3. Olivia
THREE DAYS BEFORE THE OPENING CEREMONY
“Are you ready to fall in love with a hot Greek boy, become a sun-kissed goddess, and have the best summer of your life?” said a familiar voice. A moment later, Olivia was pulled into an espresso-scented hug by her favorite person in the world: Aditi Sharma.
“Uh, I’m ready to ace this internship, be offered a full-time job at the OOC, and have the best summer of our lives,” Olivia said as Aditi hugged her even tighter.
Aditi Sharma was the type of girl you could tell all your secrets to without suspecting for a moment that they would leave the room. Her long, wavy, black hair, golden-brown skin, and curves looked good in everything. They’d met on the playground at the age of five and had been inseparable ever since. She was the human personification of sunshine.
“I’m so proud of you, Liv!” Aditi said, putting her hands on either side of Olivia’s face. They’d been talking about her Olympic dream for years. As soon as Olivia had secured the internship, her best friend had begged to come along for the ride. Aditi was a full-time iced coffee influencer with a side gig doing graphic design for a tech company. She could basically work anywhere, so they’d found an apartment in Athens for the summer. To nobody’s surprise, Olivia’s internship was unpaid, so she went into debt to pay for the flight, used an even bigger chunk of her credit card to pay for the Airbnb, and ignored the financial hell she could feel herself falling into. Because it was the Olympics! She’d deal with all of that once she secured her graduate job.
They walked through the airport together, passed security, and browsed the bookshop as they waited for their gate to be announced. They tried on fancy perfumes in the duty-free section and imagined what the weeks that lay ahead of them would be like once they landed in Greece.
“So, will Summer Olivia be joining us this year?”
Olivia paused what she was doing and turned to face Aditi.
She and Aditi had spent years saving for the summer after their nineteenth birthdays. Neither of them had ever been on a holiday abroad, so they’d planned and plotted a girls’ trip straight out of their dreams. They read travel blogs, watched holiday vlogs, and searched “safe, not-too-racist cities for young women” before settling on Portugal. At first they’d been having a great time. But then, on their fourth day of exploring Lisbon, Olivia met Tiago: a tall, devastatingly handsome Portuguese boy who worked at the hostel where they were staying. He took them to his favorite bakery to try delicious pastéis de nata, showed them gorgeous views of the skyline from all around the city, and then kissed Olivia while they walked on the beach at sunset. Olivia fell for him—fast. At one point she’d turned to Aditi and said, “I think the sun is going to my head; summer makes me reckless,” and thus the nickname was born. But this year she was determined to keep her head on straight.
“Summer Olivia is permanently retired,” said Olivia adamantly.
“But she’s so much fun,” Aditi said with a mischievous smile.
“She’s fun until she gets distracted and starts making bad decisions and lets the sun get to her head and almost turns my life upside down,” Olivia said, recalling the last time her summer self had taken the reins. She’d wound up using her credit card to book a last-minute flight and had cried on the plane for her whole journey home.
“But remember how much fun we had?”
“And remember how I almost didn’t come home?”
“Would that have been so bad?” Aditi smiled.
“You only say that because if I’d uprooted my life for that boy, visiting me would have given you a reason to spend every August on a Portuguese beach,” Olivia said, raising her eyebrow. She laughed as the expression on Aditi’s face changed. “This time, the plan comes first,” she said, tapping the top of her suitcase to emphasize each word.
After the impulsive, almost disastrous summer of 2019, Olivia had gone home and meticulously mapped out how she was going to live out the next few years of her life. She’d made a five-year plan, stuck it above her desk, and promised herself that she would do everything she could to achieve every goal on her list.
“And what’s the plan again?” Aditi knew every step of the plan, but she also knew just how much Olivia liked talking about it.
“Years one to three, get a first-class honors law degree at UCL and intern at each of the big four,” said Olivia.
“Tick,” said Aditi with a grin.
“Year three, spend the summer interning at an Olympic-adjacent company in New York and get into LSE for my master’s.”
“Tick,” said Aditi, drawing a tick in the air.
“Year four, KILL my master’s program, win an academic award, and intern at a bunch of tech start-ups and NGOs.”
“Tick!” shouted Aditi, squeezing Olivia’s arm.
“Then start year five by interning at the Olympics and end it having secured my dream job at the Olympic Organizing Commission or the UN,” said Olivia as they headed over to their gate. “Then the rest of my twenties? Total world domination. By twenty-nine I’m either on the Forbes Thirty Under Thirty list or a Nobel Prize nominee, you know?” She laughed, but they both knew she wasn’t joking; she ran on pure unfiltered ambition.
“Or both!” said Aditi. Olivia could always count on her best friend to be her number one hype woman.
On the plane, they synced up their screens to watch the same movie together during their flight. When they were above the Austrian mountains at the halfway point between England and Greece, Aditi took out her toiletry bag and—to the complete bewilderment of the middle-aged man sitting beside them—began her six-step skincare routine. Olivia accepted a face mask, closed her eyes, and smiled.
This summer was her chance to take a huge step toward achieving the dreams she’d spent her whole life thinking about. And to make it in ways her parents had long ago stopped believing they could. She couldn’t afford to veer away from the carefully crafted plan she’d made for herself.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking,” came the voice from the speakers above. “We’re about to land in Athens, where the temperature is thirty-four degrees centigrade. If you look to the left, you’ll see the majestic hills and the Acropolis.” Olivia glanced over to the left and caught a glimpse of the city from the windows on the opposite side of the plane.
“And if you look to the right, you’ll see what I know so many of you have come to Athens for this summer,” he said. Olivia looked out of her window as the plane began its descent. She could see the city sprawling out across the horizon. And then she looked closer. There it was, standing apart from everything else in the city, the Olympic Stadium. She had spent years planning for this, months preparing for it, and her whole life dreaming about it. Now, it was finally within reach.