Chapter 25 Ari
Ari
Everyone walks all over you … and you just let them.
Sienna’s words had been echoing around Ari’s mind all morning.
It was a harsh thing to say, especially in front of all their teammates.
But as painful as it was, Sienna was right.
Being a chronic people pleaser was getting in the way of becoming the person she needed to be.
So when she got to the meeting room that morning, she unrolled a page of flipchart paper and uncapped a new marker, the sharp chemical smell of it filling her with a sense of purpose.
She wrote out a list of strategies: ones that had worked well and ones it was time to retire.
Then she printed out the personalized feedback notes she’d been compiling over the course of the past few months.
When her teammates began walking into the room, she started handing them out.
“What’s all of this?” Yasmeen asked as she glanced through the notes. Nodding at some in agreement.
“A fresh slate,” Ari said, trying to sound firm as she addressed the rest of the team. “Yesterday’s meeting was a disaster, and I dropped the ball. But we have a lot of work to do if we’re going to try and make it to the quarterfinals.”
“So that’s why you left early? I thought you’d snuck away to hook up with that boy you told us about, not do all of this,” Izzy teased, pointing at Ari’s presentation, notes, and strategy meeting.
She knew Izzy was just messing with her.
And even if she wasn’t, Izzy was a hopeless romantic.
A statement like that would have never been a dig.
But it still cut a little. Not because of Izzy’s intentions, but because of Ari’s past. She’d been in a near-constant state of distraction during her years with Harrison.
Their relationship had preoccupied her in all the worst ways.
She’d been a confident teenager, but he’d drawn out her insecurities and made her question everything.
To the point where she stumbled her way through every game she played after hanging out with him.
It had taken her ages to unlearn the lies he’d made her believe, and she’d come a long way since their breakup.
But her teammates didn’t think she was there yet. So, she had to show them.
Sienna was right, Ari had failed to truly take on the authority that came with being the captain of her team.
Gracie was good at doing both because her reputation had led the team to respect her immediately.
But Ari had known these girls all her life, and she didn’t know how to say no to them.
Her inability to do that with her best friends made it nearly impossible to portray any sense of authority over the rest of the team. But that ended today.
Ari squared her shoulders. “Okay, first of all, let’s address the elephant in the room.
The arguments we had the other day in the locker room?
We’re better than that. A team doesn’t work without honesty and harmony, but this,” she said, waving her hands in a circle, “is a strategy meeting, not our group chat.”
It was a little harsh, but she needed to stand her ground. They couldn’t allow their friendships to get in the way of the reality that for the rest of the month, they were, first and most importantly, teammates.
“You’re right,” Sienna admitted, putting up her hands. “I’m sorry.”
Coach McLaughlin walked in. He looked over at Ari, waiting to see how she would respond.
“It’s alright,” Ari said, brushing it off even though Sienna’s words from yesterday still stung. “The past couple of months have been intense, but it’s only because it matters to us. So let’s stay focused on the end goal. Getting to the semifinals.”
Coach raised an eyebrow at her statement. It felt like everyone did.
“I thought it was the quarterfinals?” said Yasmeen. “I don’t want to sound like a downer, but that feels a little unrealistic.”
Ari nodded; of course it was. “It only feels that way because we haven’t done it before.
But I think we can, we just need to make some adjustments.
Right, Coach?” she said as they all turned to him.
She knew that they, like her, were still disappointed in him for not fixing the rink time situation sooner.
“Your captain is right. You’ve put in the time and effort you needed to get here. We just need to push that a little bit harder to stay in the game,” he said, giving Ari a small nod of approval before the two of them went around the room, giving each of her teammates detailed feedback.
Ari gave Mia, a player on the left wing of the offense, advice on how to improve her speed.
Then, she told a right wing player named Alexis how to get better at blocking.
She gave the backup goaltenders, Melissa and Kayley, guidance on how to improve their predictions, then went around the whole team until she finally reached her friends.
“Yasmeen, you do keep getting distracted when the puck is coming toward you,” Ari began.
Yasmeen opened her mouth to object, but Ari just put her hand up to signal that she wasn’t done yet.
“You panic and get distracted; I can see it in your eyes. You never used to do that back home. So, when you get on the ice, remind yourself that you’re excellent in defense.
Then focus all your energy into tracking the puck so you can block it in time. ”
Yasmeen nodded. Ari moved on.
“Izzy. In an ideal world, the puck should never get close enough for you to have to save it,” she began.
Izzy opened her mouth as if to agree and berate the girls in defense, but Ari had more to say.
“However, this is a real-life game. There are no perfect scenarios, just what happens on the rink. So, when the puck comes, be enthusiastic about the fact that you get to do what you’ve been training your whole life for.
You’re good at what you do, so focus on how lucky you are to get to do that instead of the fact that the pucks are coming your way.
” Izzy looked shocked, but instead of reacting, she closed her eyes and muttered a quiet “whatever” because she, like the rest of the team, knew Ari was right.
“And Sienna,” Ari said to her oldest friend, who was an excellent player but lived in a near-permanent state of doom.
“Arikoishe,” she replied, mirroring her seriousness.
Ari smiled because, in that moment, she could see Sienna as both the sweet and scrappy eleven-year-old who’d invited her to her first ice hockey game and the brilliant but terrified twenty-one-year-old having a crisis of confidence.
“You know I love you. But I don’t care if you’re the best player we’ve got.
If you’re a negative force in the changing room, I won’t hesitate to keep you on the bench,” Ari said, being firm for what felt like the first time in their long friendship.
Sienna’s eyes widened a little, but if Ari knew her as well as she thought she did, there was a hint of approval in her expression, too.
Sienna had been trying to get Ari to stand up for herself more ever since they’d met.
“We’re all here because we’re good at what we do.
So, for the love of God, put a little bit more faith in your teammates and start imagining some best-case scenarios. We need all the belief we can get.”
A few of the other girls began to mutter, but Ari wasn’t having it. She shot them daggers with her eyes and waited until the locker room returned to silence before she addressed them as a team.
“Maybe it was a fluke, blind luck, or the godsend that is Gracie Walters. But how we got here doesn’t matter anymore.
We’re at the Olympics now, we made it. So, what we’re not going to do is squander this opportunity by bickering and fighting about petty little things, alright?
” she said. A few of the girls muttered.
“I said, alright?” To that, the girls replied with “Okay.” She gave them what she hoped was a deeply unnerving, no-nonsense look.
“We have less than two weeks left in the Village and only one more game to get us to the quarterfinals. We can’t afford to waste another second.
Like it or not, I am your captain. So, get dressed, get your shit together, and get on that rink ready to train for your lives.
Because I did not get this far just to get this far. And neither did you.”
“Okay, Captain,” said Sienna with a nod. Ari smiled.
“Good. For the next week, how we feel about one another shouldn’t matter. Let’s go back to being friends after the Games. Team before everything, okay?” Ari was relieved when everyone seemed to agree.
Yasmeen went over to the speaker and pressed PLAY. The new Little Simz album flooded through the speakers as the team got ready to train on the rink. Ari took a deep breath, turned around, and did the same.
This time around, their training session went brilliantly. Her teammates applied the feedback they’d been given, and the extra hour they had on the ice that day was so productive that they decided to treat themselves.
“This is not what I thought you meant by a team field trip,” Yasmeen said as she went around painting matching flags onto her teammates’ cheeks.
They’d debated going back to their rooms to change into casual clothes.
But instead they headed straight to the arena to rifle through the merch shop.
There they found colorful wigs, T-shirts, and face paint to cheer on their Team GB friends on the curling team.
Ari’s teammates had all been hyper-focused on games and training and hadn’t explored the Village.
And while she knew that they needed to put their dynamic as a team above everything else, she also knew they needed something to bring them together and remind them why they’d become friends in the first place.
So, she’d sweet-talked the woman who worked in the Athletes Liaison office into getting the entire team tickets to that night’s curling competition.