27. Zeke
DAY FOUR OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
As Zeke sat next to Olivia, he realized that whatever it was that he’d started to feel for her, he was already too far gone to shut it down. The sight of her when he’d walked into the elevator had quite literally stopped him midstep. He’d never reacted to anyone like that before. It had taken him a real moment to shake off. She wasn’t wearing her volunteer uniform; he could see it poking out of the bag on her shoulder. Instead, she was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white linen shirt with a few specks of brightly colored paint on the sleeve. When she’d slid down the wall, he’d joined her. But now that they were just a few centimeters apart, he wondered if he’d made the wrong decision. Because while he’d been able to keep the conversation going when they were standing up, now they were sitting so close together he couldn’t ignore the almost magnetic pull she seemed to have on him. Or how nervous he got around her.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” Olivia asked, looking over at him. “I just assumed when I was speaking to the technician.”
He held her gaze for a second too long. And then tried to act more confident than he felt. “The opposite actually,” he said.
“So, you like being squeezed tightly into small spaces?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. That perfectly arched eyebrow would be the death of him. “If that’s what you’re into, no judgment. This is a safe space,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders as she teased him.
He glanced down at her lips, noticed the deep-red lipstick she was wearing, and then quickly glanced away. He needed to get better at maintaining his composure.
“What I meant is that I don’t get claustrophobic because I’ve been trained not to.”
“Oh, now I need to know the full story.”
“Do you remember that football player who disappeared in the middle of the World Cup a few years ago?” he asked, grateful for a topic of conversation that would steady him. “So, the official story was that he got lost in the host city, but the truth is he got kidnapped.”
“Really?” said Olivia, her eyes widening.
“Really. Luckily, they were pretty amateur kidnappers—unlike you, who I know would excel at kidnapping,” he joked.
“It’s a given,” she said with the warm, bright, infectious laugh he was always trying to get out of her.
“So, the footballer was able to escape, and the kidnappers were caught. But then every international sporting organization sent their athletes to a mandatory kidnapping prevention and survival course.”
“That sounds like something from a movie,” she said.
“Right? It felt like it. We all did self-defense training, an actual real-life escape room class, learned how to hold our breath, and…” he gestured to the elevator.
“Learned how not to get claustrophobic in small spaces,” she finished with a nod.
“Exactly,” he said.
As Olivia moved around to get more comfortable on the floor, a waft of the perfume she was wearing mixed with the paint and vanilla drifting his way. She smelled so good he had to hold his breath to stop himself from leaning toward her.
“So, I was painting Arlo in the nude, but why were you in the building?” Olivia asked.
“So, I was painting Arlo in the nude,” Zeke mimicked, “is a great way to start a sentence.” He paused. “I was in therapy… and I hate therapy.”
“Hate it?” Her face and tone were gentle.
“Truly hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I can talk about my feelings,” he said—though he never had to Fiona—“but there’s just something about talking to someone knowing that they’re going to analyze everything I say that makes me close off.”
Olivia nodded. “I get that; it doesn’t really feel like a natural conversation.”
“Yeah, it feels like a weird treasure hunt. Like, what trauma, insecurity, or anxiety can we uncover today?”
“An emotional treasure hunt? Sounds like my idea of a good time,” she said, making him laugh a little. “I love talking about things.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah, the more I talk about something, the clearer my thoughts on it become,” she said.
“Oh, I’d rather sit in silence and come to my own conclusions,” he said.
“You like sitting alone with your thoughts?” she asked. “Sounds like my personal idea of hell.”
“It’s the best. You can just sit there and eventually, if you wait around long enough, you clear away everyone else’s opinions and the things you think you’re supposed to think until all that’s left is what you truly want and feel,” he said. Plus, coming to his own conclusions meant he could avoid hearing questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to.
“But then I’d have to actually listen to what I really want, not what I’ve told myself I want,” Olivia said with a nervous laugh. “And truly knowing myself terrifies me.”
“And having someone question the things I tell myself to make life easier? That terrifies me,” he said, looking at her with a self-conscious laugh.
After a few moments, they both went quiet. As if worried they’d revealed too much. The silence grew louder until all Zeke could hear was the gentle hum of the elevator.
He looked over at Olivia and whispered, “Is this the silence you hear in your nightmares?”
Olivia shook her head and smiled. “Careful, go long enough without speaking and I’ll start asking you questions about the meaning of life.”
Zeke faked a shudder and they both laughed. Thirty minutes passed as the two of them talked about all the weird but wonderful things they’d seen so far in the Village. Olivia told Zeke about some of the strangest walkie-talkie calls she’d had, and Zeke told Olivia about some of the wildest training accidents he’d seen. Giannis the lift technician called to tell them it was going to take another thirty minutes for him to reach them. So they took it in turns to put their phones on shuffle and see who could guess the song first until they reached a draw. Then, Zeke showed Olivia the photos he’d taken of the exclusive athlete-only areas of the Village. After that, they played a game where they took turns saying random dates and scrolled through their camera rolls to see where they’d been and what they’d been doing.
“March twenty-ninth?” asked Zeke as they both scrolled.
“My cousin’s twenty-first birthday party,” said Olivia, turning her phone to face Zeke, who nodded and then turned his to face her.
“Camping,” he said, showing her a photo of him camping with Anwar and Frankie on a rainy day in the middle of Wales. “June seventh?” he asked as they both scrolled.
“My master’s graduation.”
“You look good in a cap and gown,” he said. He could hear the flirtation in his tone.
“That’s what my grandad said before trying to convince me to do a PhD,” she said jokingly. “How about you?”
“June seventh… a photo shoot.” He looked away, quickly scrolling past the pictures.
“Is that what you look like when you’re embarrassed?” she said with amusement.
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“Yes, you are. See, now I want to see the photos.”
“Nope,” he said, feeling a sudden wave of self-consciousness.
“Zeke!” she said, her eyes widening. “You can’t tell me you were doing a photo shoot and then not show me the photos.” She leaned toward him mischievously. He was finding it harder and harder to say no to her.
“All right, all right,” said Zeke as he gave her his phone to look at the photos. As she scrolled through, he tried to guess what she was thinking, but her face was impossible to read.
“What’s the verdict?”
She looked at the photos, and then back up at him.
“You look good,” she said matter-of-factly. “Did you get your eyebrows done for it?”
“Yeah, I did, but I think they’ve started to grow back now. Look,” he said, pointing up at his eyebrow to show Olivia the short thin hairs growing back outside the lines the stylist on the photo shoot had shaped them into.
“Zeke, you know how I’m good at a lot of things…” She rummaged through her bag.
“I don’t know if I like where this is going,” Zeke said, half in terror and half in amusement as he watched her take out a makeup bag and a bottle of hand sanitizer.
“Trust me,” she said, excitedly pulling out a pair of tweezers.
“You are way too enthusiastic for me to trust you,” said Zeke, looking at the tweezers and then the delighted, to the point of maniacal, smile on Olivia’s face.
“Okay, this might hurt a little bit,” she said.
“I did kidnap training, remember? I’m familiar with torture.”
Olivia rolled her eyes and leaned over to place her hands on the side of his head. They were warm, soft, and smelled like vanilla. The gentleness caught him by surprise.
Maybe it was the fact that she was hovering right above his face or maybe it was the fact that they’d been talking to each other for almost an entire hour now, but he felt like something was shifting between them. Like he’d known her longer than just the past few days. He felt so at ease with her that it made him nervous. Zeke could feel himself getting gently pulled in. Their faces were just centimeters apart, so close that he could smell the perfume on her skin.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to make a move on me,” he whispered.
“If you’re not careful I might end up accidentally overplucking you,” she whispered as she leaned so close to him there was barely any separation between their bodies. Taking the elevator was the best decision Zeke had made all week.