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“Kenna, hey,” she says, glancing down. She drops her hand from the locker and then stares inside it like there’s a tunnel to Narnia she can crawl toward.
Life won’t be the same again. You just have to make the best of it.
I plaster a smile on my face, even though I don’t feel like it. Laney’s my best friend. We went to high school together, won state together in synchro diving, and then we both got accepted to Warner University three years ago to dive for the Bulldogs. Up until the incident, she was also my roommate. She would never not answer my calls or messages. “I have great news,” I try again, echoing the rambling messages I left on her voicemail, but it falls a little flat.
Her whole face is in the locker now, a bright-red blush creeping up her neck. “Yeah?”
Warning bells go off in my head.
I stop my slow steps toward her. Something’s not right. It’s almost as if she’s avoiding me like I’m the putrid-smelling D&D nerd that tried hitting on her at Starbucks our freshman year.
My fingers curl into my palms, the note in my hand crinkling. She was there at my hospital bed. She freaking was there after my first surgery, and my second surgery, and—
The door to Coach’s office swings open with a creak, and I turn toward it. She gives me a big smile. “McKenna. How great to see you!”
I return her smile. I’ll deal with Laney later. Who knows? Maybe a guy she was seeing broke up with her. Or maybe she had a bad practice.
The world doesn’t revolve around you, McKenna.
The excited grin that grows on my face isn’t fake. “Coach, I’m so happy,” I singsong.
She ushers me into her office and shuts the door. As usual, manila folders are piled everywhere. She calls it organizational chaos, but to me, it just looks like stacks of folders and papers strewn about with no purpose whatsoever. She moves them around on her desk, but honestly, it doesn’t look like there’s a reason for her madness. She just transfers everything from one side to the other, almost like a nervous tic.
“I’m so glad you wanted to meet,” she says. Her fingers flex, and she finally peers up to meet my gaze.
Fuck.
I see it there: nerves. Apprehension.
But that’s okay because she doesn’t know what I’m holding in my hot little hand. The piece of paper that’s about to change everything.
My foot taps against the tile of its own accord. It feels like if I don’t rein it in, it might grow wings and take off tap dancing out of pure joy.
Coach takes a deep breath and opens her mouth, but I don’t let her get a word out.
Okay, maybe the world does revolve around me. At least for right now.
“I got it,” I tell her, slapping the note down on her desk and sliding it over like it’s the missing page of some historical treasure. The words written on this note are valuable, just not drape-myself-in-gold-and-diamonds valuable.
Honestly, it’s even more.
She glances up, and I nod, smile pulled so taut the muscles around my mouth start to ache.
“McKenna…” She sighs.
I open the note for her. “It’s all right here.” Once I get it unfolded, I point at my doctor’s poorly scrawled signature. “She’s okayed me to dive, Coach. I’m back.”
The area behind my eyes heats. I’ve been trying to tamp down the emotion that’s been building like a pressure cooker ever since that day six months ago, and it feels dangerously close to boiling over now.
All of the pain I endured—physically, emotionally, mentally—it all comes down to this moment. The one I worked so hard for.
Coach picks up some manila folders again, taps them against the surface of her desk, then moves them back to the other side, her fingers flexing and straightening. Is that a…tremble? A shake?
For a moment, my heart stops beating. Then I go cold. A metal box slams around my heart, and I sit back.
“McKenna, I agreed to meet with you because I’ve come to some difficult decisions lately.”
Difficult…