Here Comes the Flood Page 8

  “I know, my big boy. I love you too. Now go get some rest so you can win some medals. I’ve seen you do it a bunch of times, but it really never gets old.”

  Isaac laughed. “Okay, Mom. I’m on it.”

  Chapter 7

  Day 2

  TIM STOOD in the lounge, watching the TV that broadcast the American network’s coverage of the Games. And sure enough, he was making headlines.

  “The other odd story of today,” said a pretty blond reporter, “is that diver Timothy Swan apparently bailed on a practice after the press showed up yesterday.”

  “Turn that shit off,” Isaac said, walking into the lounge.

  Tim had missed Isaac the night before. After having dinner with his parents, who had flown to Madrid earlier in the day, Tim had holed up in his room a good chunk of the day but emerged to watch Isaac swim on TV before he retreated to his room again. Isaac had swum the fastest in his semifinal heat, but he’d come in second overall. Not that it mattered, since it was the final he needed to win to get the medal. But regardless, Isaac had likely still been at the pool long after Tim had gone to bed.

  But man, Tim was glad to see Isaac now.

  On the TV, a woman said, “He became visibly upset. We don’t really know why. He had a bad practice, that was clear. The Chinese team may have intimidated him. Some say he panicked because of pressure from his coach—”

  Isaac turned off the TV.

  “That’s some bullshit.” Tim’s pulse picked up. He was angry more than panicky now, but his breath caught in a similar way.

  “What happened yesterday?” Isaac asked.

  “A reporter showed up at practice. She started asking questions about Pat, and I freaked.”

  “Ah.”

  Tim loved that he didn’t have to explain. He turned to face Isaac. Isaac glanced behind him, then reached forward, putting his hands on Tim’s waist. Tim bowed his head and pressed it against Isaac’s chest. Being shadowed by Isaac’s big body comforted Tim, but touching him had a calming effect too. Tim’s breathing returned to normal.

  Tim took a deep breath, sniffed, and stepped away. “Do you worry about getting caught? With me, I mean. It doesn’t seem like you do, but I’ll admit, I’m a little worried. There aren’t any reporters in these dorms, but all it really takes is a gossipy athlete walking by and blabbing to someone. Then we’ll be on that fluffy half-hour entertainment show that airs before the main coverage every night.”

  Isaac shrugged. “Fuck ’em.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Isaac let out a breath. “All right, yes, I’m a little worried. But only because I’m not ready to share this with the world yet.” He reached over and ran the back of his hand along Tim’s cheek. “We just met. No need to shout it from the rooftops.”

  “You’re not worried about some of the less tolerant athletes? Bad press? Being outed?”

  “Believe me, I know all about bad press. It sucks. When I was arrested, the press pored over my whole life in meticulous detail. I’m genuinely surprised none of my male exes came forward, because that little detail would have been a delicious cherry on top, right? But the thing is, it blows over. They’re just words.”

  “So if someone saw you kiss me and told a reporter, you wouldn’t care, then?”

  “I’d care, but… what have I got to lose at this point? My family and friends know I’m bisexual. The DUI pretty much tanked everything else.”

  That gave Tim pause. “You’re not just using me to go out in a blaze of glory, are you?”

  Isaac looked confused by that, at least. He furrowed his brow and leaned away. “Why would you—oh. It’s the defeatist attitude, isn’t it?”

  “It’s hard to figure you out sometimes. I think you do care, but you think you’ve already lost everything. You have a second chance here, Isaac. Not many people get that. You should be making the most of it instead of assuming everything will turn out terribly.”

  “I should, you’re right. I am. I think… I mean, I want you to know, your friendship means a lot to me. That we can talk freely with each other is so valuable. If I leave here in two weeks with no medals, I’ll still have had this time with you. That’s no small thing.” Isaac sighed. “I want my life back. I want to feel like I own it, not that it’s out of control. Getting sober was a big part of that, but if I can prove I can still swim? If I can say, hey, I’m clean now, I’m healthy? Maybe I get my career back. I can swim for a few more years while I figure out what to do next.”

  “There you go.” Tim smiled. He was encouraged by the shifts in Isaac’s attitude. “But tonight you’re going to win a gold medal for me.”

  “I thought we agreed it just had to be a medal.”

  “I’ve decided it has to be gold.”

  Isaac grinned. “All right. For you? Anything.”

  ISAAC HAD a breaststroke semifinal the afternoon before the 400 IM final. He supposed it could have been worse; there were only three heats of swimmers, so they were foregoing semifinals, saving him from having to swim a second race that night. When he’d been younger, two medal races in one night would have been no issue, but now that he was almost thirty, he needed more recovery time between races.

  So he stood in what had been designated the American Lounge corner of the ready room. Adam said he thought the time to beat in the 200-meter breaststroke was 3:45, which felt reasonable; Isaac’s world record was two seconds faster than that. He’d set that six years ago, long before the DUI, but still, somewhere in his body lived the muscle memory to get that done.

  One of the other coaches called Adam away—just as well, because Isaac preferred to play white noise through his headphones before a race—so Isaac sat in a folding chair, aware of the camera in the corner trained on him.

  His phone lay in his jacket pocket, with the white noise app already turned on, so Isaac slid his headphones on. He closed his eyes and zoned out. He needed to calm down enough to relax.

  His muscles felt good, though. He’d watched some of the other swimmers go through the cupping therapy and thought it too freaky—it involved sucking skin and muscle into a glass cup, leaving big purple bruises behind, so no, thank you—but he took up Tim’s suggestion for acupuncture that morning, which had done some good. It didn’t hurt, and maybe it did nothing, but having to lie still for a half hour had helped soothe Isaac’s fraying nerves if nothing else.

  An announcer called his heat, so he stood and followed the other swimmers out.

  The camera from the American network was really up in his business, but he kept his headphones on until the last possible moment, ignoring everything that was not this race. There were a couple of swimmers in the field that Adam had thought he should look out for, but Isaac didn’t know them, and he didn’t much care.

  Four lengths of the pool. That’s all he needed to do.

  He swam. He enjoyed it. He was in his element with the breaststroke. He turned on the gas a little for the last lap and enjoyed the burn in his muscles. It started to hurt the last twenty-five meters, but Isaac didn’t care.

  This was what he’d been put on the planet to do.

  He hit the wall and didn’t even look at the scoreboard for a moment. He breathed. He saw the reactions of the guys on either side of him, slapping the water and celebrating. Then he turned around.

  Second place. 3:45.2. Not the best, but good enough to get into the final.

  This time he zoned out and ended up getting stopped by the reporter on his way back to the warm-up pool.

  “Hi, Mindy Somers, TBC Sports. You have a minute?”

  Isaac sighed and nodded.

  “Isaac, you’ve been looking really strong in your preliminary swims. You’re one of the favorites to win your race tonight. You just swam the third-fastest time in the breaststroke semis. How do you feel?”

  “I’m pretty good,” he said, panting still.

  “What’s it like, being back in the Olympics again?”

  Isaac breathed for a second, buying him t
ime to decide if he should blow her off or give her a good sound bite. He settled on saying, “I’m happy to have another chance.”

  “You’ve been through so much the last few years. You came out of nowhere at the Trials to qualify for a number of races here in Madrid. What was that like?”

  “Well, I’ve been training for a year and a half with this goal in mind.”

  “Do you expect to win a medal?”

  God, he wanted her to go away. But he smiled and said, “I’d love to, but really, I’m just happy to be here.”

  Mindy Somers tossed it back to the guys in the booth, so Isaac ducked away.

  After his cool-down, Isaac decided to head back to his room for a nap, but as he was changing, Tim and Jason came into the locker room.

  “Oh, hey,” said Tim. “How’d your heat go?”

  “Good. Qualified for the final. What are you doing here?”

  “Women’s final is starting, so we had to clear out of the pool.”

  “I’m headed back to the Athlete Village. Want to go with me?” Isaac asked.

  Jason seemed to take the hint. “I’m gonna try to talk the swim coaches into letting me swim a couple of laps in the warm-up pool.” He hooked his thumb back toward the pool and cleared out.

  Isaac knew he probably shouldn’t get too used to having Tim by his side, since he’d be flying back to Raleigh and Tim back to Colorado when this was all over, but he also wanted to make the most of it now. His rehab mantra had been to take each day as it came. Tim brought Isaac more happiness than he could have expected, so he would savor it each day that he had it.

  A short shuttle bus parked just outside the athlete’s entrance to the Aquatics Center did loops between the venues and the Athlete Village. Isaac nodded at the driver, who leaned against the bus, fiddling with his phone.

  “Ride?” the driver said.

  “Yes,” said Isaac.

  They boarded the bus. The trip back to the village was quick. When they got off the bus, Isaac and Tim ran into a group Isaac thought might have been the American basketball team, goofing around on the giant Olympic rings near the entrance to the village.

  “Hey, here comes the Flood!” one of them shouted. He hopped off the ring he’d been standing on.

  Soon Isaac and Tim found themselves surrounded by a bunch of basketball players—he recognized one of them as a player for the Charlotte Hornets because they’d done some event together in Charleston a few years ago. Before the DUI.

  “We’re off tonight,” one of the guys said, “so we were gonna come see you win your tenth medal, Flood.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to.”

  “No, seriously, we are all about Team USA,” said another basketball player.

  Isaac laughed. “Well, sure. You’re expected to run away with your gold medal.”

  “We have some competition,” one of the guys said.

  “Yeah, hell, that Serbian team is full of NBA players,” said another. “And the Spanish have the home-court advantage.”

  “You’re the best team by far,” said Tim.

  “Yeah, we are.” A bunch of the guys high-fived each other.

  “You’re Timmy Swan,” the Hornet—whose name escaped Isaac—said to Tim.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll come root for you too. When do you dive?”

  “Tomorrow. Then again next Tuesday and Saturday.”

  “Yeah, boy. New gold medals for everyone. U-S-A! U-S-A!”

  All of the basketball players started chanting, “U-S-A!” Their enthusiasm was infectious, but Isaac really wanted to go get that nap.

  “Thanks, guys,” Isaac said. “If I don’t see you tonight, good luck tomorrow.”

  Isaac ducked away, and after Tim signed an autograph for one of the basketball players, he returned to Isaac’s side. Tim said, “Those guys are fun.”

  “Yeah, but I’m glad I don’t play a team sport. I like my team, but I don’t want to spend all of our time together.”

  Tim laughed. “You’re such a grump.”

  “What I like about swimming,” Isaac said, “is that it’s an individual sport. Most of the time you can’t see what your opponents are doing, and if you stop to look, you lose. So all you can do is swim as hard as you can. You can’t control anything in the pool except your own body. You can’t control if the other swimmers in the pool are having the best meet of their lives, if someone else breaks a world record, if someone else is having an off day. All I can do is get in the water and be the best I can be.”

  “I get that,” Tim said. “Hell, it’s the same for me. Except for the synchronized events, I’m out there on the springboard or the platform by myself. I have no control over whether the other divers are good or not. I can only control myself.”

  “Exactly.”

  But Isaac was tired and didn’t want to have too many more of these philosophical discussions. After he’d talked Jake off the ledge the other night, the American men’s gymnastics team had indeed finished in the top spot after the team qualifiers the night before, with Jake qualifying for four event finals and the all-around. Isaac hadn’t watched, but Melissa from the swim team had assured him Jake had been awesome. And hot, but Isaac already knew that.

  He glanced at Tim and smiled. Jake was hot, but he had nothing on Tim.

  Tim smiled back. “What was that smile for?”

  “Nothing. I like you.”

  Tim grinned wider. “I like you too.”

  Someone off to the side shouted something unfriendly at them, but Isaac didn’t recognize the words. Tim apparently did, though, because his whole face crumpled.

  “Come on,” Isaac said, “let’s get out of here.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what he said, but it wasn’t friendly.”

  “He basically called us faggots.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Isaac didn’t give a shit what anyone said about him. He threw an arm around Tim because Tim was upset, and he nudged him toward the closest building, which happened to be America House.

  And, of course, a whole huge group of people were sitting around and cheered when they walked in, Isaac with his arm still around Tim. Someone shouted, “Here comes the Flood!” He looked around and spotted Luke, sitting with his family near the bar. So Isaac headed that way.

  “What are we doing?” Tim asked.

  “Getting away from that asshole. Also saying hello to Luke.”

  Luke looked up as Isaac approached. “Hey, Flood, what’s going on?”

  Isaac finally pulled his arm away from Tim, who looked at him questioningly. So Isaac said, “Did you guys meet? Tim Swan, Luke Rogers.”

  They shook hands. Luke’s mother gave Isaac a hug and ruffled his hair.

  “Don’t you have a race tonight?” Luke asked.

  “I was on my way back to my room for a nap when Tim and I were first accosted by the U.S. basketball team—” Isaac stuck out his thumb. “And then someone shouted homophobic things at us in a foreign language.”

  “An athlete?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah. No idea who it was.”

  “They spoke Spanish,” said Tim.

  “Doesn’t really narrow it down,” said Luke. “I was going to say, if you knew which team, you could file a complaint. Officially, the Olympics has policies about that.”

  Isaac slid onto a stool and said, “Are they enforced?”

  Luke shrugged.

  “I didn’t even see what colors the guy wore,” said Tim, sounding miserable. “I think he had on a warm-up suit, which probably had his country’s name on it, but ugh….” Tim rubbed his head as if he had a headache.

  Isaac wanted to pull Tim into his arms but didn’t know if it would be appropriate.

  Luke furrowed his brow. “So are you guys…?” He pointed a finger back and forth between them.

  “Not really,” said Tim. “I mean, we’re friends, right?”

  “Of course,” said Isaac.

 
Tim nodded, satisfied. “We were coming back from the Aquatics Center together. That’s all.” He sighed. “It’s because of me. It’s because everyone knows I’m a fag.”

  “Don’t use words like that,” Isaac said. He wasn’t offended—he just didn’t like the self-deprecating way Tim said it. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not ashamed, I’m… tired.”

  Isaac gave in and touched Tim again then, running his hand along Tim’s arm. Tim looked up and met Isaac’s gaze.

  “You can still file a complaint. Athletes are supposed to be able to feel safe in the Athlete Village.” Luke cleared his throat. “As team captain, I felt like it was my responsibility to know what the policies were. You are not the only LGBT member of the swim team, after all, Isaac.”

  Which Isaac knew. Backstroke specialist Sabrina had a girlfriend back home who had opted not to fly to Spain.

  “If anything else happens,” Luke said, “let me know.”

  Isaac nodded but was suddenly exhausted. “Yeah. Listen, I gotta go take a nap. We just needed to get away from whatever was happening out there.”

  “Are you all right, Tim?” Luke asked.

  Tim didn’t look all right. He looked shaken up. But he nodded.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Isaac insisted.

  Chapter 8

  Transcript: Men’s 400 Individual Medley Finals

  O’TOOLE: Let’s take a look at the contenders. In Lane One, we’ve got Carlo Pereira from Brazil.

  DAVIS: Fifth-fastest time in the world this year.