Chapter 46
Sasha had always known his trip home was going to be miserable.
The logistics alone were a nightmare: departing LAX on Sunday morning local time, arriving in Moscow right around breakfast on Monday, and taking a cab straight to Round Lake for morning practice (then inevitably being punished for his exhaustion).
Kirill had flat-out told him he was insane, and Alina had lamented that he wasn’t coming back sooner for a home-cooked meal; yet Sasha had wanted to spend as much time with Danny as possible, and he didn’t care what he had to pay for it.
Until he’d paid everything for it.
But at least when he lands in Moscow, one side of his Team Russia hoodie soaked through with tears, the only person who sees him is the taxi driver.
At practice, he gives enough bland answers about American food, beaches, and girls to satisfy his teammates; then the coaches make them do extra conditioning for talking too much, and they’re all just trying to breathe after that.
But Kirill starts up again on the way back to the dorms, asking what Danny’s workout routine is, whether he’s planning any upgrades, if he says “yeah, baby” while training as much as he does while competing.
Desperate to make the interrogation stop, Sasha tells Kirill what he knows he wants to hear: that American gyms are lawless jurisdictions where the athletes, not the coaches, get to decide what they’re doing that day, and “honestly, you were right, I shouldn’t have gone.”
He can’t quite keep the misery out of his voice when he says that, and the smugness in Kirill’s expression fades.
“Wow. It was really that bad?”
Sasha shrugs, and Kirill drops it then, or at least he starts ranting about the Americans and their perverted doctor, so Sasha doesn’t have to do anything except listen.
But that’s the easy part, it turns out. Because once he’s lied his way through a phone call with Alina, no one asks about his trip again; and then he’s just reliving it by himself, an endless loop in his head as he trains, eats, and sleeps.
Sometimes—late at night, remembering the last words Danny said to him—he wonders if he got it wrong, if there’s a chance they didn’t break up.
After all, Danny never actually said We’re done or I’m through; Sasha’s sure of it.
But then he remembers I guess this is it and Sasha instead of Sash, and his hope collapses mid-cartwheel.
After three days of this, Danny calls.
Sasha’s alone in his dorm room, staring at the two photos he and Danny took together and telling himself he should delete them, already knowing he never will. When Danny’s name appears on the screen, he’s so frantic to pick up the call, his thumb misses the button twice.
“Danny?”
“Hi, Sasha. Um…”
Sasha’s stomach twists—there it is again, Sasha. He suddenly hates his own name.
“So, I know we’re, uh…” Danny trails off; he doesn’t seem to have a word for what they are anymore, either. “But, uh… I just wanted to tell you, cause I thought you should know, that, um… my parents found out about—”
As soon as Sasha realizes where this is going, he hangs up.
Danny calls again, and Sasha just sits there, shaking.
Maybe he’s overreacting—Danny might have been about to say something completely different, like that the Hartmans found out Emily’s a lesbian—but he doesn’t think he is.
Which means Danny told his parents not even three fucking days after they, um.
Finally, Danny leaves a voicemail.
“Hi. Um, I guess you’re not gonna pick up.
So, what I was gonna say was, uh… my parents already knew.
Like, basically the whole time you were here.
My mom… well, I probably shouldn’t, like, talk about it on your voicemail, but my mom saw…
something. I don’t know if you remember, when she was, like, bringing up the laundry, but, um.
Anyway. I didn’t tell them. They already knew. And they were really happy about it.”
Sasha has to listen twice before he thinks he understands what happened, but that last part is clear.
The Hartmans had accepted Danny—accepted him, he realizes, his eyes suddenly burning—and not only that, but they’d known the entire time he was in California.
So all those arguments with Danny had been for nothing.
“Um, yeah, so… I just wanted to let you know. They’re not going to tell anyone.
And, uh, I know you probably don’t believe that, but it’s true.
They won’t. So… yeah. That’s it. Um. I guess I won’t call again.
Unless you want me to. Uh, I mean, I guess we’re, um…
well, I’m just gonna stop talking now. Okay. Bye.”
Sasha doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with any of that.
Other than erase the voicemail, replaying it one last time at least five times before he presses delete, because he can’t have Danny’s voice saying those things on his phone.
Then the voicemail’s gone, and he still has no idea how to respond, because what does unless you want me to mean?
How the fuck is he supposed to figure that out?
He’d wanted to talk to Danny, but now he’s angry all over again that other people keep finding out about them, even if it wasn’t Danny’s fault this time.
So he turns off his phone, and the next morning he mutes his notifications before practice, telling himself he’ll decide later.
He’s still telling himself that the next day, and the day after, until he realizes it’s been a week and he hasn’t messaged Danny, despite checking his notifications every chance he gets.
He isn’t proud of this, but there’s a part of him that’s waiting for Danny to reach out again, to be the first to break the silence.
Because that’s what Danny’s always done, and maybe Sasha’s taken that for granted, how much Danny used to want to talk to him.
Another week goes by.
And then another after that.
Each one’s worse than the last, the stalemate slowly killing him; he hadn’t realized how much Danny’s texts and calls had filled his day until they stopped completely.
He starts scouring YouTube for old interviews just so he can hear Danny’s voice, and he wonders if this is love: losing his fucking mind, wishing he could scream and claw his way out of his own body.
He gets a haircut.
It’s a terrible haircut. He goes to Kirill’s usual place and tells the barber to chop everything off—all the curls that keep getting in his eyes, that make his coaches yell at him for looking sloppy, that Danny used to touch like they were gold—and that’s exactly what the barber does.
Kirill takes one look at him and says “Jesus,” his mother actually bursts into tears the next time she sees him, and he almost does too when he looks in the mirror.
He catches himself reaching for curls that aren’t there, checking his phone for texts that aren’t there either.
He doesn’t know what’s worse: not getting any closure, or still having hope.
That eventually Danny will call, or send a picture of Buddy, and somehow—Sasha’s imagination can never quite fill in the blank—they’ll go back to the way things were before.
But what would he even say? “Sorry, I know I haven’t spoken to you in four weeks, but could we just forget any of this ever happened?”
Danny would have every right to tell him to fuck off. Jesus, Sasha wants to tell himself to fuck off whenever he imagines saying that out loud.
Besides, getting back together wouldn’t change the fact that Sasha said nothing when Danny said I love you—and then said a lot of other things he regretted instead.
Or the fact that Danny’s outed Sasha to three different people and Sasha can’t trust him not to do it again.
So he’s trying, slowly, to accept that the damage is done.
The only thing that helps is gymnastics.
With the Russian Cup fast approaching at the end of August, practice turns into a relentless cycle of routines, corrections from the coaches, and more routines, forcing Sasha to stay focused on his training.
Danny’s still there—always, everywhere Sasha goes, like tiny pieces of the foam pit sticking to his skin—but at least he doesn’t have enough time or energy to dwell on him day and night.
The national team flies into Yekaterinburg the weekend before the competition starts, and Sasha busies himself with the preparations, keeping his phone at the bottom of his gym bag.
The Americans are in the middle of their national championships—with Danny predicted to win a fifth straight all-around title—and he’s trying as hard as he can not to wonder how it’s going, not to check for any clips or even scores.
Sunday’s their first full training session at the arena, so he puts in the work, grinding it out on the equipment until he’s covered in chalk and sweat.
Afterwards, he takes a long, cold shower, mentally running through his routines and absolutely not thinking about Danny; then he towels off and heads back to the locker room, wondering if he can get anyone interested in a noisy, distracting video game tournament.
Almost all of his teammates are hanging around, except for Kirill, who tried to avoid the massage again and promptly got punished with an extra-long one.
Sasha spots Oleg and Ilya in a corner, huddled over Oleg’s phone and probably watching another gymnastics fail compilation, judging by their winces and groans.
“Oof, he’s done,” Oleg says, and as Sasha comes over to see, Ilya looks up.
“Oh, hey—Sasha, have you talked to Danny?”
Sasha freezes, instantly on alert. Why the fuck would Ilya ask if he’s talked to Danny? Is this an ambush? He risks a glance at Oleg, his heart pounding in his chest—
“I was just wondering if he’s okay,” Ilya says. “It was his Achilles, right?”
That’s when he’s done finally registers, and Sasha stops breathing.
“What.” The word comes out like a croak. “What are you talking about? What happened?”
Oleg taps the screen, then tosses him the phone.