“She has a tutor, but she has a whole plan: Olympics first, then college. She talks about going to law school someday. For her, there’s a whole world out there,” I explain.

I don’t have to spell it out for Jasmine. For us, there was no other world. We’re here, after all, aren’t we? I stab a piece of lettuce with my fork.

“I wanted to be a fashion designer,” Jasmine says suddenly. Her eyes are spacey, vacant, like she’s dreaming about some far-off memory. She turns sharply toward me. “Did you know that?”

“Maybe?”

I vaguely recall her sketching evening gowns and spindly high heels on a long car ride to a competition. We must have been twelve. She erased and redrew and erased and redrew each line on a model’s body until it matched the vision she held in her mind.

“But then, you know, everything just happened. London and then the post-Olympics tour and then all these motivational speeches at gyms and then Dimitri and NBC, and here we are,” she says, shrugging like she blinked and it all just fell into place, like one domino after another. She gives a short laugh. “What was I supposed to do, duck out and learn to sew?”

My question comes tumbling out before I have time to realize that it’s a rude one. “Are you happy?” I blurt.

The words hang in the air. Jasmine uncrosses and crosses her legs, catching one stiletto along the rung of the bar stool and taking a long sip of wine.

“Of course I’m happy,” she says finally. “I just wonder, sometimes, what else could’ve happened—would’ve happened—if we’d grown up differently.”

“Without Dimitri, you mean,” I clarify.

“With a different coach, more options, another life,” she says, gesturing vaguely around the restaurant.

The wine is getting to her now; there’s a looseness to her energy, so unlike the sensitive, tightly wound girl I used to know.

“Which is why,” she continues, “you can’t let Ryan take the job.”

“What job?” I ask.

“The one they’re talking about right now,” she says, pointing above us, like it’s obvious. “Upstairs. In our suite. No matter who they’ll coach together for 2024—Hallie or someone else—that girl deserves better.”

“Ryan’s with Dimitri?” I ask blankly.

I have the sickening sensation of being the last person to know what’s going on, and I hate it. I don’t want to have to play catch-up with my own boyfriend’s whereabouts and career.

“Where’d you think they were?” she asks, alarmed, as if she suddenly realizes that I’ve been in the dark. “Oh, honey.”

I groan.