared to my apartment in Greenwood. I linger longer than I need to in the shower. When I get out, wrapped in a fluffy white hotel bathrobe that feels wonderfully thick and heavy over my shoulders, I’m relieved to see a text from Ryan—until I read it.

  Hey, sorry, I’m actually not free to hang out right now, he wrote. Let’s talk later?

  His words make me feel lonelier. I spent countless hours in LA waiting for Tyler to text me back, to come home, to want to see me. Eagerly waiting for scraps of attention is the most pathetic feeling in the world.

  Sure, I type.

  I consider delaying my response by several minutes to give him a taste of his own medicine, but that’s too juvenile to feel rewarding. I should know better than to behave like a child. I press send.

  I’m too restless to sit around this room, so I get dressed and head downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant. Vending machine snacks aside, I’ve barely eaten all day, and it’d be good for me to get some real food. I didn’t realize it until now, but I’m hungry. The restaurant’s vibe mimics the beachy decor from upstairs: the upholstery on the chairs looks speckled like sand, and nautical bits and bobs like buoys and fishing net hang from the driftwood bar.

  “Just one?” the hostess asks.

  “Just me,” I say, pretending to be cheery and fine about that.

  She scans the crowded room.

  “So, it’ll be about fifteen or twenty minutes for a table for one, but I could seat you now at the bar, if you’d like,” she offers.

  “The bar’s fine,” I say.

  There aren’t many free bar stools, either, though I see one crammed between two larger men, and another… Oh. Next to Jasmine. I move toward the seat between the two men, but she sees me before I can sit down. For a split second, neither of us says anything.

  “Hey!” she says, waving me over.

  “Will that seat work?” the hostess asks.

  Jasmine is watching expectantly.

  “It’s fine, thank you,” I tell the hostess.

  I wedge myself into the seat on Jasmine’s right. She’s dressed for TV: gleaming lipstick, sleek blowout, lemon-yellow shift dress. There’s a glass of white wine and a leafy green salad in front of her.

  “I wondered if I’d bump into you,” she says, giving me an air-kiss by my cheek.

  “Good to see you,” I say, even though the prospect of a conversation with her makes me anxious.

  The bartender slides a menu my way, and I order a glass of wine as quickly as I can.

  “Plus, uh, whatever salad she’s having,” I add.

  “It’s delicious,” Jasmine gushes.

  She would grow up to be the kind of woman who raves about lettuce.

  “It was so interesting to watch Hallie compete today,” she says. “You know, knowing you coach her now.”

  “ ‘Interesting’?” I echo.

  That sounds like a euphemism for bad.

  “I loved her new floor routine,” Jasmine insists. “I made a note of it on-air, even—I was talking about how you choreographed it yourself, and how excited I was to see Hallie compete it for the first time today.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. “That’s actually very nice of you. Thank you.”

  “I’m sure she would’ve liked to do a little bit better in the rankings today,” Jasmine says. “But, hey, you know I always love to root for the underdog.”

  She winks, as if there’s a camera waiting somewhere to catch her reaction. There’s not.

  “She’s a good, hard worker. I think she’ll bounce back just fine,” I say.

  “She’s not tough to discipline?” Jasmine asks.

  The question catches me off guard. “We don’t really need to discipline her.”

  “Sure,” she says skeptically.

  “No, really. It’s actually been really interesting, figuring out a coaching style that’s different from the one we grew up with,” I continue. “You remember, Dimitri always said he was hard on us because that would be best for us. But with Hallie, I don’t know, she just works hard.”

  Jasmine doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she sips quietly from her wineglass. I regret speaking so candidly about Dimitri in front of her.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to imply anything about the way he coached. I know, obviously, things are different now that he’s your… husband.”

  The word still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  “No, it’s all right, you don’t need to apologize,” she says, twisting her diamond engagement ring and staring down at her salad, like she’s trying to find the right words. “I know he… I mean, he was…” She trails off and sighs heavily.

  “Is he still like that? I mean, when it’s just you two?” I ask tentatively.

  I know I’m prying, but it occurs to me that Jasmine might not have anyone else she can talk to like this. We used to confide in each other all the time—more often than not about the man who’s now her husband—but I wouldn’t be surprised if she stays tight-lipped about what he’s really like among her new set of friends.

  My salad arrives. Jasmine pauses, politely watching the busboy set it down in front of me. She looks grateful for the opportunity to collect her thoughts before she speaks.

  “He’s a good man,” she finally says in an even voice. “He provides a beautiful life for us, and he is so respected in the community, and he makes me happy.”

  I know what Jasmine looks like when she’s not being totally honest. I’ve seen it before, back when we were kids. It was easy to lie about doing two sets of reps of crunches instead of three, or to pretend we didn’t eat the extra whipped cream on our chai lattes at Lolly’s. I’m not married, so I can’t judge firsthand what’s normal and what’s not in her relationship. But she doesn’t sound like a woman in love. She sounds like a defense attorney.

  “Right,” I say.

  Discomfort clings to me like an itchy, too-small sweater. There’s more I want to know.

  “But what’s it… like? Being married to him? I mean, I can’t imagine,” I say.

  It sounds like I’m openly gawking, and I guess I am. I’ve spent years wondering what their relationship could possibly be like, and after getting a glimpse of it at their party, my cur
iosity has only intensified.

  She gestures to the bartender for another glass of wine.

  “I mean, you know him,” she says, shrugging. “Sometimes, he has his… moods,” she admits. “You remember those.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “And he… he’s particular, you know? He likes things to be a certain way. Sometimes, he gets upset when things aren’t right.”

  “He used to take it out on us,” I say bitterly.

  Maybe that’s a step too far, but Jasmine doesn’t disagree with me.

  “He meant well, but it wasn’t right,” she says.

  “It took me a long time to clearly see how that affected me, because at the time, it all felt so normal,” I say. The words come more easily now, since I know Jasmine will agree with me on this point. “Or, at least, if not normal, like everything was in service of a greater goal.”

  “Glory,” we intone at the same time, like we’ve heard thousands of times before.

  In the back of my head, I hear the word in a guttural Russian accent, and I bet she does, too. For a moment, the past seven years collapse, and I feel like we’re just kids again—giggling friends who finish each other’s sentences. It makes me miss how we used to be. Nobody has ever replaced her.

  “But I think that’s changing, no?” she says. “Dimitri’s old-school, but he’s pretty much the only one left.”

  “I mean, Ryan and I do our best,” I concede. “Hallie’s mostly pretty easy, but even so, we don’t push her any harder than she’d push herself. I mean, god, the world is not a good place for gymnasts right now. You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” she says heavily.

  We don’t even need to say it out loud.

  “But as horrible as that is, this isn’t the first time there’s been a scandal like that—awful things like that have happened before,” I point out.

  “In dark, shady fucking corners, yeah,” she says grimly.

  “The rest of the sport, though? I think it’s getting a little better,” I say.

  “I think I see that, too,” she says. “At competitions, it’s like… whoa. The girls all have muscles and thighs and don’t hide the fact that they eat.”

  We both look limply down at the remaining salad on our plates.

  “I don’t know about the girls Dimitri works with, but Hallie has personality. Sass. Or, as he might call it, attitude,” I say.

  “Nothing we were allowed to have,” Jasmine adds, shaking her head.

  “Ha. No. But Hallie’s good. Happy.”

  “She’s okay with food?” Jasmine asks.

  “She eats, she does yoga, she’s confident…” I say.

  Jasmine lets out a low whistle, understanding the implication: Hallie’s not like we were. “Good for her.”

  “She has a tutor, but she has a whole plan: Olympics first, then college. She talks about going to law school someday. For her, there’s a whole world out there,” I explain.

  I don’t have to spell it out for Jasmine. For us, there was no other world. We’re here, after all, aren’t we? I stab a piece of lettuce with my fork.

  “I wanted to be a fashion designer,” Jasmine says suddenly. Her eyes are spacey, vacant, like she’s dreaming about some far-off memory. She turns sharply toward me. “Did you know that?”

  “Maybe?”

  I vaguely recall her sketching evening gowns and spindly high heels on a long car ride to a competition. We must have been twelve. She erased and redrew and erased and redrew each line on a model’s body until it matched the vision she held in her mind.

  “But then, you know, everything just happened. London and then the post-Olympics tour and then all these motivational speeches at gyms and then Dimitri and NBC, and here we are,” she says, shrugging like she blinked and it all just fell into place, like one domino after another. She gives a short laugh. “What was I supposed to do, duck out and learn to sew?”

  My question comes tumbling out before I have time to realize that it’s a rude one. “Are you happy?” I blurt.

  The words hang in the air. Jasmine uncrosses and crosses her legs, catching one stiletto along the rung of the bar stool and taking a long sip of wine.

  “Of course I’m happy,” she says finally. “I just wonder, sometimes, what else could’ve happened—would’ve happened—if we’d grown up differently.”

  “Without Dimitri, you mean,” I clarify.

  “With a different coach, more options, another life,” she says, gesturing vaguely around the restaurant.

  The wine is getting to her now; there’s a looseness to her energy, so unlike the sensitive, tightly wound girl I used to know.

  “Which is why,” she continues, “you can’t let Ryan take the job.”

  “What job?” I ask.

  “The one they’re talking about right now,” she says, pointing above us, like it’s obvious. “Upstairs. In our suite. No matter who they’ll coach together for 2024—Hallie or someone else—that girl deserves better.”

  “Ryan’s with Dimitri?” I ask blankly.

  I have the sickening sensation of being the last person to know what’s going on, and I hate it. I don’t want to have to play catch-up with my own boyfriend’s whereabouts and career.

  “Where’d you think they were?” she asks, alarmed, as if she suddenly realizes that I’ve been in the dark. “Oh, honey.”

  I groan.

  “You can’t let Ryan take the job,” Jasmine says, her tone growing urgent now. She clutches my arm. “I shouldn’t say this, and if you tell anyone I did, I’ll deny it, but keep Hallie away from Dimitri. Let her be good and safe and healthy. Let her have a future outside of this world.”

  “What’s your room number?” I ask.

  “Room two twenty,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Like 2020—for good luck.”

  “Of course he would request that.”

  “I’ll cover your meal if you cover for me,” she says, holding a finger to her lips. “Go.”

  I race to the elevators.

  • CHAPTER 21 •

  The moment before I knock on Dimitri’s door, my stomach tightens and my mind spirals into tight focus. It’s the same sensation I used to get right before I saluted the judges and strode forward to perform a routine. I knock.

  Dimitri opens the door. Surprise flits across his face.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He doesn’t greet me.

  “Your girlfriend’s here,” he calls over his shoulder.

  He cocks his head and clicks his tongue, signaling for me to enter. Somehow, that’s more humiliating than him shutting the door in my face. There was a time I spent more of my day with him than with my own parents. Now he won’t even use my name.

  The suite is far larger and nicer than the room I’m staying in. The bedroom is identical to mine, but there’s also a lounge with a pair of upholstered armchairs and a love seat arranged around a coffee table. There’s a crystal decanter of whiskey with two matching, half-filled glasses. Ryan rises from one of the armchairs, confused.

  “Avery? What are you doing here?” he asks.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” I say, hoping my voice comes out steady and strong.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” he says helplessly. “I texted you earlier, remember? I said we’d catch up later?”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks.

  There’s real concern in his voice.

  “Well, yeah, I’m fine, but…” I wish I had prepared something more convincing to say ahead of time. “I just… I really would like to speak with you. Now.”

  “Where are your manners, girl?” Dimitri says, looking amused. “We’re working out business here.”

  The way he calls me girl, it’s like he’s hurled me more than a decade into the past. He has a knack for making me feel so small. It makes me burn with rage, especially because I know he’s right—I barged in here without an invitation—but I can’t apologize. I can’t bow dow
n in front of him and pretend to be sorry. I’m not.

  Ryan looks from me to Dimitri and back again.

  “Go,” Dimitri says, waving his hand to dismiss us both. “Ryan, we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  “No, Dimitri, it’s fine…” Ryan starts to protest.

  But Dimitri’s already halfway to the bedroom. We’ve been dismissed.

  “All right, bye, thank you for everything,” Ryan rushes to say.

  I hate how furious and flustered and thrown off course I feel, just from spending one single minute in Dimitri’s presence. But maybe it’s for the best—maybe this is exactly the raw, hateful energy I need to fully convince Ryan he can never work with that man.

  Ryan follows me out of the suite. I turn to face him the minute the door closes behind us, but he shakes his head, pressing a finger to his lips, and ushers us farther down the narrow hall, toward the elevator. I jab the up button.

  “What was that?” he says finally. “Are you really okay? Is Hallie okay?”

  “I’m fine, she’s fine,” I insist.

  We enter the empty elevator, and the tight quarters make it feel impossible to keep my thoughts to myself. We’re so close, he can probably hear what I’m thinking.

  “What were you talking about?” I demand.

  The edge of my voice sounds hard. Angry. Ugly.

  “I’ve made up my mind. I want to work with Dimitri at Powerhouse,” he admits.

  For a moment, I feel too bitter to speak.

  “But you know he’s not a good guy,” I say.

  The elevator doors ding open on the seventh floor, and I follow him to his room.

  “I know you’ve said that,” he says carefully.

  I grab his arm and stop walking. “That’s not fair.”

  He sighs and pulls his arm away. “Okay. It’s not, you’re right. I’m sorry.”