Chapter 25

In the corners of the Olympiastadion super screens showed a closeup of the flag bearer for Team GB. He was a cyclist who had crashed during the last summer Games, cracking four vertebrae in his spine, and then been diagnosed with cancer whilst recovering from his injuries. He’d been lucky to recover from that terrible one-two punch and was tipped to medal in the keirin this year.

I looked away from the screens and peered across the athletes gathered in the centre of the stadium with us. My palms were sweaty as I scanned the column of athletes marching behind the Great Britain banner. There! With a rush of excitement, I saw Nao for the first time since my family had left for Christmas at my sister’s place five years earlier.

Her hair was longer than the short bob she’d had when we were in high school. It was cut in a more mature style that framed her face, but longer - just enough to brush her shoulders. Like the rest of the women in Team GB, she wore a dark blue blazer, not quite as dark as navy, with an open neck blouse and a red and white scarf loosely knotted in front. Her face had lost some of the roundness it had still had when we had been together, but she still had the most beautiful eyes. They were wide open as she looked around the stadium, and then raised her arm to wave. She was smiling as she took in the massive cheering crowd. Her smile hadn’t changed at all.

I felt like ... well, nothing. Surely, I should have felt some sudden desire to run over to her, or wave my arms so she’d reflexively look my way and see me waiting for her. But I didn’t. I just felt a little numb and empty. Of course, I wanted to see her, to talk to her but it just felt like it wouldn’t be enough.

I stumbled forward as Dave and Toby slammed into me from either side.

“Find her yet?” said Dave, pushing himself up a little of my shoulder and craning his neck way too obviously. “Oh, is that her? The one with the hair?”

“Brilliant description,” Toby mocked from the other shoulder. “Very helpful. Could you be any less specific?”

“Yeah,” I said, simply. “I found her.”

“Well, you sound really excited about it,” Toby replied. “I mean, seriously.” He began to speak in a flat monotone. “No. Stop. Settle down. I can’t let you do it. Be still. Control yourself, you maniac.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Dave, still searching. “Did she get fat?”

“Fuck, dude!” hissed Toby. “That’s really inappropriate. And really discriminatory too,” he said a little louder, eyeing off a few woman weightlifters standing near us.

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “She put on eighty kilos which is why she’s a competitive swimmer at the fucking Olympics.”

“Tsk. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Dave said, turning to me and shaking his head.

“Which is why I’m using it to talk to the biggest moron in this stadium,” I snapped back.

“Children!” Toby clapped his hands loudly and spoke in an absurdly bad impression of a British nanny. “If you can’t be civil with each other, I will turn this opening ceremony around and it will be straight to bed with no Olympics or supper for either of you!”

“But muuuuum, he started it,” whinged Dave. They were so good with their banter that I couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“There’s our happy widdle boy,” said Dave, pinching my cheek between his finger and thumb.

“Fuck off,” I laughed, twisting out of his reach.

“Seriously though,” said Toby in his normal voice. “You saw her, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Just ‘Yeah’? After all this build up and drama? The people demand more!”

I shrugged.

“What does it matter if she doesn’t want to talk to me? It’s not like I’m expecting us to pick up where we left off or elope or something. We were kids in high school for fuck’s sake.”

“You’ve waited four years-” began Toby.

“Five,” I corrected.

“Okay, five years. What’s another week going to matter?”

“I don’t think she’s being unreasonable at all,” said my mum.

I looked up at her in surprise, then over at my dad.

“Do not get me involved in this,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t need both of you to be annoyed with me whilst I’m enjoying the scenery.”

My mum raised an eyebrow.

“What?” said my dad, innocently. “We’ve seen the Alps, the Rhine, the Danube, lots of bridges here in Hamburg, and,” he gestured around the athlete’s village visitor’s park where we were sitting, “many other ‘natural wonders’.” Who would miss the opportunity to see their child compete in the Olympics? My parents had turned it into a second honeymoon, adding a six-week trip through Europe to their week at the Games. It was the day before the opening ceremony, a few days after Selina had approached me at lunch, with a message supposedly from Nao. Mum and Dad had come to see me in the visitor’s park, where a few coffee shops surrounded a plaza that any athlete could host family visitors and other approved guests at.

I looked over my shoulder in the direction my father was facing to see the American women’s rowing crews passing by. I turned back to see my mother glaring at him.

“Come on, honey,” he said cheerfully. “I’m still going home with you.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she warned. She faced me. “And you, Jimmy. What’s the problem? Nao didn’t say she didn’t want to talk to you ever. She just said she didn’t want you hunting her out at the Games. Understandable.”

“She didn’t even say that. In fact, Nao didn’t say anything. She sent her messenger over instead.”

“Well, the girl probably could have probably shown a bit more tact in the delivery. Fancy just popping up out of the blue and coming out with something like that,” conceded mum.

“How am I supposed to know that it even came from Nao?”

“I guess you don’t. Maybe it was a message from Nao. Maybe it was a message from her roommate or just a teammate looking out for Nao. But does it matter? Either way, you’re obsessing way too much about this.”

“I am not obsessing!”

“James William Connor! Do not raise your voice at me, in public or otherwise. Oh, don’t look so embarrassed. I don’t care who you are, or who you think you are. We do not do rudeness. I am still your mother.” She looked at me and took a breath. Her expression softened, but only a little. “Listen to yourself. We haven’t heard you say a thing about Nao MacRae for years, and now it’s the only thing you’ve talked to us about since we got here. Sorry, but who cares? It’s not like you’ve been pining for her in solitude since she moved. I’ve seen the bin when we visited your dorm. Unless you were making balloon animals with those things?”