CHAPTER 75 #2
Has anyone ever noticed how Ana looks just like a flamingo when she’s in her skating costumes? She wore one at Worlds this year that was pink and I still laugh at how she looked. I hope she gets a better designer for Milan
Flamingo.
For a second I can’t recall why that word sounds so familiar, except when I do my stomach feel like it’s been twisted inside out.
Your posture. Unless you’re trying to look like a flamingo.
Troy.
_________
When he comes back downstairs, I’ve already showered and have started to watch a romantic comedy, though have barely been paying any attention to it, even when the steamy scenes—my typical favorites—come on and don’t make me feel a thing.
Troy walks into the kitchen, the same content expression on his face before he drops two bowls of fresh fruit onto the coffee table and some sugar cookies that I don’t touch.
“When you called me a flamingo,” I ask because it’s suddenly eating me alive, “is it because you think I look like one?”
Mid-bite, and his gaze darts right up at me. “What?”
“It’s just, when you kept saying that, is it because of my legs?”
When Troy frowns with his brows arched like he doesn’t understand what’s happening right now, I realize that I sound like a lunatic.
“God, I sound like an idiot right now,” I repeat out loud. “This is dumb. Never mind.”
“No, you don’t,” he says it like he means it, like I’m ridiculous to even ask him such a thing. Except, he’s the one who first said it. “You don’t sound like an idiot,” he adds, “and no, you don’t look like a flamingo. I was just shit-talking before, did I offend you?”
“No, I, it’s dumb.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Saying what?”
“That what you want to say is dumb. Talk to me.”
My chest starts warming again, trying my best to push it out.
“Some people used to bully me for my height,” I say, in disbelief that I’m admitting this to him, “and um, about my legs. And I read a comment just now online about me saying that I look like one, a flamingo. Then I remembered the flamingo comment you said and, I guess I didn’t think about it before, but,” I feel myself begin to ramble, “they have pretty long legs, right? So I just thought, maybe that’s why you said I looked like that when I skated? ”
He looks, he looks—livid. Not at me, no, at himself, I think. And he quickly sits up, leaning toward me like he’s trying to figure out how he should respond.
“Jesus, I, Ana, no,” he says, his voice filled with nerves, “you don’t look anything like a flamingo. If I knew you felt this way, I would have never even said that. I thought we were joking, the way we would do.”
“No, I know,” I blurt. “I’d joke with you too. That’s why I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t want to make anything weird.”
“You didn’t make things weird.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“No, it hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt you. Ever.”
A sudden, burning sensation reaches my eyes, quickly blinking it away.
“Thank you for, um explaining that,” I say, not knowing how else to word it, feeling awkward all of a sudden.
Hating myself for opening up like that.
Opening up to him.
It’s weak and it’s wrong.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
“Where are you going?” he says and I hate how worried he sounds. How worried he looks.
Like I can’t handle being alone.
I’ve always been alone.
“Just going to use the restroom,” I say with a kiss to his cheek for no other reason than to dispel that glance of concern on his face.
And it works when Troy’s lips curve like he’s happy by the gesture.
While I start to hear the voices as I step over each stair.
Daddy long legs.
The nickname that Violet started sophomore year of high school. Right after our first Olympic Games.
And then my diary entry the morning after first hearing it take off at our high school.
Violet called me daddy long legs yesterday. Right in front of Andrew when he came to pick me up after school.
I think she was hoping he’d break up with me. I don’t know why because she has her own boyfriend.
I wouldn’t even care but after passing period, the entire class, every single person, except for Donya started calling me that.
I wish we could move.
You never forget the teasing look on all the jocks’ faces at fifteen-years-old after they hear the most popular girl in school compare you to that.
Look at daddy long legs, Andrew!
And I never looked at my body the same.
_________
Keep going even if you’re the only one who believes in yourself.
I scoff at the entry I wrote just a year earlier at fourteen-years-old, tossing my diary onto the nightstand.
What a stupid, na?ve child I was to have ever put those words into ink.
After I’ve read through a few pages I probably shouldn’t have, remembered memories I’ve been trying to forget for ages, I leave the guest room, returning back to the living room.
A sadness washes over me while we’re watching TV that I reach over to touch Troy’s arm, hoping he doesn’t make me spell this out for him.
Dropping my eyes to his mouth, a pure relief when he leans forward without a comment, I latch onto his lips before they help me escape every trouble from the past.
It’s not long until he picks me up and takes us both back into his room and we’re a naked tangle of sweat and satisfied release.
“You were good today, with the questioning,” I tell him. “I think you work well under pressure. Thanks for sort of stepping in when I got a bit, uh, nervous.”
He smiles, and it makes my chest even more nervous.
Then he pushes back in surprise, and my stomach jitters with these tiny butterflies.
“Are you getting sappy on me, Petrov?”
“Don’t get used to it,” I snap.
My eyes trail with wonder as he reaches out a hand, both of us resting on our sides against his soft pillowcases, before he lets his fingers shape around the side of my neck, feeling my heartbeat tick right against his warm skin. “And what if I want to?”
For a second the room freezes, my mind not registering quite what he just said. Every dirty thing he’s done to me the past month suddenly feeling tame in comparison.
Cruel, he can’t be that vile to say those words and not mean them at least a little. Except he can if he’s the person I grew up with, a truth that feels weaker to accept by each passing day.
Vulnerability edges between us, and the notion of it is so out of reach, it dies right with the hope it tries to give me.
And what if I want to? The words feel like the twist of a knife.
“Trust me,” I warn, my eyes blinking deep. “You don’t.”
Troy’s smile fades like I’ve hurt him a little by the response and that death of his hope, cruel, it makes me—maybe—but it feels much more manageable, much more real and familiar.
I turn to my side to sleep knowing that I won’t, not for a good couple of hours, hoping he got the hint that this, us…we are nothing but rivals who are temporarily working together to reach a common goal.
To win.