Letters to Nowhere(33)

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“You guys look very…” Jordan and I both held our breath, mentally filling in the blank from Coach Bentley—guilty, secretive, intoxicated…”Cold.”

“Oh, yeah. I took Karen sledding,” Jordan said with the ease of a professional con man. “She’s never been before. Talk about a deprived childhood. See why I quit gymnastics, Dad?”

Damn, he’s good. I rolled my eyes behind Jordan’s back. “It’s cold, wet, and there’s really no challenge to it, other than surviving frostbite. I don’t think I missed out on much.”

Coach Bentley shrugged at both of us and then turned his focus back to the TV. By the time I walked into my new bedroom, it smelled completely like…Jordan…like his aftershave stuff in the dark green bottle resting on the back of the toilet. I changed into my warmest pajamas and snuggled up under the covers, sighing with relief that I wouldn’t have to spend another night in that closet. And pretty soon, my old furniture would have a brand new scent after its new owner took it over.

Just before I drifted off to sleep, Jordan flipped on the hall light and stood in my doorway, leaning against the frame. His hair was wet from the shower and looked more brown than blond. He wore St. Louis University flannel pants and no shirt, just a wet towel hanging around his neck.

“A little more comfortable than the closet, huh?”

“Uh–huh.” I closed my eyes again so I didn’t have to stare at his bare chest.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I have a feeling I’m gonna hate myself tomorrow for that.”

“Don’t, seriously,” I mumbled. “It’s not like we were tangled up on the couch with your hand up my skirt.”

The wet towel hit me in the side of the face and I laughed, still too tired to open my eyes. “I am so not picking that up.”

I heard Jordan’s feet creak across my floor as he bent over to retrieve the bathroom towel, his light laughter telling me everything was okay with us. “Good night, Karen.”

“Night, Jordan.”

Even though I agreed with Jordan’s reasoning for not kissing me again, that didn’t keep me from falling asleep thinking about his mouth against mine, his hand resting on my face, the endearing nerves that caused him to spill everything he was feeling. Overall, it really was a great first kiss. I just wouldn’t tell him that. No need to further inflate his ego.





CHAPTER TEN





February 16

Mom,




A boy (guy) kissed me last night and I’m not sure if I would have been the kind of girl to tell her mom about her first kiss. I think I would have waited for it to happen a few times before I told you. Like right before you would have seen it for yourself, maybe?




Love, Karen




P.S. I do know that I’d never in a million years tell Dad




Dad,




You were wrong about teenage boys. Some of them, or at least one of them, are capable of having clean, moral thoughts.




So there.




Love, Karen




Monday morning, Coach Bentley had the elite girls come into the gym at the usual time, but only for a team meeting and physical therapy with the trainer. This was a tradition Coach Cordes started following a grueling weekend at National Training Camp, and Bentley must have agreed with it because he kept it up. We usually got the evening off as well, unless we needed more physical therapy or choreography.

Blair did, in fact, have a stress fracture in her tibia and needed a minimum of three weeks’ leg–rest to allow it to heal. My shoulder was already feeling better, so our trainer didn’t even send me to the sports medicine clinic next door for an x–ray, let alone an MRI.

Ellen had been diagnosed with pneumonia in the ER last night after returning home from Houston. She was here anyway, because we had to be on our deathbed to miss a team meeting. She had on her baggy sweats and a winter jacket when she curled up on the blue carpet to wait for Coach Bentley’s painful rehash of the weekend.

Stevie sat on one side of me, back straight, eyes wide and ready to listen, but I could see the defeat on her face. She’d been knocked down a notch this weekend and I didn’t know how that would affect her decision to return to gymnastics.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” Bentley said, pacing in front of us. “It wasn’t a great weekend, ladies. Not great at all.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Blair blinking back tears. Knowing Blair’s mom, they’d probably spent the entire morning analyzing every angle of her injury, looking for a place to point blame. Usually that included lectures for Blair about anything from not training hard enough to training too hard. When Blair’s mom got like that, my mom used to steer me away and find an excuse for us to snatch Blair and go shopping or out to lunch.

“Obviously, Nina Jones and her committee could see with their own eyes that Ellen was ill. Ellen hasn’t lost any ground or hurt her position, but regardless, it was a missed opportunity to show what she has to offer once again.” Bentley stopped pacing. “Sometimes things are beyond our control. Blair proved she was a responsible enough athlete not to compromise her position by training with a serious injury. Not every gymnast is able to resist that temptation to push yourself when you know it will do more damage than good. Even I wasn’t able to understand this in all my years of competing.”