6. Sammy

Sammy

“Good morning,” Finn says, when I open the car door and slide inside.

It’s a beautiful day, the kind that epitomizes the Vermont summer, with large fluffy white clouds and a sky full of layered, darkening colors, moving from a deep rose pink to a lighter mauve. This morning, when I went for my run, the air was cool against my skin. Now it’s warm, a gentle breeze coming in from the bay.

“Good morning,” I say, hearing how rough my voice is. It’s just after six, and I haven’t spoken yet. I clear my throat and buckle up, then glance over at my elite athlete coach.

Finn is wearing a snug black pair of yoga pants and a matching zip-up jacket, her hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She has the kind of smooth, attractive collarbone that lands women on the covers of magazines. My eyes trail down from her face to her neck, which leads down into her jacket, where her breasts strain against the fabric.

“Today is all about developing your boldness,” she says, flicking her eyes up and looking away from the tablet in her hand. I rip my gaze away from her chest, my cheeks flooding with heat. I shift in my seat and clear my throat, trying to ignore my sudden awareness of her body.

I’m around beautiful women all the time. It should not be a big deal that Finn is gorgeous.

“Okay,” I say, and then, “my…boldness?”

“That’s right.” She nods, her fingers tapping across her screen quickly. For the past few days, I’ve been in and out of appointments, getting poked and prodded. Testing my bone density, muscles mass, a thousand different chemicals and levels that I’d never heard of before. Finn insisted they were all vital to understanding my potential, to identifying the areas in which I could improve.

So I was expecting a change in diet, maybe a new exercise routine. Not boldness .

She sets her tablet to the side and when she leans forward to look at me, it makes my heart stutter for a moment. Finn has the kind of intense, wide eyes that make you feel like you’re in a spotlight when she fixes them on you.

She continues, “I’ve been looking over all your tests and developing a comprehensive plan, which will include you meeting with a new physical trainer. We’re also working on making slight modifications to your diet, and one doctor has recommended a vitamin D supplement. All of these changes will be incremental, mere fractions of a percentage toward our goal of making you great. But what I’m really searching for—what, in my experience, has been the most influential—is the one element that’s missing. The thing that holds the athlete back. And for you, I think it’s a lack of…gumption.”

“Gumption?” I ask, rearing my head back. I’m immediately thinking about every morning I got to the rink before anyone else. The amount of time I’ve spent working and working, only to find myself an average goalie at best.

“Maybe that’s not the right word,” Finn says, tapping her finger on her lips. I draw my eyes away from the movement and shift in my seat again. “It’s like this,” she goes on, crossing her legs, “it’s that boldness, that willingness to go for it . I get this feeling that you’re very…traditional. Stuck in your ways, and it’s clear from your training regimen that what you need is not more drilling. What you need is a breakthrough in your approach to the sport. To life.”

“To life,” I parrot, realizing I’m just repeating her, but feeling unable to do anything else. She’s electric, her hands moving as she speaks, and it’s hard to tear my eyes away from her. Her hair sits on her shoulder, glinting in the low lights flashing outside the car, and there’s a light pink flush on her cheeks.

Watching her, I realize something—Finn is like me. She loves what she does. When she takes a deep breath and continues, I feel a kind of kinship with her. A kind of respect.

“Yes,” she says, sounding incredibly serious. “Many athletes think they can separate their lives from the sport, but that’s simply not the truth. We are all just people, and as nice as it would be to keep your life on the rink separate, it’s not what happens. We bring the stuff from the rink into our lives, and the stuff from our lives onto the rink.”

“Do you…skate? Or play?” I ask, surprised at the way she’s talking about the rink like that. It strikes at something in me, making me feel like I’m talking to a guy on the team.

“Oh,” she laughs, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. “No, thank god.”

“Well, shit.” I let out a low laugh, and she brings a hand to her mouth, shaking her head.

“I mean—shit—not that playing hockey is bad ,” Finn goes on, and I can’t help but smile. This is the first time she hasn’t been perfectly composed, looking a bit flustered. I imagine it’s not every day she manages to insult a client like this.

“I’m just…well, I’m not very coordinated,” she continues. “There’s a reason I only ride a stationary bike.”

“I bet you could skate just fine,” I say, my eyes traveling up and down her body without meaning to. She certainly looks athletic enough. An image flashes through my mind of the two of us on the ice, my hands on her hips, showing her how to keep her balance as she pushes ahead.

“Oh, I’m not sure about that” She shakes her head, looks down to her tablet. Her cheeks are an even deeper pink now. Something in my chest tightens, and I want to reach out, to touch the skin there, see if it’s warm.

“I could teach you.”

“That is not how this arrangement works. You’re paying me .”

“No, Grey is paying you. And forced you to fly all the way out of here. Least you could get out of it would be a free skating lesson.”

“I—”

Finn cuts off as the car comes to a stop, and I realize we’ve reached out desperation. I continue looking at her as she gathers her things, wishing she would have finished that statement. Suddenly, I want nothing more than to be on the ice with her, watch her on skates. Steady her.

“Alright,” she says, her voice snapping back to that cool, professional tone. “First exercise!”

Finn climbs from the car and straightens outside, eyes on me as I exit as well. When I’m standing and looking around, I realize we’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s a small building to our left, the outside a bright white corrugated metal. A small window on the back is mostly dark, and there are no signs around to indicate what it might be. The weather is holding up, the sky still beautiful, shadows and lines on the clouds making the entire thing picturesque.

“Where the hell are we?” I ask, looking out across the field and wondering if I’ll be doing sprints or something. Conditioning is important, but it makes more sense to train on the ice, where subtle changes in my movements really count.

“You are at Barton Airfield, my friend!” someone declares.

I turn, facing the voice behind me, which belongs to an older man with salt and pepper hair. He has the kind of squarish face and wide smile that reminds me of Mr. Rodgers, and I have to crane my head down to look at him.

Barton Airfield. The man standing in front of me has a little name tag that reads Gerald Barton and then Pilot.

When I glance at Finn, something in my stomach swoops, fear and anxiety settling in. Why the hell are we at an airfield?

“Okay,” I say, slowly, glancing between her and the pilot. “For…?”

“Oh,” Finn says, glancing up from her tablet. “Boldness, remember? We’re going to be doing a little exercise in doing something even when it makes you uncomfortable.”

“And that thing would be, what? Going in a plane?”

“Going out of the plane, mate!” the pilot says, laughing and clapping me on the arm. “Don’t you worry about it a bit! My niece is a pro at what she does.”

“Going out of the plane?” I ask, as another woman comes walking toward us. She’s cute, dressed in a matching pink athletic set, much like Finn’s, but brighter.

Once she’s standing next to us, I realize she’s much taller than Finn, coming damn near to being as tall as me. I’ve met very few women nearing my height, and it catches me off guard.

“That’s right,” she says, nodding and gesturing to the little hut. “Shall we get you fit for the harness? Just need you to sign some papers and we can get going. Don’t worry if you’re nervous, people usually are for their first time.”

“First time at what ?”

“Skydiving,” she laughs, tossing her braid over her shoulder and looking me up and down. I see recognition flash in her eyes, and hope she’s not going to ask me for an autograph. My hands are starting to shake a bit too much.

“I’m Leila,” she says instead. “Now, come on, adventure is this way!”