“It’s nice,” he agreed, and then went back to driving. “I think mostly I kept going with it for my parents,” he surprised me by saying. “We had the resources to hire the best coaches, tutors, whatever it took so I could spend every waking moment making myself into an Olympian.” I noticed that there was not a single word in that explanation about him actually wanting to be one. “To my father if you’re good at something the only option is to keep going until you’re the best.” To his father. Not to him.

“Did you want to do it?”

He lifted a shoulder and the side of his mouth tipped into a smile that seemed to have a jagged edge to it. “Who doesn’t want to be an Olympian?” From the look on his face, I was guessing him. I really thought he would leave it there, but he kept going. “I wanted to make my father proud. My mother wanted my father to be proud of the son she’d given him. And I was good at it, I like doing things I’m good at. I like to push myself to do things other people think impossible,” he admitted, and I recognized that drive. But there was also the resignation in his words, as if he understood that his very existence was not because his parents wanted a child, but because they wanted a human trophy. It made me sad for him. Made me wonder if I didn’t know Theo anywhere near as well as I thought.

“Why don’t you hang your medals?” As soon as I blurted that out I regretted it. His expression, which had not been quite open but at least somewhat amiable, shuttered.

“Why didn’t you ask that this morning?” he asked in answer.

“This morning?” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“When Mona asked you to say something that surprised you about me.”

Oh...that.

Theo had always been perceptive, so him realizing I’d held something back wasn’t exactly a surprise. The question had stumped me, not because I couldn’t rattle off something silly and minor, which I had, but because what had come to mind first was a morning about six months into working for Theo.

“No, that wasn’t it,” I admitted. “I was going to tell them about the time when you had knee surgery,” I told him, still a little embarrassed even after all this time. “I didn’t think you’d want that side of you being aired out to strangers.” He looked at me again, and this time there was something there I could not quite discern. Maybe he didn’t like me rousing up that memory.