Chapter 1 - Tyler
Tyler Bannichek dropped his duffel bag on his kitchen floor and slammed the front door of his apartment hard enough to rattle the dishes. His roommate, Eli, came running down the hall, his eyes wide. When he saw Tyler, he stopped and glared. “What the hell?”
“Aren't you glad to see a member of the US Olympic team in your very own apartment?” Tyler's grin was so wide his cheeks hurt. “The committee decided. I'm in!”
“Oh.” Eli leaned on the doorway of the kitchen and looked at him blankly.
“Yeah, I did even better than Nationals. I told you I had to rock the Trials this weekend and I fucking did that. I was named second out of all the guys on Sunday. I'm going to London! Five guys and three alternates, and I'm one of the five!”
“Congratulations.”
Tyler frowned. Eli's voice and face both showed a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“I figured you'd be pleased for me. You know better than anyone how hard I've worked for this.” They'd been roommates for over two years, while Tyler worked an evening job in a hardware chain and trained his ass off. Eli had been there through Tyler’s crazy schedule, through the travel to meets and all the stresses and setbacks to get to this day.
Eli might be an architecture student with only a mild interest in sports, and no appreciation for how important the Olympics were, but there was no one who'd been more supportive all that time.
Eli's next words made Tyler realize there was also no one whom he’d trusted more with his secrets. Because Eli said slowly, “They don't know about your back, do they?”
“Of course they do,” Tyler snapped. “My injury’s in the records. 'Tyler Bannichek had compression fractures of two spinal vertebrae as a high school junior, but has made a remarkable recovery since then.' Don't you read the press releases?”
“No. I listen to you pace the floor at night when it hurts so bad you can't sleep. I see the empty bottles of ibuprofen in the trash. I remember you telling me about 2009, when it flared up on you so bad you almost had to quit. And then I think about last month, when you came home from the gym and for an hour you had shooting pains in your left leg. You remember that? You remember pounding your fist on your thigh, like somehow bruising the outside would stop the pain on the inside?”
“My back's better,” Tyler lied. “It hardly bothers me at all anymore. I'm better than ever. My Trials score was my best all-around yet.”
“So I'm just imagining the way you fret and worry about actually making it through to August?
The way you plan your plane trips with layovers to shorten the flights whenever you can?
Tell me you didn't cut your work hours until you're living on ramen noodles so you can save your back for the gym and not risk it lifting boxes.”
“That's not why I cut back my hours.”
“Bullshit.” Eli's eyes were a hazel mix, gold and green and brown, but when he was mad they turned dark. And right now, those dark eyes were trained on Tyler. “You want to know something? I didn't check the news because I was hoping you wouldn't make the team.”
“You were?” Tyler wrapped his arms around his middle, like he'd been punched in the gut, and blinked hard. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am, you bastard. I'm your best friend and I'm the one who sees you walking this tightrope where one wrong move could leave you paralyzed forever. And you want me to just be okay with that risk.”
“It's not that bad. The chance is super small. It mostly just hurts, sometimes.”
“I snooped into your doctor's report when it came in the mail three weeks ago.”
“What the fuck?” Tyler strode over to stare at Eli. “That was private. That was none of your business!”
“I know.” Eli looked down for a moment, guilt on his narrow tanned face.
But when he raised his head, the look in his eyes was closer to pain.
“But I had to see the results. You know what the doctor said. He said your back was unstable, something about compressions and the discs. He advised immediately stopping gymnastics. G-forces, back arch, rotations, landings—you could do permanent damage. There was stuff in there about stabilization surgery.”
“I can last another month.” Tyler wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears and not listen. He was already stressed to the max. He didn’t need Eli making it worse. He’s supposed to be on my side.
Eli glared. “Yeah. Except what about the next time it zaps you just as you're taking off for a vault, or doing a high-bar dismount? Tell me there's no chance you’ll crash that vault, or land on your head and kill yourself.”
“Jesus, I won’t kill myself.” Shut up, shut up, shut up. That kind of fear was what gave a gymnast the yips, and ended careers. Tyler couldn’t let fear get to him.
“And after the Olympics you'll quit?”
Tyler almost said yes, but he wasn't going to make that kind of promise.
He'd take some time to rest, for sure, but he didn't have to quit.
That time in 2009 had been almost this bad, and he'd managed to get through it.
His mom's death had given him a plausible reason to take time off and his back had healed up fine.
He'd eased back into training, relearned his top routines, and made it to Nationals.
So maybe the fucking thing had flared up worse again the last few months—he could handle pain.
Eli was making a big deal out of nothing.
Apparently he'd taken too long to answer, because Eli said, “I thought so. You won’t quit until you wreck your spine or break your neck. Well, congratulations on making the team. I hope you survive, but I'm not sticking around to find out.”
“What?”
“I'm leaving. I've been your roommate for two years, and these last six months have about killed me. You're obsessed with your sport, and if you can blow off a doctor and an MRI scan, then nothing I say will make a difference. I'm just so fucking tired of being terrified all the time.”
Tyler reached toward Eli's arm without thinking. “Leaving?”
Eli stepped back out of reach. “Yeah. Derek invited me to go on a road trip with him to New York in a couple of weeks.
I'm gonna take him up on it. Then I'll find a new apartment.
Maybe something closer to campus. With a roommate who isn't intent on killing himself and doesn't eat painkillers like they're M&M's.”
“Leaving?” Tyler knew he sounded like a fool, but he'd walked in the door hoping to share the great news with his best friend, and suddenly Eli was walking out of his life? He couldn't figure how he got there from here.
Eli's eyes softened, warming with the gold lights that Tyler loved.
..well, liked best. “Tyler, you're a smart guy, you work so hard.
You could do a hundred other things besides gymnastics.
If you stop now, while you're healthy, you could have a future.” His lips twisted wryly. “Maybe even find an actual boyfriend.”
Damn Eli for bringing that up, too. Tyler was in the closet and way too busy for relationships, and it was none of Eli's business anyway if he chose to stay that way.
And why would he want to do something else when he had the world in his hand?
“None of those hundred things are the goal I've been working for all my life.
None of them are what I'm the fucking best in the world at.”
“Third at Nationals.”
“Second on vault at Worlds last year and fuck you. None of those other things are what I've spent thousands of hours a year every year of my life training for. This is the Olympics, Eli. This is the gold ring. One more month.”
“A month of working harder than you ever have before? Going bigger, taking more risks?”
“I guess.”
Eli shook his head. “You don't need me anyway. The other guys on the team will come here to Colorado to train now, like you said. Pretty soon you'll have seven other guys to hang with who probably agree with your obsession. You won't even notice I'm gone.”
Eli turned and walked back into his room, slamming the door behind him. Tyler was left staring at his roommate's closed door. I definitely will notice.
Of course he would. Eli wasn't just his roommate. Over the last two years, Eli had become his closest friend and biggest supporter. Okay, maybe recently Eli had started this thing about how winning meets wasn’t worth the risk of getting hurt, but that was just because he wasn’t into sports.
He didn’t get the point of playing hurt.
Tyler figured once Eli saw that they Olympics weren’t just a pipe dream, once he realized Tyler really had what it took to stand on that podium under the Stars and Stripes, he’d quit nagging and get onboard with Tyler’s run for the gold.
The other gymnasts named to the team were great guys and would be fun to train with, but living here in Colorado Springs meant he didn't have to stay in the training center.
He could hang out in his apartment right up to the moment they took off for London.
He'd planned it that way, planned to share every moment of this amazing run-up month with Eli.
Except where was the point of that, if Eli wasn't going to be around? If Eli was angry, instead of excited?
He leaned against the wall and thought about Eli, gorgeous Eli, with his tanned skin and soft dark curls and changeable hazel eyes.
When they'd first started rooming together, Tyler had been barely aware of the men Eli went out with, especially since a new guy showed up at the end of every term, hung with Eli for a night or a weekend and was gone again. Hookups were hookups, no big deal.