14. Nadia
Nadia
I took a deep breath as I waited for my turn at floor exercises. I was right behind Anna in the rotation, but they started us each on a different exercise. Anna had just performed a nearly flawless vault, and I was up next for floor. After the team cycled through again I’d get to the vault as my last apparatus.
With years of practice, I took several breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, centering myself as I examined the mat, ensuring that everything looked normal. Coach Ekaterina and my teammates watched from the sidelines, and somewhere up in the stands, my parents were holding court and bragging about how their daughter got all her talent from them.
I didn’t care about any of that right now. It was just me, my mat, and an instrumental version of Walking on Sunshine. My theme song.
I stepped into the square as the music started, and right out of the gate began running, leaping into the air and circling twice before my feet landed again. I kept moving, leaping and twisting and tumbling along with the peppy music. My face was a mask of concentration, but I remembered to smile every time I landed.
Making my way to a corner of the mat, I prepared for my signature move. The crowd grew silent, knowing what was coming. I was one of only a handful of female gymnasts who could do the airborne quadruple loop, land, and immediately jump into a triple. If I pulled it off, my technical score would be high. With a deep breath, I closed my eyes briefly, reminding my muscles that we could do this. We’d done it many times before. We were good at it.
My body was airborne without conscious thought thanks to the muscle memory that came from years of practice. I circled in the air for four rotations, landed, then went airborne again to hit the triple. I landed again, exactly in time with the end of my music, and threw my arms up in triumph. The crowd was on its feet, clapping and cheering. I gave a low bow to the crowd on both sides of the stadium before turning to give the judges a respectful salute.
The instant I was off the mat my team circled me in a jubilant hug. Anna was the last to pull away.
“That was fucking hot,” she whispered, giving me an honest to God smile.
It was almost as good as the perfect score I received a few minutes later.
By the time we all got to our fourth exercise, it was clear that, as we’d expected, our only competition was from the Russians. They were a great team, every one of them strong and technically proficient, if a little robotic at times. We were ahead of them, but only by a tiny margin. As Coach Ekaterina reminded us before we started the final round, it was essential that we stay focused.
“Every single one of you must be their best this round,” she said firmly, a subtle reminder that Goat couldn’t carry the team by herself.
Not that we’d let her. We were all as competitive and professional as she was, even if we weren’t quite as good. There wasn’t a single person on this team who wouldn’t give their all.
But Ekaterina’s job was to coach us, and she took it very seriously. One by one she looked us in the eye and pointed a finger in our direction, her nails painted solid black. After giving us each a hard look, she told the team, “Don’t fuck this up!”
Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear that she gave Anna and me an extra long, extra aggressive look. Not that it mattered, it just fired me up more. I might seem like rainbows and sunshine, but I hadn’t gotten where I was in this sport without a competitive streak a mile long.
Ninety minutes later Ekaterina was singing a different tune. The U.S. team had beaten the Russians, taking the gold. Our coach was ebullient about winning the team competition and sticking it to the country she felt had betrayed her.
We weren’t allowed to have alcohol in the stadium, but as soon as we walked out of the performance area Ekaterina led us to the coach’s housing a few blocks away. We crowded into her tiny room, avoiding the cardboard bed, and she gave us each a single glass of champagne to celebrate.
We had to go back for the awards ceremony in an hour, so we couldn’t party too much, but we all agreed that champagne had never tasted so sweet.
A little while later we returned to the stadium. Anna and I lingered in the locker room, then ducked into a bathroom stall to share a quick kiss. It felt illicit, making the kiss all the sweeter.
“We’d better go before Coach freaks out,” she said breathlessly as we broke apart.
My hand shot down and I cupped Anna’s pussy, giving it a little squeeze that made her gasp. I waited for Anna’s eyes to meet mine, then gave her a little smile.
“Soon.”
Then I grabbed her hand and pulled Anna through the locker room. The risk was low, since no one was around. As we walked down the long hallway towards our entrance to the stadium, we heard voices and pulled our hands apart just before rounding a corner.
“Nadia, darling! There you are!”
I stopped as I saw my parents striding toward me. My heart sank. There went my good mood.
Mom looked like she’d just walked out of a fashion show in Milan instead of the bleachers in the competition stadium. Typical. She was wearing an expensive wrap dress and chunky heels that added three inches to her five foot nothing height. A heavy gold necklace hung around her neck, and several expensive rings adorned her fingers. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her blonde extensions falling down past her shoulders. She’d recently had her eyelashes done and they were thick and dark over her big blue eyes, drawing attention from the wrinkles that had formed in the corners against her will. I was pretty sure there was cosmetic surgery in her future.
Dad was wearing designer slacks and a polo emblazoned with the logo of the Games, along with a gold watch that cost more than most Americans made in a year. Like Mom, he was a natural blonde, much lighter than hers, but still perfectly styled. With his square chin and long but ridiculously handsome face, he looked like Dudley Do Right from the old cartoons, a fact that the press loved to exploit back in his competition days.
Mom pulled me into a Chanel scented hug, air-kissing my cheeks, then dad clapped me on the shoulder like I was a little boy playing baseball.
“Mom, Dad, this is my teammate Anna. Anna, my parents --.”
My mother interrupted before I could share their names.
“I’m sure Anna knows who we are, darling.”
I barely resisted rolling my eyes. My mother was snobby and condescending as a rule, and while I usually could just ignore it, I didn’t appreciate her being that way with Anna.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Gordan,” Anna said politely.
“Of course it is,” my mother said dismissively before turning her cold stare back on me. “I guess we should say congratulations for winning the gold.”
I knew it was chafing at her, given that her own team had only won the bronze and silver respectively during her two trips to the Games long before I was born. I was betting that she would justify it by saying that gymnastics was harder back in the eighties and nineties before there were so many safety protocols.
I noticed that even though she said she should say congratulations for winning, she didn’t actually say it. Instead she launched right into a critique.
“You got lucky with the judges today, but you will need to do better in the individuals, Nadia. You made a lot of mistakes. You won’t have your teammates to carry you in the next round.”
Even after a lifetime of her belittling me, the criticism still hit me like a fist to the gut. My father was quiet, content to let my mother speak for him, but I could tell by his disapproving frown that he agreed with her.
“Nadia got a perfect score on the floor exercises,” Anna reminded them with a frown. Her voice was loud and firm.
“And she got high scores on all three of the apparatus thanks to her excellent performance and technical skill. She was an integral part of us winning the gold. You should be proud of Nadia’s performance, not criticizing her during our moment of triumph.”
And that was the minute I fell head over heels in love with Anna Parker.