Chapter Five
We both fake-smiled at the waitress when she came back with coffee.
“Okay, I’m listening,” Ben said softly after she walked away.
And that was a big part of the problem. For all his good-time party-guy vibes, I knew firsthand that Ben was a phenomenal
listener. Once he was locked in, it was too easy to crack open your heart and reveal the messy contents to him. And his advice?
Nearly as good as my therapist’s.
I’d always hoped that I’d get this reckoning with Ben. I’d envisioned it would play out like we were in a movie, with music
swelling as I made point after devastating point, until Ben looked suitably regretful for what happened between us.
Or didn’t happen.
The vintage diner setting with a bipolar jukebox spitting out Gwar one minute and Britney the next didn’t exactly set the
mood. And then there were the eyes on us . . . Most folks were used to seeing me around town, but our combined star power
seemed to be attracting more attention than usual.
I cleared my throat. I thought I was prepared, but I’d crafted my speech without considering how it would feel to be sitting across from him again.
I wasn’t sure which part was safe to focus on—his unwavering stare, the set of his angular jaw, or the mouth that looked like it was seconds away from curling into a smile despite the tension.
Not the mouth. Definitely not the mouth.
“Do you know how much you hurt me?” I began, trying to keep my voice steady.
He finally broke off eye contact to glance down at the mug clutched in his hands. “I do.” Ben looked up to meet my eyes again.
“And I’m sorry.”
I’d expected excuses, not him copping to being a dick right away. I had reams of supporting evidence to make my case, but
here he was, apologizing right at the jump. Admitting that he’d been wrong was the equivalent of a bucket of water on my five-alarm
fury.
“Good.”
It was all I could come up with as I recalibrated my approach.
“I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few years, and I came close to reaching out, but you seemed like you were doing
well,” Ben said.
“No thanks to you,” I shot back at him. “And it took time for me to get to that point. I went through hell.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He sighed and fidgeted with his mug again.
“That night, you told me not to worry.” I hoped the tremor in my voice wasn’t obvious, because I didn’t want him to think
he had access to that part of me again. “Your exact words were “I’ve got you.” And I believed you, Ben.”
Saying it out loud made me feel needy, but of course he already knew I was.
After our time in Switzerland, Bennett Martino knew every single one of my secrets.
Now I had to make sure he wouldn’t be sharing any of them with his viewing audience.
“Why did you act all invested in me?” I demanded. “I told you everything. From the bullshit with my mom, to the way Carol treated me.” I leaned across the table to hiss-whisper the next part. “I
told you about my fucking eating disorder!”
He winced.
“If you were so worried about me, then why didn’t you reach out once we got home, when I really needed you?”
It felt so good to pin the question on him like he was a bug on corkboard. Ben frowned at me.
“I know this might sound hard to believe, but it was for the best,” he insisted.
My mouth dropped open.
“Wow.” I nodded my head when I finally snapped out of my shocked haze. “Okay. Really patronizing. Leaning into the age gap thing,
huh? Mr. Been There Done That knows all.”
“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “Not even close. The stuff we talked about that night . . . I don’t know. In a way I feel
responsible for what you did when you got home.”
“You mean quitting?”
He shifted. “Yeah. I was terrified that I pushed you to it.”
“Please. Don’t give yourself so much credit for my good decisions,” I mumbled as I fiddled with a sugar packet.
“You were spiraling that night. I was worried about you, and when you started talking about which competitions you were going
to plan for next, and how you and your coach—who you hated—could rework your routines . . . Quinn, you sounded . . . robotic. There was no passion for your sport, just this zombielike drive to win again. Like you had something to prove.”
“You think?” I asked sarcastically.
“Come on.”
I hugged my arms to my chest and scanned the room again. Thankfully, everyone was focused on their food, not us. I watched
a group of teenage girls laughing and downing waffles and felt a twinge of jealousy. Did they consider calorie counts, or
was it possible for some people to just . . . eat? Because at that age I’d forgotten what waffles tasted like.
“I felt bad for even implying that you needed a break,” Ben continued. “When I heard you’d quit I felt . . . I don’t know . . . sort of responsible for
it.”
“Shame you didn’t think to check in on your young patient.”
“Quinn, I’m trying here, okay? Or should I not bother?”
He looked genuinely upset, and it almost swayed me. But I had years of built-up anger fueling me, and I wasn’t about to get
lulled by his handsome sad face.
I remembered every minute of our conversation that night. We’d sat huddled together for hours while I cried and ranted about
the state of my life. It got to the point where I’d nearly hyperventilated, and that was when Ben had pulled me close and
wrapped his arms around me. I cried against his shoulder until I felt okay to keep talking.
That hug felt different from any others I’d gotten during Switzerland. I’d been falling the whole time, desperate for someone
to grab on to me and tell me that I was still worthy, but only Ben had really seen me. The way he’d held me, pressing himself to me like he could ground me with his body, made me feel safe in a way I’d
never experienced.
It was no surprise what happened later that night.
Before that point, Ben gave me the space to rant, and offered me his perspective without judgment. He never came out and told
me that I needed to consider quitting, but he didn’t have to. Little by little, through examples from his own career and a
thoughtful examination of mine, the answer became clear to me on my own.
It felt like we were at the beginning of something real and important. Being so open had left me feeling bruised and free, like Ben was going to help me carry my load now that he knew it was crushing me.
“And I’m sorry, Quinn, but I need to remind you that I came back to the States dealing with my own shit. I won gold, and it
was amazing, but I was also retiring. I had sponsorship commitments I needed to fulfill, and so much press.” His brow knitted
as he broke off, like it was his turn to stop himself from saying too much. “Let’s just say there’s a lot you don’t know about
that period. You were in my thoughts, all the damn time, but I needed to deal with my own shit first.”
It was a bucket of water on my fury, although being busy with his many gold medal commitments wasn’t exactly a rough go compared
to what I’d dealt with when I got home.
He deserved a thimbleful of grace and nothing more.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I admitted quietly.
But still . . . how hard would it have been to send me a quick text? Just an “I’m thinking about you, stay strong” message
would’ve been enough to make me feel less alone as I took an arcade rifle to my life and picked off the parts that were no
longer working for me.
“No need to apologize,” he said quickly. “I’m sure from the outside it looked like I was having the time of my life. And I was, for a little while. Then reality hit, hard. And let’s just leave it at that for now.” He took a long draw of coffee, still watching me over the rim of the mug. “I wanted
to reach out to you, Quinn. I did, I swear. But you were sorting through your entire career, questioning everything. I thought
I’d be a distraction. Plus . . .”
“What?” I pushed.
When he finally refocused on me I felt a tremor pass through my body.
“I was closing in on thirty. You were a child.”
I snorted. “Oh gross. Don’t make it sound so Lolita.”
“But you get what I’m saying,” he said in a strained voice. “The whole thing was complicated, given where we both were in
our careers.”
I hated that he was making sense, but his logic couldn’t erase the pain I’d carried in the years since. Even an “it’s not
you, it’s me” text would’ve been better than the ghosting he subjected me to. And I’d gotten a little unhinged as my unanswered
texts piled up.
I still cringed thinking about some of the stuff I’d said.
“We’re both coming to this taping with baggage,” he said.
I snorted in response. His was a carry-on, mine was a steamer trunk.
“But we have to make it work. You’ll get to tell your story the way you want, and I’ll get my contract with the show.”
I allowed a single nod in response.
“So with that in mind, I was hoping we could lay out some ground rules for this interview,” he said.
“Please.” I spread my hands and swept the air in front of me. “Enlighten me, oh wise elder.”
“You’re so fucking annoying,” he said and chuckled.
“Childish, you might say,” I countered.
He ignored me. “We both have a lot riding on the next couple of weeks. I need your episode and then my coverage of the Games to be flawless. After a bunch of false starts, this job feels like a fit for me. I can envision an actual future with the show, so I need everything to go smoothly.”
I ignored his bossiness. “Future? What’s that?”
“Yeah, my point exactly,” he said. “So what I’m asking is for us to enter into an agreement. We’ll forget about our past and
focus on making something inspiring together. Remember, this interview will help you, too, Quinn.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “But you’re not the only one who gets to lay down rules, so it’s my turn.”
“Go for it.”
I forced myself to ignore how willing he seemed to hear me out, because it was only for selfish reasons.
“I expect this to be one hundred percent professional. That means you have to forget everything personal I told you in Switzerland.
Don’t even hint at it. I opened myself up to you, not your viewing audience. You can’t act like we have any shared history. And don’t try
to be my buddy. As far as anyone knows, we were both at the Games four years ago, and that’s the extent of our relationship.
Distant teammates.”
A quiet settled over the booth as we considered the fiction I was proposing, because there was still gossip residue about
exactly what had happened between us in Switzerland, and doing the show would resurface it. The last thing I wanted was to
be considered nothing more than one of Ben’s conquests.
“You probably don’t even remember half of what happened that night,” I scoffed at him. It was how I’d consoled myself when he didn’t reach out to me. Maybe he’d been drunk for twenty-four hours? It was the only acceptable explanation of why he’d let me twist in the wind once we got home.
Ben went still, his eyes locked on me.
“I remember every second.”
My stomach dipped like I was on a small-town carnival roller coaster.
I’d shared the ugliest parts of myself with him, and he’d accepted me anyway, at least for that night. Would it even be possible
for Ben to forget all the crap about my mom if he got the chance to interview her? And when I talked about how pumped I was
to be going to the Olympics again, would he know that it was an act, and that I was actually terrified of blowing it for a
second time?
Of course he would. After that night of truth telling I felt like Ben knew all the parts of me I tried to keep hidden. That
the burned-out gifted kid was still fighting for her chance at gold.
He’d heard it all and acted like none of it mattered. That night, all he’d cared about was making sure that I was going to
be okay.
In another life, Ben and I would be soulmates. In this one, we were nothing more than temporary colleagues.