“Sure, I’ll put her on.” She covers the receiver with one hand. “Avery, phone for you.”

I can’t imagine who it is. Nobody knows that I’m here. I take the phone from Mom and wander into the living room.

“Hello?” I ask uncertainly.

“Avery, hi,” a male voice says. “I’m sure you don’t remember me. It’s been a million years. This is Ryan Nicholson.”

Of course I remember him. His name is seared into my memory; you never forget the name of your teenage crush. Ryan was a top gymnast around the same time that I was. He trained in Florida, and like me, he was homeschooled for most of his teenage years. Because we both competed on a national and international level, we crossed paths at meets a few times a year. When my best friend Jasmine and I made lists of the cutest boys we knew, his name was always on them. To be fair, we were both homeschooled and knew of just eight or ten boys who didn’t sport rattails—an unfortunately popular fad among male gymnasts in the 2000s—but still. His thick, dark hair; chocolate-brown eyes; and nicely muscled arms and abs made a lasting impression. He went to the Olympics in both 2012 and 2016.

“Ryan! Hi. Wow. It’s been a minute.”

“It sure has been,” he says.

“Um, so…” I say.

It’s like all normal social niceties have completely fallen out of my brain.

“I hear you’re in town again,” he says.

“How?” I blurt out.

I wonder if he read the TMZ story and drew his own conclusions.

“Winnie told me she ran into your dad at the grocery store yesterday.”

Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. She’s the office manager at my old gym, Summit. I loved her.

“Oh! Right,” I say, relieved. “What have you been up to all these years?”

“Has it been that long?” he asks. “Wow. I mean, well, a lot of things. Training. I went to the University of Michigan for gymnastics, and competed in London and Rio. Did some traveling for a while. And I’ve been coaching, too. You?”

“Well, I just moved back to Greenwood,” I say, hoping that covers it.

There’s a beat of silence on the line.

“Uh, you’re probably wondering why I’m calling,” he says.

“Yeah,” I admit.

Years ago, if Jasmine and I could’ve chosen a personal phone call from Ryan Nicholson or Ryan Gosling, we would’ve picked Nicholson every time. I pace the width of the living room and wind up face-to-face with my cardboard cutout. I swivel to dodge her.

“I’m working at Summit Gymnastics now,” he says. “I know you trained there for years with Dimitri Federov before he left.”

“I did.”