Page 120 of Crashing into Love

“Drew, you two kissed on the mountain. Everyone saw.”

“Oh, right,” she said, forgetting all about that. “Well, yeah, we’re seeing each other.”

“And you’re looking for some kind of inside scoop? I can’t give you that. It would be unfair. Plus, shouldn’t you want Selma to find out the right way if she made the team, whenever Charlie makes those calls?”

“Yeah, I know. I just thought I’d ask.”

“She’d hear officially long before I do,” Chris told her. “Right now, everything is still preliminary.”

“I know.” Drew nodded.

“I was going to ask you later, when we actually called you to tell you the good news of you being on our short list, but I’m getting some interest from the network covering the Games about you two.”

“What kind of interest?”

“A story about the two of you. Everyone still remembers that she’s the one who took you out of the last Olympics. They want to run a story about how you two go from that to this.”

“They want to make a story about our relationship?”

“Can you blame them? It’s a great story. I don’t get involved in the lives of our athletes, obviously, but Selma crashed into you when you were a strong medal contender, and, somehow, years later, you two are a couple. You’re also competitors. She’s on one team. You’re on the other. And you’re both in the top ten ranked boarders in the world right now, which means you two could easily be in the final, competing against one another, not that long from now. The story practically writes itself.”

“My relationship isn’t a story, Chris.”

“I’m aware of that. And I’m not going to push you to do anything. That’s not my job, anyway. But you’ll get some push from others once the official selections come out. So will Selma. It’s part of the Olympics: people want to know about the athletes they’re rooting for.”

“I know that, and I understand, but this is my life. It’s Selma’s, too. Plus, she has a daughter, and I don’t know that she’d want to bring her into this. If we start talking about us, people will expect to hear about how we have this little family with Gia or something. I know Selma won’t want that. We haven’t even been together all that long. I didn’t see her for, like, three years before we reconnected. Then, we had an awkward start, to say the least. We’re still new, Chris.”

“Okay. Okay.” He held up his hands in supplication. “I get it. Just maybe keep things on the down-low, then. No more kissing each other after races. Because the more you do that, the more people will want to know about you two.”

“I can do that,” she replied, knowing that it would be easy to do that right now since she and Selma were hardly talking.

“Are you flying home today?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a flight in about an hour, so I should get going.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here just to have your knee checked.”

“Yes, I did. The team docs that you trust are here, so I wanted them to evaluate me to make sure I’m good and for you to know that they said that.”

“Well, I appreciate that. But, in the future, your own doc will be fine, Drew.”

“There’s not really an ‘in the future,’ is there?” Drew asked. “This is pretty much it for me.”

“You’re retiring after the Games?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one more regular season. I just can’t see you all putting me on another national team in four years. I’d be forty-one by then.”

“It would depend on how you’re performing and if you stay healthy, Drew. There’s no one telling us we can’t bring you at forty-one. If you’re still kicking ass, we’d want you on the team.”

“I know, but– Well, you don’t need to hear this. You just said you stay out of the lives of your athletes.” Drew sighed.

“Hey, we go way back here. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve put things on hold to be a pro boarder. I don’t regret any of that, and I love my career – I know it’s going to be sad when it ends – but I also think I’m ready to stop putting things off now.”

“Ah… Selma?”

Drew couldn’t hold back her smile.

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