Unsportsmanlike Conduct

by Sophia Henry

  As I flew through the air, I pushed thoughts of dying out of my mind. This was the vacation of my lifetime, and I’d met a gorgeous guy who enjoyed the same things I did. I wanted to appreciate every minute we had together.

  —

  “You did very well,” Pasha told me as we trekked hand in hand across a worn path through the woods to the next run.

  The gorgeous glimpse of the ocean over the trees came back to me. “That run was particularly amazing.”

  “But you were afraid, yes?”

  “Who wouldn’t be afraid?”

  “Me.”

  “Bullshit.” I kicked a large rock to the side and watched it tumble down a tree-speckled hill.

  “What is there to be scared of?” he asked.

  “Falling? Crashing?”

  Pasha waved his hand, dismissing my comment. “There are straps around you. You will not fall.”

  “Frayed wires.”

  “You’re not really an adventurous girl, are you?” he asked.

  “I am. I like to try new things. I’ve just never tried so many life-threatening things in such a short period of time.”

  “Do you drive cars?”

  “Of course.”

  “I am scared of being in a car. More accidents happen there.”

  “That’s true. I guess I never really thought about it.”

  “ ‘Pasha died when he ran into a tree while he zip-lined along beautiful scenery, on a beautiful island, with his beautiful girl.’ That’s a good story for the news, right?”

  His beautiful girl. He could’ve said “a beautiful girl” or just “beautiful girl.” Instead he claimed me as his, and it sank straight into my heart.

  “More glamorous than being killed in a car accident,” I said.

  Pasha immediately tensed and dropped my hand. I glanced at him, wondering what chord I’d struck.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I told you about my mother, yes? How she died?” His voice, which had had a teasing tone before, was flat and dry.

  “You told me she died, but you never said how.”

  Pasha raised his arm and lifted a sprawling tree branch out of the way before it smacked us in the face. “Car accident.”

  My stomach dropped. Why had I made that stupid comment? I’d just taken his car example and run with it.

  To say I don’t know how to talk to people about tragedy is an understatement. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy; I do. It’s one of those awkward situations where I don’t know what to say. I have a significant knack for keeping it real and telling people how it is. No reason to beat about the bush. Death didn’t fall into that territory. A lot of people talk about death with finesse, a skill I don’t have.

  “Zipping between trees is much safer than being on the road,” Pasha supplied in my silence.

  “I’m sorry.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

  “She was my favorite person. She really cared about me. Not like anyone else.” The pain in his heart flowed through his words.

  “What about your dad?” I asked.

  “My father hated me,” Pasha whispered. He cleared his throat with a small cough and added, “The feeling was mutual.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  Pasha stopped and stared at me as if I’d asked him to bite the head off a bird.

  “I want to know you,” I explained. “I want to understand you.”

  “Please excuse my surprise. Not many people want to know me.” A soft, empty laugh escaped his lips. “I communicate better with my dick.”

  I rolled my eyes and tugged his hand, leading him forward so we wouldn’t fall behind the rest of the group. I didn’t press him to tell me about his parents. My direct question might have offended him.

  “My father wanted me to dance, but I was not a good dancer.” Pasha must have noticed I opened my mouth to call bullshit, because he continued. “I mean, I was good, but not good enough. He wanted me to compete. He pointed out every little thing I did wrong. He never stopped telling me how bad I was. Never stopped pounding it into my head. Literally pounding.” Pasha tapped his head with a closed fist.

  I swallowed back my disgust. Who could hit a kid? How was that a viable way to teach?

  “All the time. Over and over,” Pasha continued. “I kept trying to make him happy, but it was impossible. He made me hate dancing.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Biggest asshole.” Pasha spat onto the dirt path. “I was better at other things, but he gave me no support. He just told me how much I hurt my mother’s heart because I would not dance. So I did my own thing. I ignored him. And he kept telling me how bad I was.”

  I squeezed Pasha’s hand. A lame gesture of comfort, but it was all I had to give. I couldn’t empathize. For as much as I complained about my overbearing parents, I’d never had a bad relationship with them. Any disagreements or anger between us were brought on by what I considered normal teen angst.

  “They died in a car accident a few years ago. A bus turned wrong way on a road and smashed into the car. No chance.” Pasha didn’t take his eyes off the path ahead of us. “You wanna hear something fucked up?”

  “Yes.” I wanted him to open up with me. To share his secrets with me.

  “I don’t miss him. I don’t care. My life is better without him.” The wavering rasp in his low voice told me he was trying to convince himself more than me.

  Time to show my fake boyfriend my true colors. “You don’t feel that way.”

  Pasha stopped abruptly. “You do not know me. How do you know what I feel?”

  “You’re angry. And grieving. We all say things we don’t mean when we’re grieving. It makes sense. You didn’t have a chance to tell him how you feel, to make it right.”

  “You do not understand.” Pasha dismissed me with a shake of his head. He began walking at a much faster pace and I had to jog to keep up.

  “Then help me understand,” I called. “Don’t run away.”

  He stopped and turned around. “You help me understand. What’s your story? Why do you want to do all these crazy adventures?”

  “You really want to know my story?” I asked. I took a deep breath before speaking again. “I’ll probably die of a common cold that my stupid body can’t fight off.”

  Chapter 14

  What the fuck?

  It only took Kristen a few strides to catch up to me, but on that last step, her foot hit a dip in the path and she fell forward.

  Adrenaline shot through me, and I was desperate to catch her before she went down. I reached out and grabbed her upper arms firmly. Though I’d succeeded in saving her from a faceful of gravel, her head smacked my chest, causing her neck to whip back.

  “Jesus!” I breathed. I cradled her neck in my hand and pulled her closer with my other arm. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again.

  I reached down and lifted her chin, holding her eyes with an intense gaze. “Why would you say that, about dying of a cold?”

  “I thought we were getting super deep in the jungles of St. Lucia.” Her attempted quip fell as flat as her voice was when she delivered it.

  How could she even joke about something like that?

  “This is the reason for the medicine? The shaking machine?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Not to be a buzzkill or anything.”

  I slipped my fingers into her hair and brushed my thumb across her cheek. “A cold?”

  “A cold,” she confirmed. The luster that had been present in her deep brown eyes since the moment we met had disappeared, extinguished as she shared the shocking reality of her future.

  “I have a genetic disorder called cystic fibrosis. I was born with it and I’ve been managing it all my life. You can’t catch it,” she added quickly, as if reassuring me. “Colds are hard for me to fight off. A simple cold usually turns into a lung infection, which is even harder to get rid of. I’ve been in the hospital so many times, my favorite nurse keeps o
ne of my blankets in her locker.”

  Every word she delivered was a knife to the abdomen.

  My life hasn’t been easy. As a child, I saw my father beat my mother until her face was nearly unrecognizable. As a teenager, I’d seen people murdered in the streets of Moscow. I’d identified my parents’ bodies after the gruesome car crash that took their lives.

  Even more recently, I’d volunteered in the children’s ward of St. John Providence hospital four days a week, every week that I lived in Detroit. I spent the most time with the kids who were the worst off, because I thought I could have the greatest effect on them. I knew tragedy. I knew pain.

  Or I thought I knew pain, until this beautiful, bright being in front of me told me that a fucking cold could take her out of this world. It wasn’t fair.

  “Have you come close to dying?” I couldn’t stop the morbid question. I needed to know what she was dealing with. I needed to know how I could ease her pain, her fear.

  “Have I come close to dying?” she repeated. “Probably. Sometimes my parents didn’t tell me how bad my condition was. They had a habit of sheltering me from the worst news. And I let them because I didn’t want to know. I never wanted to wake up in a hospital and find them standing over my bed sobbing about how close I came to dying. They’ve always focused on the fact that I’m alive.”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak, choosing instead to continue the soft caress of my thumb against her cheek.

  Kristen covered my hand with hers. “What’s your story? Your real story?”

  Real? Interesting word choice.

  “I wished him dead,” I said after a pause. “I wished him dead so many times I can’t even count. My own father.”

  She bit her lip, but she didn’t speak, so I continued.

  “He yelled at Mama all the time. Always mean. She wasn’t thin enough, her steps weren’t fast enough or good enough. No one was good enough to be with the great Artem.” I delivered my father’s name as if introducing the main performer at a carnival, the way Katia and I had always done as kids to mock him. Out of earshot, of course, or we’d get beaten as well. I shook my head at the memories.

  I dropped my hand from her face and stepped back. Chastising myself for touching her while talking about him.

  I wasn’t like him. I’d never be like him. If I said it enough, I’d convince myself someday.

  But what if I was?

  “He hit her. Broke her nose. Strangled her. Pushed her down on icy sidewalks. He never did this in front of friends. No, my father was manipulative. He knew he had to keep up appearances. He faked love and passion while they danced, but after competitions he let Mama know how he felt about her performance. We were all afraid of the man he became when the competition ended and it was just our family again.

  “But one day when I was eleven, he hit her so hard she fell and knocked her head on the kitchen table. Mama lay on the floor with blood gushing from a gash in her head, and I was so angry and scared. All the built-up rage came out, and I hit him.” My chest tightened as I conjured memories of that first fight with my father. I ran a hand across the stubble on my cheek and chin. “He punched me back. So hard it broke my jaw, but it didn’t stop me from standing up to him. After that, anytime he even raised his voice to Mama or Katia, my sister, I challenged him.”

  “Geez,” Kristen said through an exhale. Her lips twisted, and I knew what she would ask before she opened her mouth.

  “How could your mom stay with him?” she asked. “How could she keep you and your sister in that environment?”

  “It’s different where I’m from, Kristen,” I said. How did I even begin to explain such a completely different culture to her? Nothing I could say would make her understand that world. “What I did—fighting my father—was not common. Mama was furious with me. She didn’t want me to stand up for her, because it didn’t change my father, it just provoked him. Everything I did provoked him.” I stopped.

  Every decision I made. Every word out of my mouth. Hell, my presence alone provoked him. And when his career ended, my father took his disappointment and misery out on the people closest to him.

  “I’m sorry.” Kristen reached out and took my hand. I didn’t pull away from her, just looked at our joined hands with sadness.

  “My mother was a good person. She loved us. In fact, she sent me to Canada to live with my aunt and uncle to get me away from my father. I stayed one year, learned better English. But I went back home because I needed to be there to protect her. I couldn’t let her be around him without me. Fights with my father became normal because I’d never let him touch Mama as long as I was around.” I lifted my eyes to Kristen’s. “Better me than her.”

  She squeezed my hand, though I knew by her silence and her wide eyes that I’d horrified her with my childhood stories.

  “I wished him dead, but I did not wish for her to go with him.” Tears clouded my vision, but I’d never let them fall. “I lost everything when I lost her. I lost my mind. I lost my heart. I lost my ability to give a fuck about anyone. Why bring more pain?”

  “You have your entire life ahead of you,” she pleaded, squeezing my hands. “Your past doesn’t define you.”

  I’d never opened up to anyone about my past. Not a teammate. Not a girlfriend. The only people who I spoke to about it were the women in my family: my babushka, Mama, Katia, and Svetlana. Only those women, for whom I would give my life, had seen me this vulnerable, this broken.

  And now Kristen.

  I shook out of her grip and placed my hands on her cheeks, holding her face an inch from mine, imploring her to understand. She blinked once, but her gaze held firm. She didn’t look away.

  “I don’t want to be like him,” I whispered. “I don’t want to hurt the people I’m supposed to love the most. I won’t. So I choose not to love.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “You—”

  “Come along, lovebirds!” Our zip-line guide interrupted Kristen’s response by calling out to us from a distance.

  The trance broken, I released her face and took a step back to regain my composure. Then I took her hand again and led her back to the group gathered at the start of our next run.

  —

  Our zip-lining experience was definitely more refreshing and exhilarating than death-defying. At the last run, there were two lines set up side by side. Kristen and I sailed over the trees together. I couldn’t hold her hand, for safety reasons, but there was something about sharing that last leg of the journey together that felt like we’d sealed an invisible bond.

  I couldn’t believe I’d shared the most intense details of my life after just a few days of knowing her. We’d allowed each other access to our deepest, darkest secrets we both kept locked away.

  Except one. Because I still hadn’t admitted who I was.

  During the bumpy bus ride back, Kristen laid her head on my shoulder and snuggled close. I wrapped my arm around her and rested my cheek on her head. Every dip and pothole brought us closer, literally. I couldn’t stand the thought of her being jostled around in her fragile state, so I tightened my grip, a human seatbelt, pulling her deeper into me. Into my body. Into my soul.

  If I could prove to her that I was a good person when she didn’t have preconceived notions of me, maybe she would look past the part where I hadn’t revealed my identity.

  Instead of worrying about what would happen when we parted ways—when she found out the truth—I thought about the motto Kristen had shared with me: Allow yourself to slip into the moment and just enjoy. I nuzzled her hair again, soaking up the warmth of her body…and her heart.

  Chapter 15

  “I’m starving,” I told Pasha, placing a hand on my grumbling stomach as we shuffled single file through the aisle of the tour bus.

  “Let’s get food.” Pasha took my hand, assisting me as I jumped to the ground.

  My throat rumbled, irritated by the dust and dirt the passengers kicked up getting off the bus. “Need to find my
girls first. Lena has my bag,” I explained.

  Lena had taken my bag to the beach with her while Pasha and I went zip-lining. Though I wanted to find our friends and have lunch with them, I also absolutely needed to, because I always kept my pancreatic enzymes in my bag, and I couldn’t eat lunch without them.

  After a few minutes of searching, we found Lena and Sia. Though the beach was crowded, they ended up being easy to find because Blake was standing on one leg, toes digging into the sand with his other leg lifted and curled at the knee. He held the foot behind his back with his hand, in what looked like a yoga pose.

  It must have been a great story, because the animation in his voice had his body wavering, though he still kept his balance. Then Lena said something I couldn’t hear, and Blake burst out laughing and fell out of his pose.

  “You look like drunk bird,” Pasha said when we reached them.

  “Oh, good, because I was telling the drunk bird story,” Blake quipped. He dropped onto a resort-issued, blue-and-white-striped towel and picked up a plastic cup.

  “How was zip-lining?” Lena asked.

  “So amazing.” I knelt next to her, my knees sinking into the warm sand. “Seriously. It felt like we were flying.”

  “How close was it to flying?” Lena asked Pasha.

  “Why are you asking him? I’m the bird here,” Blake said with a laugh.

  Lena lifted the brim of the floppy straw hat covering her eyes to look at Blake. “I’m asking the pro.”

  “Are you a pro at zip-lining?” Blake asked Pasha. “I didn’t know.” He tipped back his beer.

  “At flying,” Lena explained. “I thought you two knew each other from work.”

  “We do,” Pasha said quickly. “But Blake is not pilot. He is more, how do you say it? Flight waitress?”

  “Fuck you.” The muscles in Blake’s upper arms tightened as he crushed his plastic cup with one hand and threw it at Pasha, who batted it away. “Don’t you call yourself an Aviator now?”

  Pasha scowled at him and addressed Lena. “Being a pilot is just like being in the back of the plane. It’s not like we’re wing-walking with the wind in our hair.”