49. Olivia
DAY EIGHT OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
When Olivia called Aditi with tears in her voice, Aditi immediately caught a taxi, picked her up, and dragged her out of the Village. Olivia protested, but her best friend insisted that spending the rest of her lunch break drinking an iced pistachio latte far away from the Village was exactly what she needed to process it all. And she was right. Olivia hadn’t stopped talking since they’d driven out of the gates past the Olympic rings. But she didn’t want to talk about Zeke. It was too complicated, and it hurt too much. So, instead, she focused her energy on the much simpler act of trash-talking Lars.
“Imagine what my summer would have been like if he hadn’t just called his daddy for a favor,” Olivia said, shaking her head.
“I hate him as much as you do,” Aditi said, as they found a table in the café.
“I see Lars Lindbergs everywhere,” Olivia said. “These silver-spoon-fed boys who just glide through life and collect shiny friends to make themselves look good.”
“And by ‘shiny friends’ do you mean Zeke?” asked Aditi, who’d been listening patiently as Olivia talked about everything except for the person she was really thinking about.
“Yeah, because the fact that he’s pally with Lars Lindberg makes me question what kind of person he is. Like, who willingly hangs out with that spoiled nepo baby? Lars doesn’t even have a real personality. What does that say about Zeke? Probably that I had him all wrong from the start,” said Olivia, taking a furious sip of her iced latte.
“Liv,” said Aditi in a gentle voice, “do you think that maybe you’re focusing on how much you hate Lars to distract yourself from the fact that Zeke hurt your feelings?”
“No,” Olivia said unconvincingly. She twirled her straw and stared at her glass, hoping she’d find answers in the pistachio-flavored froth. But none appeared.
Aditi was right. Olivia had spent the past ten minutes picking Lars apart because it was easier than facing what was actually upsetting her. At least she knew how to deal with that part of her life. She’d just work harder and keep doing everything she needed to do to get a seat at the table. Her future would be filled with rooms of people who made her feel invisible and dream jobs that left her disillusioned. That she could handle, but the way she felt about Zeke was a lot more complicated.
“The photos aren’t even the worst thing,” she said—even though the photos felt like a rough punch to the gut. “It’s the fact that he didn’t run after me.” Now that she’d stopped channeling her emotions into being annoyed at Lars, she could no longer avoid how hurt she was.
“Liv,” said Aditi, handing her a tissue. Olivia hadn’t even noticed that she was crying.
“Part of me is devastated because I still really like him,” Olivia said, the present tense not lost on her. “But this other twisted part of me is almost relieved because the photos gave me a quick, easy out before I fell in way over my head.”
“Was it starting to feel a bit too—” started Aditi.
“Real? Yeah.”
Ever since she’d met him, Olivia had felt her guard coming down around Zeke… And it scared her. She didn’t want to get sidetracked and didn’t particularly fancy getting her heart broken at the end of August, again. But what really scared her was letting someone in enough for them to see every part of her. It wasn’t like that summer with Tiago when she’d felt like another person for a few weeks. No, it was quite the opposite. Whenever she spent time with Zeke, she felt herself opening up beyond the point that she’d allowed herself to be comfortable with. She felt herself becoming lighter, freer, and more herself.
Falling in love was fun, until it wasn’t. Even with Tiago, a part of her had been relieved she could blame the end on him. A sharp, quick ending was always better than a summer spent watching affection slowly start to fade away. So, whenever she felt someone’s interest begin to wane, she was the one to cut things off. She wouldn’t let her heart be so easily broken.
“With Zeke, I don’t know, it was different. And maybe I ran away from it. But if he’d wanted me enough, he would have run after me,” she said, unable to hold the tears back as Aditi came over to her side of the table to hug her.
Olivia’s lunch break was only an hour, so, despite Aditi’s attempts at persuasion, she had to go back to the Village. Once there, she distracted herself by attacking the huge pile of goodie bags waiting to be filled. She’d only planned on working on the goodie bags for as long as it took to get ahead of tomorrow’s events. But without meaning to, she spent hours in the packing room. By the time she looked up at the clock on the wall, it was already 6:41 p.m. Her shift should have ended an hour earlier. But she wasn’t ready to go home and face her feelings yet. So, she increased the volume on her headphones and picked up her phone.
The phone was where her problems had started in the first place, but she couldn’t help but absentmindedly reach out for it. She was scrolling while trying not to think about Zeke, when her finger landed on an image that sent a bolt of adrenaline through her body. Olivia clicked on it and froze. Because she was looking at a post that Valentina had just sent out to the world. It was a four-photo carousel with the caption “People I love.”
The first slide was a black-and-white photo of Valentina with her gymnastics teammates holding their medals up and throwing their winners’ wreaths into the air. The second was a photo of her, Zeke, and Haruki dancing at a bar the night she’d won her gold medal. And then Olivia saw the third picture. It was a photo of Valentina dancing hand in hand with a girl who was looking straight into her eyes. She wore the gaze of someone in love. The final photo was a picture of Valentina with that same girl, kissing as they stood in colorful outfits right next to a parade.
Olivia stared at the photo, her thoughts racing. Zeke had asked her to just give him a chance, to believe in him rather than jumping to the worst-case scenario. But she had jumped to the least-trusting conclusion. However, as she looked down at the photos she felt a small flicker of hope. It wasn’t too late to fix things.
She glanced around the goodie bag room and then back down at her phone. It was 6:48 p.m. She had to find Zeke, and she had to find him fast.