On the ride back to Summit, I point out landmarks—not Greenwood’s most notable spots, necessarily, but the places that marked my childhood here: my elementary school, the sushi spot my family likes to go for birthdays and anniversaries, the house where I attended my first and last boy-girl party growing up. The town looks extra sleepy in the winter. White and gray Colonial homes match the pale sky and dingy snowbanks; the trees are bare and skeletal. Inside the car, though, it feels like summer. Ryan drives one-handed with his fingers laced through mine in my lap as a Bruce Springsteen song blares from the radio.

We slip into the gym with three minutes to spare. Ryan heads into the office, while I sit at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Sara to finish Hallie’s lesson. I hear the Tibetan singing bowl, then silence, and finally, a few murmured words. I can’t make out what Hallie and Sara are saying, but when they appear in the staircase a minute later, Hallie has a pleasantly dazed look on her face.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

She passes me on the staircase, and I notice that her typically excellent posture has a new ease to it, like she’s gliding.

“That was actually pretty chill,” she says.

“Huh, imagine that,” I say, resisting the urge to gloat further.

“Thanks for having me in,” Sara says, more to me than to Hallie.

“Maybe you’ll come back again next week?” Hallie asks.

Sara and I exchange glances.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I say.

Chapter 17

• CHAPTER 17 •

I do dumb things when I’m falling in love. That’s what I think for the entirety of the forty-five minutes I spend in the front seat of Ryan’s car on Saturday night, nearly nauseous with nerves, as he drives us to Dimitri and Jasmine’s house for a cocktail party in honor of my former coach’s fiftieth birthday. When Ryan asked me earlier that week if I’d be his date for the night, he told me that if it was too awkward given my strained relationship with Jasmine, I could skip it. But oh, no. I told him it’d be fine. I think I might have even said it’d be fun. It was like my brain had entirely evacuated my body: I wanted to spend a night out with Ryan, so I said yes. It was that simple. Even though I haven’t seen Jasmine since her twentieth birthday or Dimitri since the 2012 Olympic Trials.