Except that Pat was still here in the city. He hadn’t shown up with the whole entourage—he’d seemed quite alone in the stands, according to his parents, and he’d been alone at America House last night—but he was here. Did that mean he’d learned something? That he wanted Tim back for more than just fame and magazine covers? Not that it mattered, because Tim was not going back to him.
He shook his head and looked at Isaac, who gazed at him warmly. It killed Tim to say it, but he whispered, “Please don’t say anything about us. At your interview, I mean.”
“I won’t.” Isaac kissed Tim’s forehead. “I completely understand. But I wanted to let you know I’m going to do this interview. Do you think it’s a terrible mistake?”
Tim put a hand on Isaac’s waist and looked into his eyes. He knew Isaac wanted to do the interview and was moved by that desire, even if he wasn’t confident it was a good idea.
“You said,” Isaac said softly, “that telling your story to the public meant kids had a role model. That they could see a successful gay man and know that good things were possible for them too. What if I said, you know, you can sink into some dark places, but you can also fight your way back out? Do you think that would be an inspirational message?”
Tim’s heart squeezed. Had he actually inspired Isaac to make this choice? He could see the question in Isaac’s eyes, the struggle he’d probably had mentally for the past few days while he wrestled with the decision.
Tim realized that somewhere in the past two weeks, he’d fallen in love with Isaac Flood. Warmth spread across Tim’s chest as he looked at Isaac; this was a man he’d come to care about deeply in a short amount of time. And Isaac had done something incredible, both by getting sober and by using his sobriety as motivation to become one of the best athletes in the world.
How had this happened? How had Tim fallen for a man so fast? Was he making a terrible mistake, like he had with Pat? They’d known each other for such a short amount of time, and Tim clearly wasn’t the best judge of character. He didn’t completely trust his feelings yet.
Well, he figured, they’d made no decisions yet. As far as things stood right now, Tim would fly back to Boulder on Monday, and Isaac would fly back to North Carolina. Nothing had really changed. But everything had changed.
Still, Isaac was waiting for Tim to say something, concern etched all over his face, probably wondering if he was making a horrific mistake by talking about his struggle so publicly.
Tim looked around, then leaned forward and kissed Isaac. “I think it’s an important message.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And I hate to be a jerk about going public with our relationship. I’d love to go public. But can you imagine how many gawkers and cameras would show up at the platform final if we did?”
“I understand. I won’t say anything.”
“I’ve been through this before and I can’t… not before the final.”
“Tim. I get it. I swear, it’s our secret until you say otherwise.”
“The minute diving is over, we can tell anyone you want.”
Isaac shrugged. “The world doesn’t need to know yet. I’m happy with this being between us. And our closest friends, I guess.”
Tim smiled, relieved. “When is the interview?”
Isaac pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “In an hour. Sheri from USA Swimming is arranging for a car to take me from here to the broadcast center in about ten minutes. So I’m really glad I caught you.”
“You watched me practice.”
“I did. Is that creepy?”
“No, I think it’s sweet.” Tim kissed Isaac again.
Isaac lowered his eyelids and smiled slowly. “Good. What are you up to now?”
“I was going to put in an hour at the gym. Then I might take a nap in your room.”
Isaac grinned. “Sounds good to me. I’ll see you when I get back.”
Isaac bounded out of the locker room, so Tim changed into his gym clothes. He hummed a little to himself, feeling content for now, buzzy from realizing how much he cared about Isaac. He smiled to himself as he shouldered his gym bag and left the locker room. He nodded at the security guard on the way out, glad that he was there, keeping out anyone who didn’t belong.
Because Pat did not belong. And yet there he was, standing just outside the police barrier. He grinned like an idiot when he saw Tim.
“Didn’t I tell you to go home?” Tim asked, pushing past him.
“Can we talk? Somewhere less public? Like your room maybe?”
“No.” Fury rose up in Tim’s belly. How dare Pat be here like this? How dare he interrupt whatever was growing between him and Isaac? How could Pat be so presumptuous as to think Tim would just dump everything to be back with him? “First of all, only athletes are allowed in the dorms. Second, I have nothing to say to you.”
“I’ve changed, Timmy. I made a terrible mistake. I never should have treated you the way I did, and I’m here to make up for that now.”
“Your timing is terrible. I’m due at the gym. Because, you know, I’m here to compete and fulfill a lifelong ambition, not to sort through my old dirty laundry.”
“Timmy.”
“Fuck off, Pat. I have things to do.”
“I flew all the way here for you. Doesn’t that mean something?”
What would it take to make Pat go away?
Well, if he wanted to talk, they could talk, but not here, not with the media setting up to film the next competition, and not with so many onlookers. Tim kept walking, Pat on his heels, toward the athlete exit. A bus idled outside. Tim started to calculate whether they could have it out on the back of an empty bus if the driver didn’t speak English, but then Pat said, “I rented a car. You want a ride back to the Athlete Village, at least?”
He didn’t, but at least the car was a place they could argue out of the public eye. “Yeah, all right.”
Luke Rogers, of all people, strolled out of the Aquatics Center then. “Hey, Tim,” he said.
“Hi, Luke. You just missed Isaac.”
“I know. He told me he had to go do some big interview. We both got called here for drug testing, which is dumb now that the competition is over. Whatever, nature of the beast.” Luke glared at Pat.
Pat stepped forward and thrust his hand out aggressively. “I’m Patterson Wood.” His tone indicated that Luke should have understood who Pat was.
Luke just stared at his hand.
Pat withdrew it and threw it around Tim instead. “I’m Tim’s boyfriend.”
Tim ducked out from under the arm. “Ex-boyfriend.”
“And hopefully boyfriend again. I’m here to win him back. We’re gonna go talk now, sort things out, you know?”
Luke tilted his head. “You okay, Tim? Need me to rough this guy up a little?”
Tim laughed, trying to sound lighter than he felt. “No, that’s all right. Pat offered me a ride to the gym, so we’re gonna talk, and then he’s going back home like I told him to.”
Pat shrugged.
Luke stepped toward the bus. “All right. See you later.”
“Who was that?” Pat asked as they walked toward the car.
“A gold-medal-winning swimmer. And a friend. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Pat led Tim to a car, a fairly nondescript black sedan. Tim tossed his bag into the back seat and got into the passenger seat. God, what a mess.
After Pat slid into the driver’s seat and was about to put the key in the ignition, Tim said, “What the hell are you doing here, Pat?”
“There’s no pleasing you, is there? You spent so much time during our relationship moping about how I never came to meets, so I finally came to one and then you were mad I brought the press. So I came without the press this time.”
Tim took a deep breath, determined to make this as clear as possible. “Patterson. Hear me, okay? I don’t love you anymore. You spent all those years of our relationship treating me more like
a prop than a boyfriend. You didn’t love me, you loved what I could get you. And you stole money from me. Explain to me why I would ever want to get back together with you.”
“It’s different now. Okay? It’s different. Yeah, I did those things, but I realized how wrong I was to let you go. I love you, Timmy. I really do. And I want for us to be together. No pretenses this time. Just you and me and love. I’ll move to Colorado if you want. I’ll still have to travel back to LA, of course, but I’m also in talks to be a lead on a TV show that will be filming in Vancouver. I know you hate LA, but Vancouver is pretty.”
“Pat….”
“You’re mad and I deserve that, but our time apart has made me realize how wrong I was.”
There was no sense trying to talk to him—Pat wouldn’t be listening. All right. Tim pointed in the general direction of the Athlete Village and said, “Drive me to the gym.” His fury was a tangible thing, sitting like a fire in his chest, burning and making him want jump out of the car. But the bus was pulling out of the parking lot, so if he didn’t want to wait around another half hour for the next one, he’d have to go back with Pat.
Pat started the car. “All right.”
“It’s over, okay? The answer is no. We will not be getting back together. Get that through your fucking skull.”
“Language, Timmy.”
“I don’t care. I’m furious, okay? I’ve never been this angry. I can’t believe you have the fucking nerve to come here and think that I would ever forgive you. Just drive me back, okay?”
“Fine.” Pat stomped on the accelerator and veered out of the parking lot.
MARCUS HOLT had been a morning show host for as long as Isaac could remember. His name might not have stuck in Isaac’s head, but he definitely looked familiar now that Isaac sat across from him. Holt had silver-flecked black hair and a deep tan, and for the interview he wore a yellow shirt with a navy blue tie, looking ready for the summer weather in Madrid.
The camera guys were still fiddling with their equipment, so Isaac asked, “Can I decline to answer a question?”
“We’ll edit this later.”
That was not an answer. “I just mean, there’s some stuff in my personal life I’m not willing to talk about on TV, so if you happen to ask about it, I want the right to say, ‘No comment.’”
Marcus seemed intrigued by that, making Isaac think he shouldn’t have said anything. “We can edit out parts you’re uncomfortable with.”
Right.
They’d already discussed that Isaac wanted this interview to be candid as far as his alcoholism and his Olympic experience went. Holt had argued at first that he wanted to keep things positive, but probably the part of him that had delivered hard news before cohosting a show that was mostly segments about cooking and pop culture had been snared by the idea of doing an in-depth interview with a guy like Isaac.
Isaac knew he had to put most of his energy into thinking through what he said before he said it. He felt a bit like he’d walked into a trap. The set was supposed to seem warm and homey. It was a little corner of the studio with big armchairs facing each other with a little round table between them. The walls were lined with shelves full of colorful books. Isaac looked at the spines while Holt conferred with the camera crew. Most of them were in Spanish; Isaac surmised some intern had bought out a used bookstore.
“Are we ready?” Holt asked.
“Yeah,” said Isaac.
Holt gave some kind of signal and then they were rolling. Holt asked a series of inane questions, probably to get Isaac to relax, but Isaac couldn’t seem to make his stiff body bend at all. He leaned back in the chair and tried not to look like he was uncomfortable.
“Relax,” Holt said.
“I know. I’m suddenly nervous.”
Holt smiled. “Pretend we’re just chatting and the cameras aren’t there.”
“This camera is kind of staring me in the face,” Isaac said, gesturing toward it.
“Deep breath. The first serious question I want to ask you is about alcohol. When did you start drinking?”
God, it was like group therapy in rehab all over. Except instead of sharing with seven other people in a private room, he was sharing with millions. “I was twenty-two, twenty-three,” he said. “I pulled a calf muscle in training that forced me out of the pool for a while. Before that, I trained constantly and never let myself party, but when I was injured, I gave myself permission to, I don’t know. Be a stupid kid.” Isaac let out a breath. “I also had this irrational fear that my career was over. A muscle strain like that, it was a minor injury in the scheme of things, but I managed to convince myself it wouldn’t heal correctly and I’d never be as fast a swimmer. I’d been in two Olympics at that point, you know? Many athletes only get one. I thought it was over.”
“So you started partying?”
“I was a dumb kid in a lot of ways. I had all this endorsement money burning a hole in my pocket. I grew up with a single mom who worked two jobs to put food on the table and pay for my swim lessons. We never had money when I was a kid. But now I had more money than I could dream of, and I spent a lot of it in bars. The problem was, when my calf healed and I started swimming again, I didn’t stop spending money in bars.”
“Did you know you were an alcoholic?”
“At the time? No.” Isaac shook his head. It was at once strange and natural to talk through all this again. Cathartic in a way. “I thought I was in control. I know now that I wasn’t.”
“Four years ago you made the Olympic team again. Were you still drinking?”
“Yep.”
“But you still made the team.”
“I was king of the world.” Isaac laughed ruefully. “I thought I could do anything. Don’t get me wrong, I trained my ass off. Adam Vreeland is the greatest swim coach the world has ever seen, I genuinely believe that. But I also thought I was invincible.”
Holt narrowed his eyes at Isaac. “Were you drinking during those Games?”
Deep breath. “I was,” Isaac said, and it felt strange to admit, even though it was a well-known fact among the people closest to him. “To be clear, I never swam drunk, but I drank at night, when I was out of the pool.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s part of why I wanted to come back this year. I felt like crap the whole week of competition four years ago. I drank because I felt like crap and I felt like crap because I drank. By some miracle, I won some races anyway, but it was the wrong way to do it.”
Holt leaned forward. Maybe wanted to ask about that. He looked down at his notes—which Isaac had thought were probably a prop, but apparently not—and then he said, “You never swam drunk?” like a father asking a child.
“No. I respect the sport. I genuinely do. But, like, after a race? I’d have a few too many beers. Everyone always wants to celebrate when you win. Then I’d show up for the afternoon races still hungover. And that felt just awful.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that you won several medals at the Olympics when you were hungover?”
“For at least one of those races, yeah. Not the world record, but one of the others.”
“So you took your gifts for granted.”
“I did, yeah. I thought I was the best, you know? Those gold medals were mine. I should have just been able to win. Or that’s what I thought. And I didn’t win all of my races, probably because I wasn’t in top condition.”
“So what happened when you went home?”
“I drank more.” Isaac shook his head. This was harder to talk about than he’d expected. It was important to talk about, and he could help someone maybe, but Lord, this was hard to confess. “My career was over, right? I didn’t put together that drinking was affecting my conditioning, so I thought my age made me swim slower. And, you know, I’d been swimming my whole life, so facing the end of my career was tough. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I got depressed, which made me drink even more.”
“And then you had the DUI.”
“Yeah.
It was a stupid mistake, but it was also a wake-up call. I didn’t think I had a problem, you know? But I put people’s lives in danger. I put my own life in danger. That night I got absurdly drunk, and then I got into a tiff with the officer who pulled me over. So I got arrested. I spent the night in the drunk tank, and at some point I sobered up and thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ It finally hit me that I was addicted, that I wasn’t having fun. That moment inspired me to go to rehab.”
“Did you stop swimming?”
“For a couple of years, yeah. I mean, I got in a pool every now and then, but I wasn’t actively training. My, uh, doctor in rehab encouraged me to give it a shot again, though. I went back to Adam because I wanted to see if I could do it. But once I got sober, I felt better. Adam hired a nutritionist, who put me on this insane diet for a while. I lost weight, got my old body back, kind of.”
“And started racing again.”
“I honestly didn’t know if I’d make a team again. I just knew I wanted to give it an honest try. Do it right this time. Sober up, get healthy, and swim as hard as I could.”
“It seems to have worked.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know it was possible.”
“So what happens for Isaac Flood now?”
Isaac nodded. “I plan to swim as long as my body lets me. Then I don’t know. I’ve got a few things I’m feeling out. Now that I’m sober, I feel like there are a lot more possibilities.”
“And personally? A family? Kids?”
“Yeah, that’s all possible too. I mean, nothing is set right now, but I’d like a family someday.”
“Gotta meet the right girl, right?”
Isaac had to work not to roll his eyes. “Sure, something like that.”
“You are something of a sex symbol, you know. All those magazine covers. Sports Illustrated. The Wheaties box. There are photos of you all over the internet.”
Isaac didn’t know what to do with that. He knew intellectually that it was true, that he’d been spotlighted in media coverage of the last Olympics and done an ESPN Magazine body issue or two, but knowing there were other people who looked at his picture and lusted was surreal. “I… sure.”
Here Comes the Flood Page 24