CHAPTER 35

“All good; my knee is back to one-hundred-percent,” Drew told Chris. “I’ve got the all-clear from the doc, and I did a quick run this morning to test it out. Doc thinks I just tweaked it on the turn and probably overextended it when I had to get down the mountain, but it’s fine now, and I feel good.”

“I’m glad,” Chris replied. “But you know we’re not making final selections just yet, right?”

“It’s not close enough; I know. I just wanted to know where I stand. I imagine people are probably worried about my knee, but it’s fine now, and my race before that was–”

“Drew, you’re on the team.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard that right.

“Sorry?”

“Assuming you don’t hurt yourself again – you’re on the team. You’ve shown us that you’re back. You’ve got the leadership and experience we want, like we’ve talked about. You’ve even improved your rank, going from tenth to eighth in the world practically overnight. With a few more races, I think you’ll be in the top three, given what you’ve been doing out there. You tore up that last competition before the X Games, and you only went out there because of someone else. It happens.” Chris shrugged a shoulder. “We’re looking forward to you taking a more active role this time, too. I’m thinking, you’ll be the face of snowboard cross for Team USA. Interviews, morning shows, featured stories, the whole nine. We want you to bring attention to the sport and help us usher in new, young athletes.”

“Because I’m not young?” she joked a little.

“Not for our sport. Sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s okay. I get it. I’ll do all of that, Chris, but I want to be able to focus on my board, too, not just on being some face.”

“Oh, I know. The feature stuff will get filmed before the Games, so that won’t get in the way. They’ll just rerun that a dozen times, at least. Interviews before the race will be short and kept to a minimum, but interviews after should be fair game anyway.”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Just do me a favor, will you?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Don’t get hurt before then,” he said with a little laugh. “Wrap that knee all the time just to be safe, and don’t take any unnecessary risks in training. Leave that for the actual races.”

“I will.” Drew laughed back. “Thanks, Chris.”

“No problem.”

“Hey, you’re friends with the director for Team Canada, right?”

“Charlie? Yeah. Why?”

“Does he have the same short list of names for the women’s snowboard cross there?”

“Are you asking who’s on Team Canada?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know there’s a short list, right?”

“Of course, there is. And why, exactly, do you want to know who’s on it?”

“Just curious.”

“And this wouldn’t have anything to do with you dating a certain Selma Driscoll?”

“How did you–”

“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.

“Yeah. But it’s more than that, too. There are things I’ve never really thought of having before, and now, I want them. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, but I think I want to buy a house, which I’ve never really cared about before. Plus, I’m in love, yeah, and she has a daughter, so… I don’t know. I’m thinking about how, if we work out, I could be a stepmom to Gia one day, and I like that thought. It’s still so soon, but I can see these things happening. And Selma is younger than me, so she’s got years left on a board. I can actually see myself traveling with her and watching her win races while Gia and I are on the sidelines, cheering her on; and I have never wanted to be on the sidelines before.”

“You like to be in the action.”

“Yeah. This is a whole new thing for me, wanting to be there, watching someone else, but I do. I think I’d like to have one more send-off season, if I can, and then say goodbye to pro boarding to do something else.”

“Like what?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet. Some of it depends on my relationship because Selma lives in Vancouver, and I don’t. My best guess, though, is something like coaching and commentating, like most other pro athletes do when they retire.”

“You’d be great at both,” Chris replied. “And I have connections all over the place, so, when you’re ready, just let me know, and I can help get you set up somewhere.”

“Thanks, Chris,” she said.

“Of course,” he replied. “And I’m happy for you, too. You deserve all of that; whatever it is you want.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, I have another meeting to get to, and you have a flight to catch, so let’s do that and get to work. I want a gold medal for Team USA, Drew.”

“Understood.” She chuckled a little.

◆◆◆

Hours later, when she got home, Drew threw her laundry from the one-night trip into the washing machine and decided to wait until it was done before she showered because her hot water heater couldn’t handle the washer being on at the same time as the shower, and she didn’t want to take a cold shower tonight. She iced her knee instead. It was fine and didn’t hurt, but she’d done a lot of walking that day, and they’d also poked and prodded at it for their tests, so she wanted to be careful.

Once she was out of the shower and in bed, though, she pulled out her phone and tried to decide if she should call Selma or just send her a text that she’d gotten home okay. She was a little surprised that Selma hadn’t texted her already because the woman had known about her plans and had her flight number, so she would’ve known that Drew had landed hours ago now.

“I’m going to have to find a way to get over her, aren’t I?” she asked no one.

Loneliness hadn’t ever bothered Drew before – or, at least, not all that much – but tonight, it really sunk in that Selma wasn’t ready for her to be in her whole life and that she might not be for a while. That meant that Drew would have to find a way to fall out of love with a woman she’d only just fallen for, and she’d have to find a way to stay in touch with Gia, despite no longer being with her mother, because Drew would keep her word as far as Gia was concerned. As long as Selma let her, she’d try to talk to Gia whenever she could.

“God,” she muttered and tossed her phone on the bed.

She’d just pictured Selma in the background of a video chat with Gia, and there was some blurry figure with her, too. In Drew’s mind, that blurry figure was Selma’s future partner because, eventually, Selma would be ready for someone to be in her life all the way, and if Drew kept in touch with Gia, she’d have to see them together or, at least, know that they were together. At some point, Gia would make a comment about Selma and that person taking her to a movie, or dropping her off at school, or being at her birthday party and Christmas morning, and Drew wanted that. She could be patient, though, and she’d told Ruth that she wouldn’t give up, so she needed to relax and give Selma the time that she needed to figure things out on her end. Drew picked her phone back up, decided that it was already late and Selma was likely asleep, so a text would be in order.

Drew Oakes: Hey. Hope everything is okay there. I’m home. The doc gave my knee a passing grade, and I found out from Chris that as long as I don’t screw up and injure myself again, I’m pretty much a lock to be on the final roster. I’m not counting my chickens or anything because a lot can happen between now and then, but it’s good news. And I wanted to call, but it’s really late, so I didn’t want to risk waking you or Gia up. Anyway, I miss you, Selma. Can we talk tomorrow, maybe? I mean, really talk about us and what we’re doing. I’m not trying to pressure you, but I don’t even know when I’m going to see you again, so even if we just plan that, I’ll be happy. Anyway, I miss you. Good night.

Drew set her phone to charge for the night, got up, and did her nightly routine before she climbed back into bed. No response from Selma, which made sense if she was asleep, but they always texted when one of them flew, so it was still strange to Drew that Selma hadn’t checked on her earlier. Drew would’ve called Ruth, but she didn’t have her direct number and didn’t want anyone at the resort calling the elderly woman and waking her up on Drew’s behalf. So, she crawled under her blanket, put something on TV, and tried to push her concerns about Selma and their relationship out of her mind as she watched a rerun of some show she’d seen a dozen or more times. A few minutes later, though, she thought she heard something, so she put the TV on mute, waited a few seconds, and there it was again.

“What the hell?”

Drew dropped the remote on her bed and left her room, hearing the sound again. Someone was knocking on her door late at night. She approached and quickly looked out the peephole, wishing she’d thought to bring her phone with her in case she needed to call 911 on whoever was out there. Her eyes went wide, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled the door open.

“Selma?”

“Hi, babe,” Selma said.