“Fuck, really?” Her eyes widen in surprise. “Which country?” She tries to peer around us, but the hallway is empty. She looks to me first.
So I say, “Canada. Guy just fumbled the thing. Fell on his face too.”
“You’re joking?”
“It happened,” Akara professes. “Maple syrup memes are already all over the internet. No one’s even talking about you.”
She lets out a big breath. “Thank you, Canada. Taking one for the triad.” She ends up letting her hair loose and free. The strands splay wild around her cheeks.
When her eyes rise to me, I dip my head a little. My hand slips against her squared jaw, and I steal a kiss that brushes my lips slowly against her lips. Something swells up in my chest as Sulli holds the kiss a beat longer. Deepening the moment.
And when I gently pull back, I see more anxiety in her eyes.
What’s going on, Sulli?
I want to pull her into my arms. To let her bury herself into my body, into my soul. I even want to draw Akara closer. So she can feel the safety of two men, not just one.
She jumps at a boom of a firework, and Akara slips an arm around her hips. I touch her neck while she grabs onto my waistband and onto his pinky. Sulli blows out a breath, “I fucking hate fireworks. They can go blow up Satan’s butthole. That’s where you fucking belong!” she shouts at the ceiling.
“YEAH!” Akara yells upward.
“FUCK YEAH!” Sulli screams.
I laugh, and with an easiness, we’re all headed to Team USA.
“Are you limping?” Sulli asks Akara.
“I’m fine. I’m cool. I’m Kits.” He tries to play off his sprained ankle as no big deal, but Sulli seems more concerned. His injury is a longer lasting distraction for her.
While we meet up with more athletes, I try to stay frosty. Which means shaking off the glimpse of anxiety I caught in her eyes. Sulli has a D- poker face. Encroaching on an F. But I’m not a fucking mind reader either.
And I can’t press her on anything. I wouldn’t. She’s about to be broadcasted across the world. Time and fucking place, Banks Roscoe Moretti. This isn’t it.
Likely, I could be worrying for nothing. I’m hawk-eyed, scrutinizing athlete to athlete to athlete. Trusting no one. Even if they’re all on Team USA.
I knew going public with our relationship meant gambling my girlfriend’s safety. And still, I made that gamble.
Out of sheer love for Sulli and Akara, I’d make that same gamble today. But there was a moment that put the fear of God in me.
Where I felt we’d lose her. Lawyers stopped tabloids from reporting the specifics of the incident, and we’ve all just tried to put the past behind us. At her parents’ suggestion, Sulli’s been seeing a therapist a couple times a month to help cope and move forward.
Akara always had the sense to imagine the worst of the worst, so he’s not as hung up on the idea of almost losing Sulli. I never let myself truly believe death could be an outcome. Danger, we’d thwart, but no way in hell would she come that close to dying. No one would take her from me.
That was too much.
Fuck anyone else who tries again.
4
BANKS MORETTI
1 MONTH BEFORE THE OLYMPICS
JUNE
A needle buzzes over my skin, piercing the flesh of my wrist with black ink. Donnelly has my arm propped on a rolling end table in our living room. I try to relax against the couch, but I’m sitting rigid. I couldn’t care less if the ink blows out and I have another dumb fucking mistake on my body for life.
I’m still trying to shake-off the incident from two days ago. I can feel myself barely blinking. In a state of hypervigilance that keeps my mind humming. Breath is knotted. Brain alert.
Across from me, Akara watches from a chair, and every time our eyes catch, he’s practically telling me, breathe, Banks. She’s safe.
I want to sling back, then why do you keep looking at her like she’ll disappear?
We’re both dealing with this in our own way. Me, tensed like a fuckin’ Tin Man, like I need to reload an extra gun and maybe unsheathe a few swords. Defend her to the bloody death.
Akara is more playful.
He’s all “Lady Meadows” this and “string bean” that. Partly to take her mind off bad shit. Partly because he’s holding tighter to Sulli. His bond with her. He even transferred himself off Luna Hale’s detail and back onto Sulli’s today.
She has two permanent bodyguards in her two boyfriends. But after the incident, I feel like she needs a battalion that we can’t give her. Extra temporary guards have to be enough.
“Does it fucking hurt?” Sulli wonders, peering at Donnelly’s skilled work. She’s next to me on the couch.
“No. It barely stings.” I’m so mentally checked out that the pain is dull. Numb. I try to focus. “Doesn’t hurt as bad as my fucked tattoo I got at fourteen.”
Donnelly doesn’t look up. “The blown out one.”
“That’s the ugly bastard,” I confirm.
“Been wondering what you got tattooed,” Donnelly says, wiping off the ink. “My guess is script.”
“Roman numerals.” I watch him retrace the bold lettering on my wrist. No cursive. Legible. Clear. We all decided on the design when Donnelly showed us different sketches of the same phrase. I don’t know why I tell him, but I just say, “It was the day my brother died.”
Donnelly finally meets my eyes. “Sorry ‘bout him, man. Shoulda known what happened before the leak, but I never paid much attention to that kinda news in South Philly.” I love that he says South Philly like I do. Sow Philly.
“We were both kids, man.” I lift my shoulder.
He pauses, and I realize I jerked my wrist.
Fuck, I try to keep my wrist stable for him. He continues tattooing, and I tell him, “My brother’s death didn’t make any kind of headline that a bunch of eyes woulda seen anyway. It was what it was.”
Ugly.
Miserable.
A fuckin’ grenade in my family.
Life moves on, though.
Forward & Onward. I stare at the words he’s inking. Sulli places a hand on my knee, and I glance over at my beautiful girlfriend who recently qualified for the Olympics, who’s headed for Training Camp in Hawaii in four days with Team USA. Who only stopped physically shaking this morning. Enough that she declared, “Let’s get fucking tattoos. All of us. Together.”
Without hesitation, Akara and I jumped on the plan.
So we ended up three-floors below the penthouse. In my apartment that I share with Akara, Donnelly, and Quinn.
With her hand on my knee and eyes on my eyes, Sulli’s lips are rising.
I notice that Akara is smiling more, too.
What?
What’d I do?
She gently elbows my side before lifting her knees to her chest. “You talked about Sky.” Her voice is quiet. It’s still strange to hear Sulli whisper. Like really whisper to a decibel that needs ear-straining. She’s gotten better at lowering her voice in public. So I shouldn’t be surprised she can do it in my apartment.
I patty-cake her words in my head.
You talked about Sky.