Chapter 38

“Your skin is so cold!” Nao protested. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Didn’t–want–to–interrupt...” I mumbled, shuddering.

Despite my feeble protestations, Nao insisted I wear her hoodie. “It’s fine,” she said. “Don’t forget where I spent the last few years living – I’ve trained in colder weather than this.” She helped me slip it on. While it was very oversized on her, it fit me like a comfortably large sized sweatshirt. I could feel her warmth in it. My hands were shaking as I tried to zip it up. She sighed and brushed my hands away.

“Here,” she said, marrying the ends of the zipper and pulling the tab up. She untangled the draw cord of the hood at the top of the zipper, smoothing it against my chest. Her hands lingered for a moment. “You gave me your jacket on our first date. At the beach that night. Do you remember?”

I looked down at her. She was looking at her hands on my chest.

“Uh huh,” I managed with another shiver. How could I ever forget? She dropped her hands and sat down on the bench next to the corner I had been sitting in. Slowly I sat back down, the concrete blocks of the wall cool against my back through the fabric of the hoodie, but no longer icey cold. I pulled the ends of the sleeves down over my hands, curling my fingers around the cuffs to try and trap as much heat in as possible. We sat in silence for a few minutes. I could feel my body warming, the urge to shiver to keep warm diminishing. I swallowed and cleared my throat.

“That night changed my life, you know.”

Nao looked over at me, her expression unreadable.

“How so?”

“That was the first time I had Japanese mayonnaise. That stuff is like crack.”

Nao rolled her eyes.

“Seriously,” I went on. “You start trying to find all kinds of uses for it, testing it on everything. Short of fruit, it makes everything taste better.”

“Everything?”

I nodded.

“Even chicken nuggets?”

I glared at her. The side of her mouth twitched.

“Hah hah. Very funny,” I groaned.

“Well, if you can’t laugh about it...” She shrugged.

“Oh, I’ve laughed about it. Cried. Cursed.” I sighed. “Still can’t even handle the smell.”

“I’m sorry. For bringing it up.”

“You didn’t know. It’s not like it’s not amusing. I’d just find it funnier if I wasn’t the butt of the joke.”

“I guess I can understand that,” she said slowly. We sat in silence. The atmosphere felt warmer than before, although that could have just been the hoodie I was wearing. Because she’d sat down along the bench from me, unless I wanted to turn my head, I had three choices: look at the ceiling, look at the floor, or look at Nao. She was leaning against the wall, having drawn her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs again. Her head was tilted back, and her eyes were closed. Her hair was down, brushing her shoulders. In profile I could see her full lips, the soft sweep of her jaw and throat leading my gaze to the top of her chest, rising and falling softly with her breathing.

I was such an idiot.

“Nao.”

“Yeah?” She didn’t open her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’m the one who mucked up the address.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who didn’t try harder.”

She sighed, opened her eyes, and looked at me.

“What were you going to do? You were fifteen,” she said softly.

“I could have kept trying. I could have guessed you’d be levelling up in the UK. And for sure I could have done something once Derek told me he’d interviewed you.” I took a breath. “Even after he told me what you’d said.”

Nao snorted and shook her head.

“Derek’s such a wanker.”

I raised my eyebrows at that.

“What? He is. Sometimes.” she said.

“A lot of the time.”

“A lot of the time,” she agreed. “But he’s not terrible about it. I suppose he’s got the right personality balance for journalism – ignoring boundaries enough to get good background but not so much that nobody will talk to him. Still,” she shook her head again. “I’d pushed myself to forget about you ... to even forget about forgetting about you, and I’d just set a new world record and he had to bring you up.”

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” I said in my best-worst Bogie impression. She blinked in surprise.

“Since when do you quote Casablanca?”

“First year of undergrad. Ten credits of film study for arts and culture quota. The only other class with space left was modern dance.”

“Too shy to appear on stage in a unitard?”

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” I drawled.

“Clearly you didn’t take any acting classes.” She gave me a small smile.

“Shut up.”

“An-y-way, before I was so rudely interrupted ... yeah, so I’m fresh off an amazing run at the qualifiers in Bath, and Derek brings you up and I was not ready to have that conversation. With anyone, let alone him. I’d never even told my parents what had happened. I think they just assumed that long-distance hadn’t worked out or something. I shut him down on that topic pretty quickly. I should have known he’d tell you.”

I grinned at her ruefully.

“I wasn’t much kinder about you to him. When he brought you up, I was so annoyed I couldn’t even say your name. But he did get me thinking about what I would say to you when I ran into you in the Village.”

Nao’s face fell suddenly, and she looked away to the floor. After our discussion over the past few minutes the silence was heavy. The low whine of the filtration and pump system that came through the walls changed tone as a different part of the cycle kicked in.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said in a small voice. I didn’t reply. “I didn’t know what else to do. After the interview with Derek, when he told me he’d be seeing you, I realised that of course you’d be heading to the Games.” She took a deep breath and shivered. “I tried to keep it out of my mind, but by that point in time Selina and I had been sharing a flat for over a year. Even though we weren’t friends-friends, she figured out something was up pretty quickly. Want to guess what she was studying?” Nao looked over at me and smiled wryly. “Performance psychology. You know, for athletes and performers?” She took another shuddering breath and looked back down at the floor. “She thought that I was starting to get too in my head about the Games.”

“But it wasn’t the pool that was worrying you,” I said softly.

“She’s really good. It took her about a week once she realised something was up before she got me to tell her everything.” Nao looked up at the ceiling. “She is the closest female friend I’ve ever had. I should tell her that, but she’d probably just grin and tell me that she already knows.”

“She told you to stay away from me in the Village?”

Nao shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Like I said, she’s really good. We had a really good talk, over a few days, about what I wanted. Of course, I wanted to win medals. So, she asked me if seeing you, whether it went good or bad, was going to help me win medals. And of course, I couldn’t answer that. Then she asked if I even wanted to see you, and I couldn’t give her a clear ‘no’ which she took as a ‘yes’. Then she basically told me what I wanted but wouldn’t articulate.”

“You wanted to see me, but you wanted to win medals more?” I asked slowly.

“Selina made me realise that I wanted both! What was upsetting me was not knowing what was going to happen when we did see each other. What if you had changed into someone I didn’t like? Or what if you didn’t like me anymore? Or worse, what if you did like me and I got so distracted that all that effort went to the wall?” Nao shook her head. “And Selina, while I was just thinking about myself, she pointed out that you had priorities too. Who was I to show up at your Olympic chance and just dump a load of baggage on you?”

“So, you did send her to warn me off,” I said, flatly.

“Just until we’d finished our events.”

“She told me in no uncertain terms to stay the fuck away from you.”

“I don’t think she actually swore.”

“The message was pretty clear,” I said sourly.

“I wanted her to tell you that I didn’t want to see you until after our events were done, but she pointed out that would be just as distracting. Like having to wait until Christmas morning to open presents when you know what you’re getting. Or think you do.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I watched them pull you from the pool, Jimmy. I thought you’d died. And I hadn’t said anything to you, even though I had the chance. And I was s-so ashamed,” she sniffed. “After we found out you were comatose, I wrote you a letter. They had a box for you at the Village that people could put notes in. It was pretty full, so I guess it just got lost in the pile.”

“I have it,” I said quietly. “It’s in a box somewhere at home. I never opened it.”