HOLLIS
“What did you eat this morning?”
“A plate of eggs, some sausage, a yogurt, and two bottles of water,” I snap.
Coach Fucking Ted. The urge to punch him is so real. He’s been riding my ass all week about my eating. Do I like to indulge in a little treat every now and then? Fuck yeah! I have a sweet tooth, but do I burn it off in the gym and counteract it with enough veggies and protein to shit out my own garden and chicken coop? Uh, yeah.
“Turkey sausage?”
“I have no fucking clue. Room service brought it up. Should I call down and ask them?”
“I don’t appreciate your attitude, Hollis.” Coach Ted’s voice is harsh, unforgiving, as if he’s about to make me do a thousand burpees for talking back. What’s the worst that could happen? I fire him?
I could fire him . . .
The idea of sending the fucker packing appeals to me more than a giant waffle cone with soft serve at the current moment, but then Coach Wilson’s face appears in my head. He told me to stick with Coach Ted, to ride it out, that he would be good for me.
What was Coach Wilson thinking? How could he have possibly thought Coach Ted would be a good match for me?
I exhale hard and fall back into my chair, my legs spread, my head bent forward. “Can I be honest with you?”
“I only expect honesty from you.”
Of course that would be his answer.
“We’ve been clashing for a while—”
“Clashing? Is that how you see it? Because I see it as you treating me with disrespect and questioning my coaching technique every chance you get.”
“I’m not questioning you. When have I ever questioned you? I don’t fucking say a word.”
“It’s not what you say, Hollis, it’s your body language. The way you roll your eyes when you think I’m not looking. Coach Wilson would be so disappointed in you.”
“Don’t,” I yell, losing my control in seconds. Wanting to divert attention away from me, I lower my voice and speak sternly to Coach Ted. “Don’t fucking bring him up. This is about us, not him.”
“But you respected him.”
“Of course I did. He was a second father to me. He knew how to push me without pushing me too hard, something you haven’t learned yet.”
“Excuse me?” Coach Ted’s face turns bright red with anger and I wonder if he might stroke out right about now. His coloring is quite concerning.
“I don’t mean to piss you off.” That’s genuine. The last thing I want is to get in a fight with my coach right before my last chance to get into the finals. I might be the best in the world but I also know what a bad mental game can do to you. “But you have to notice how we clash. You’re tough with your athletes, a bit harsh, unrelenting. I don’t do well with that kind of coaching. You need to let up at some point.”
“Is that what you think makes an Olympic medalist? A coach who lets up?”
“I’m sorry to say, but I won my two golds without you and under Coach Wilson’s tutelage. He wasn’t relentless like you; he knew when to give me a break and when to push me. Right now, I’m so fucking tense with you around me that I can barely focus on mentally prepping myself.”
“So you’re going to blame me for your shortcomings?”
“For fuck’s sake.” I blow out a long breath and run my hands over my face. “Can you fucking listen to me? I’m not blaming you for anything, I just want us to find a happy medium with our relationship.”
“How’s this for a happy medium?” He tosses his clipboard at me. “I quit, you prick.”
Without another word, he vacates the pool area, leaving me coachless, speechless, and so fucking irritated. What the fuck just happened?
Gee, I can’t wait to dive now.
***
One dive left, one chance left to get my score up into the top two so I qualify for the team. The stunned silence of the crowd is obvious every time I pop out from my dive. I’m not the diver today. Everything about me is off. I’m either releasing from my tuck too early, causing my splash to be obnoxious, or I’m not pointing my fucking toes, or I’m breaking form. Mistake after mistake has put me in a close third where normally I would be breaking away from the pack with a lead of at least ten in the scoring.
Not today, I’m clawing my way up the ladder, trying to beat out the new talent who walked in the pool area like little bitches, as if they own the facility.
News flash, fuckers: I’ve won the gold medal in ten-meter platform for the past two Olympics; you have some fucking work to do.
Shit . . . I have some work to do.
My next dive has to be near perfect in order for me to qualify and it’s my hardest.
Needing to get away from the noise and the other divers, I put on my warms-ups, stick my ear buds in, and turn on my music from my phone. Sitting in the hallway near the locker rooms, I try to zone out. The first things I see are a few text messages. All from my sister.
Holly: What the hell is wrong with you today?
Holly: Where is your coach?
Holly: Hollis! What the fuck? You’re better than this.
Yup, Holly made it to the competition which at first made me so fucking happy, but right about now, I wish she was still overseas.
Ignoring her text messages, I scroll down to the one that is most important to me. I sent her a text earlier today letting her know I had a dream about her last night.
Melony: What was I doing? If you say sucking your dick, I’m going to punch you.
Just that single text puts me in a better mood. Leaning back, I pump up my diving mix I put together and text her back.
Hollis: You made me brownies. But just as I was about to eat them, I woke up.
Her response is fast. Thank fuck I don’t have to wait forever. I need to talk to her right now.
Melony: Is this where you say my pussy was the actual brownie?
Hollis: Look whose mind is in the gutter.
Melony: You put it there.
Hollis: Now if only I could get your heart in my hands, then I would be golden.
It’s so fucking true. All I want is for Melony to give me a chance. One. Fucking. Chance. I would show her how good of a boyfriend I am, how much of a perfect match we really are.
Melony: Shouldn’t you be diving?
Hollis: Keeping track of me?
Melony: Just looking for an excuse to change the subject.
Of course she would want to change the subject when I start talking about dating her. I’m not going to lie; her rejection is a bit of a blow to the ego. The only thing that keeps me in pursuit is her texts back to me. If she wanted nothing to do with me at all, I believe she would have blocked me by now. That’s what I want to believe, at least. Right now, I feel that it is the only thing I can cling to. My life-long coach is dead, my new asshole coach has quit, my sister can’t dive anymore because of me, and I’m diving like shit today. Just give me something here, Melony. Please. I suck in a deep breath to attempt to not lose it completely.
Hollis: One more dive to go.
Melony: Really? Are you in the lead? As if I really need to ask.
I love her confidence, if only she fucking knew.
Hollis: Not my best day.
I hate sending the text but if I lie, she’ll know I’m lying, as this shit is televised. But fuck, I hate looking weak in front of her, not my best. She may think I’m a cocky bastard but I normally have good reasons to be cocky. I know my strengths and I use them to my advantage.
Today though, fuck, today I’m so weak it’s destroying my chances at my third Olympics. One bad day is all it takes. I’ve seen it happen before; I just never thought I would be in this position.
“Hollis, two minutes.”
Fuck. I stand and start to shuck my warm-ups when my phone beeps.
Melony: Don’t let it be your worst. You got this.
Fuck me, and just like that, my heart is pounding rapidly in my chest, my adrenaline starts to surge, and all I can think about is the beautiful smile of hers. Melony is right. I won’t let this day be my worst.
This woman, why won’t she let me be a part of her life? Why won’t she let me be her better half? That’s all I want. I know she thinks I’m crazy when I say we’re going to be married one day, but hell if I don’t truly believe it. Sometimes, you just fucking know. My dad knew with my mom, and I know with Melony. What I don’t know is why she is so adamant about saying no. Why the very idea of dating me seems so abhorrent to her. Has she always been this bristly toward men? Because with such a gorgeous body and face, there is no way she hasn’t received attention. I want her, but right now my head needs to be focused on my next dive. The dive that will secure my position in the Olympic diving team. And thanks to the encouragement from my girl-to-be, that’s what I’m going to do.
Quickly, I text her back before I take off for the pool.
Hollis: Thanks, mini muffin.
With a deep breath, I do my pre-dive ritual.
If you’ve ever watched a diving competition before, you will see the weird things we take part in. First of all, we carry around a shammy. It’s our lifeline, our security blanket, a little piece of us that we can show off since all our Speedos are pretty generic. These little scraps of fabric actually serve a purpose, rather surprising, I know. We don’t just walk around with these draped over our shoulders thinking we look cool.
Have you ever performed a tuck flip? Have you ever done one at the velocity we perform, flip after flip until you part at just the right moment before hitting the water? Imagine trying to do one when your hands or legs are wet. Pretty much impossible. You will find quite quickly that water is slippery and if you’re not dry, that tuck flip will turn right into a belly flop.
Shammies are important.
Also, when walking around on the pool deck near the base of the platforms, you might see divers standing in place, acting out their dives. Don’t worry; it’s normal even though it looks like we are trying to swat away a bee.
That’s what I’m currently doing, practicing my take-off and pretending to twist, turn, and pike all the way into the water. I perform this routine five times before walking up the steps to the top platform.
Yes, we have to walk up the steps. There is no elevator or escalator or lift. Nope, we hike it up. Practice is a lot of fun when all you’re doing is dive after dive. You become conditioned rather fast, hence my occasional indulgence in a little ice cream.
Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for a cone right about now. Twist with rainbow sprinkles. Fuck chocolate jimmies, I want the colorful shit, not little sugar confections that will make my ice cream look like a spotted turd on a cone.
I dip in the hot tub to warm up my body, do a quick run of my shammy over my body and start to make my way up the stairs, the whole time playing my dive over and over in my head. Muscle memory, that’s all it is. Clear my head and let my muscle memory do its job.
Don’t let it be your worst.
I’m not going to let her down. I’m not going to let my family down. And to hell if I will give Coach Ted the satisfaction of seeing me fail without him being around.
Once I’m at the top, I focus on the platform in front of me, nothing else. I tune out the crowd chanting my name, wishing for the two-time Olympic gold medalist to once again secure another spot on the team. I run the green shammy Holly gave me when I was in college over my body, making sure everything is as dry as it can get, then I tie it in a knot, lean over the edge of the platform so I hover above the hot tubs and toss it to where I’ll pick it up after my dive.
The announcer introduces me, my cue to move forward with my dive.
Muscle memory. You’ve done this dive a thousand times, a front four-and-a-half tuck. In layman’s terms, I jump off the board, tuck my knees to my chest, and flip four times before parting the water with my hands. The most difficult dive to accomplish but well worth the payoff if done correctly.
It’s been the dive that’s made me and also broken me.
Walking up to position, I ignore the numbers calculating in my head, I ignore the announcer talking about my dive, and I ignore the nagging voice in the back of my head that keeps warning me about what failure of this dive means.
Right then, I hear Coach Wilson’s deep voice in my head. Hollis, you know the dive. You own the dive. Perfect the dive. You. Can. And. You. Will.
I focus on my movements.
Taking a deep breath, I raise my arms in the air, poise my feet, count to three and go.
One . . .
Two . . .
Three . . .
With a giant leap into the air, I tuck my legs forward hold on tight and count my revolutions. Before I know it, I hit four, untuck, spot the water, take a deep breath and push down into the water with my hands flat, separating them to create a vortex so the water above me is sucked in rather than splashing out, a technique I’ve mastered.
As soon as I hit the water, I know I’ve nailed it. If not from the feeling rushing through me but from the echoes of the crowd’s cheers chanting my name.
I swim to the surface, yank on my speedo before exiting the pool, making sure everything is in place, and then look up at my family who is uncontrollably dancing up and down in their bedazzled Hollis Howlers shirts.
I grab my shammy and quickly head for the hot tub where I warm up, shaking opponents’ hands on my way.
It doesn’t take long for me to receive my score. Within seconds, I’m no longer in a bleak position on the scoreboard. Instead, I’m number two on the board with only one other person to go; the leader. I’m going to Rio.
Fuck if that’s not a relief.
It’s a whirlwind of getting some clothes on, fixing my hair somewhat, and running through interviews. The one thing going through my mind isn’t the fact that I’ve made my third Olympics, but how much I wish Melony was here so I could celebrate with her in person. Fuck how I wish she was here. Maybe I’ll give her another call tonight.
***
“Hollis, Hollis, Hollis!” my mom cheers as I walk toward my family who is not only decked out in the gaudiest shirts I’ve ever seen but are holding blown-up pictures of my head on sticks. Just fucking great. I can only imagine what NBC thought of that.
“Hi, Mom.” I wrap the little five-foot-six woman in my arms and kiss the top of her head, being sure to stay away from the visor she’s had ever since my first Olympics. It’s supposed to be like an American flag wrapped around your head, that’s at least how my mom describes it.
“You did so great,” she coos while hugging me with all the gusto she has, which means she’s swaying me back and forth, or at least trying to.
“Not really, but thanks, Mom.”
My dad points, wiggles his finger at me as he approaches. “You had us sweating there for a second.” My mom releases me just as my dad grabs the back of my neck and kisses me on the forehead before pulling me into a giant bear hug. I’m two inches taller than his six-foot stature but he has a few more pounds on me, making his bear hug effective.
“Just trying to keep things interesting,” I joke and look around. “Where’s Holly?”
“She took off for the bathroom—”
“I’m right here,” her voice rings outs.
Turning around, I look down to see my sister roll right up behind me. She looks just the same, long dirty-blonde hair in waves, the same vivid blue eyes as mine, toned arms from having been in a wheelchair, and her muscle deteriorated legs strapped to the bottom of her wheelchair. Even though it’s been years since the accident, I still get nausea from seeing her. She could have been in the trials this week; she could be going to Rio.
Fuck, who am I kidding? If she were able to walk, she most definitely would be going to Rio. She was the best female diver in the country. Hell, she put me to shame when she was at the top of her game, and I’ve been the best in the world for the past eight years.
“Are you just going to stare at me or are you going to come down here and give me a hug?”
“Sorry,” I say shyly, leaning down to hug her. Fuck, will I ever get used to her in a chair? Will I ever lose this all-consuming guilt when I’m around her? “How are you, Holls?”
“Could be better. I spent the last hour agonizing over you and your idiotic dives. What the hell was with you today?”
“Holly,” my mom chimes in, “he made it to Rio.” The way my mom says that makes it seem like Holly wasn’t there for the entire competition, which I know she was. I got the angry texts.
“I’m aware, Mom. What I want to know is where’s your coach, and why the hell did you wait until the last dive, your hardest dive, to finally claim a spot?”
I wrack my brain and then shrug my shoulders in question. “For the drama of it all?” I tack on my most charming smile but it fades quickly when I see Holly is about to rip me a new one.
“Bullshit, where is Coach Ted?”
Knowing she won’t give up until I tell the story, I give in. “Coach Ted and I got into it before the competition. We’ve been clashing ever since we started working together. I asked him to try to cater toward me as an athlete and apparently he wanted nothing to do with that, so he left right before competition. Pretty sure that threw off my entire dive.”
“Pretty sure?” Holly questions. “No, it most definitely did. You looked like shit out there.”
“Gee, thanks, Holly. You’re so kind.”
“Just telling you how I saw it. You’re so much better than that, Hollis, diving wise and mentally as well. He should be sacked.”
“I know.” Looking around, I see a lot of bystanders. I need to sign some autographs and take pictures, and then later we can talk in private, so I ask my family to meet me in my hotel room. I would rather not air my dirty laundry in front of the public eye, who can easily record us given smart technology.
After half an hour of sticking around the venue, I make my way back to the hotel, my stomach growling. On the way up to my room, I bust open my cherry Pop-Tart as an appetizer before dinner.
Opening the door to my hotel room, I half expect my mom and dad to throw streamers at me out of celebration but instead of happy faces, I’m greeted by an angry one.
Holly.
Shit, she’s not going to let this go.
“Wow, you’re a lovely sight to come home to,” I say sarcastically, taking a bite out of my Pop-Tart and shutting the door.
“Why don’t you take a seat, we have some talking to do.”
I sit across from her on the couch, my mouth full of Pop-Tart, with zero desire to talk about today.
“I don’t want to talk, Holly. I dove horribly, case closed.”
“I don’t care about your dives today.”
“You don’t?” I look around and then ask, “Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“I told them to wait patiently in their room so I could talk to you.”
“About what?”
She takes a deep breath and says, “Ever since the accident, you’ve been treating me differently.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t say anything, Hollis. Don’t lie to me. You know it’s true. You’re different. You don’t talk to me like you used to, and when you do, you always skim the surface of our conversation. You never dig deep. You rarely talk to me about diving, a sport we both love, and when you do talk to me on the phone, it’s brief. I’m sick of it.”
I take a second before I answer her. What does someone really say to that? You’re right, I’ve been avoiding talking to you about anything serious because I feel guilty as fuck that you were the one injured in the car accident even though I was the one driving.
I fucking ended her diving career with one glance down. That’s all it takes, once glance away from the road, and you can end up running into a tree, ending your sister’s future career.
To this day I can still here the crunch of metal, the screech of Holly’s voice, the sirens in the distance, the Jaws of Life trying to extract my sister from the car. It’s still all there, at the forefront of my memory, despite being three years ago. She was looking to get her third gold, just like me, but now, she can’t . . . because of me.
“Hollis, talk to me.”
I shake my head, unable to pull together a sentence. “I just . . . fuck, Holls. I still hear, smell, and taste it all. Every damn day I hear your scream. It haunts me. I don’t avoid you because I don’t love you, I avoid you because I can’t handle seeing what I did to you.”
“Well, you’re going to have to get used to it, because as of today, I’m your new diving coach.”
My mind is still reeling about the accident until Holly’s words start to process in my brain.
“Wait, what?”
“I’m your new coach. I talked to Kelly with USA Diving; it’s all set. I took my education and certification two years ago. I just have to update my CPR card but I should be good.”
“But you’ve never coached anyone before.”
“Doesn’t matter. I know the ins and outs of elite diving, I know what it takes to be an Olympian, and I’m ready to continue to move you forward. Plus, I know what makes you tick. You not only need me, but you will want me as well.”
Not wanting to offend her, but seriously concerned about her well-being, I ask, “Do you think this is a good idea? You will be surrounded by diving.”
“I need to be surrounded by diving,” she says with passion in her voice, true conviction. “I’ve tried to move on, I’ve tried to say goodbye to the sport, but I can’t seem to let go. I keep coming back, I keep thinking of ways for me to be involved. This couldn’t be more perfect. I want to be a part of this, I need to be a part of this, and I want to do it with you.”
“I don’t know, Holls.”
“Too late, you don’t get to make the decision, it’s already been made for you. My whistle is coming for you, Hollis.”
I sit back on the couch and run my hand through my hair, my fingers sticking up the thickness of my faux hawk. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious, Hollis. I’m not just doing this for me, or for you, but I’m doing this for us. We need to reconnect; we need to get back to where we were. I miss you. I miss being simple with you; everything is so complicated.” She holds out her hand for me, which I grab instantly. “Be simple with me, Hollis. Eat, train, sleep. Be simple.”
“I can do that.” I smile at her, loving the light shining in her eyes from excitement. I would pretty much do anything to see that light burn in her eyes for as long as I know her.
Eat. Train. Sleep.
Seems so simple, but what Holly doesn’t know is that I will be adding one more factor into that routine.
Eat. Train. Sleep. Melony.
Seems like a damn good line-up if you ask me.
“When we get back to LA, I’m burning your ass. Get ready to be smoked.”
I wouldn’t put it past my sister to have me training until I pass out so I make a friendly reminder.
“Don’t forget, I need to be able to perform the dives. If you run me ragged I’ll be too sore. Now you don’t want that, do you?”
“If you’ve been conditioning like you said you have, then you won’t have a problem with any of my practices.” She rubs her hands together like an evil genius. “Damn, this is going to be so much fun.”
Well, fuck, despite her threat, for the first time since Coach Wilson passed, I feel invigorated to dive again. I’m not doing this for me; I’m doing it for them.