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I wanted to swim, but I didn’t want to drown in a hotel pool full of thrashing and overexcited teenagers, so I sat on the edge and tried to read a book as Dom texted with Heath.
“Any news on the baby front?” I asked.
“Still waiting. The due date is in two weeks, so we’re hoping she won’t go while I’m here, but if I have to, I will get on a plane and Heath will meet me there.”
I reached out and squeezed his hand.
“Let’s hope it’s after Nationals, but if you have to go, you have to go. I’ll handle this.” I waved my hand in the direction of my squad, who were having chicken fights in the pool.
“We both know that’s not true, so I’m going to hope she doesn’t go early,” he said.
I let the squad have a little more pool time and then herded them all upstairs for showers and bed. Tomorrow they’d get up early and prep for prelims, which weren’t happening for our division until tomorrow afternoon.
When we’d registered, I’d gotten our warm-up and competition time and I wished it was sooner in the day, so they wouldn’t have to sit with the jitters for hours, but no such luck.
I made sure all the chaperones were set and then went to my room and shut the door. Blissful silence. If I wasn’t so nervous, I would enjoy this a whole lot more. If I were just a regular guest, I would have ordered room service and watched a terrible movie.
Actually, there was nothing that said I couldn’t do that, so I picked up a menu and started scanning it when there was a knock at my door.
I looked through the peephole and found Dom.
“Hey, just checking on you. I’m going to bed. I’ll knock on the door in the morning just in case,” he said.
“Thanks, that would be great.”
We hugged and he headed to bed, but I did one last room check before I went back to my room and ordered some food and flipped on the TV. The food came pretty fast and I wrapped myself in a fluffy robe as I lay on the bed and tried to pick which bad movie I was more in the mood for.
If I let myself think too much, I’d go off the deep end of anxiety and spiral and then I’d be no good to anyone. I took one of my pills, just in case, and left another one out on my nightstand in case I needed it in the middle of the night.
I was tired, but sleep wasn’t going to happen, unless I literally took a sleeping pill, but that could make me hard to wake tomorrow, and I didn’t want to risk it. Maybe I should have roomed with someone else. At least there would be someone to talk to, to distract me from all the stress.
The calm I’d had the past few days had given way to the storm, and I couldn’t settle down. I got up and paced around the room, flicking through channels, not pausing long enough to even know what the show was before moving on to the next option. I couldn’t go on my phone, because there were just messages of good luck and too much cheer stuff that only made things worse.
I was about to break down and call Dom to come and hang out with me when there was a knock on my door. A soft knock, followed by a new message on my phone.
I’m outside.
I opened the door and she slipped in, looking up and down the hallway to make sure that no one had seen her. I closed and locked the door, just in case.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. She wore a pair of black yoga pants and a loose tank that did all kinds of favors for her figure. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Why was she allowed to be so hot?
“Why are you whispering?” she said at a normal volume.
“Because you’re not supposed tobehere, Echo. What if someone sees you? How are we going to explain that?”
“I’ve never gotten caught sneaking into your room before,” she pointed out, which was fair, but we had a lot more at stake now if we got caught. At camp, if she’d gotten caught in my room, the first assumption wouldn’t be that we were hooking up, and we planned to say that we were just hanging out and the adults probably would have believed us. Sometimes being assumed heterosexual came in handy.
That wouldn’t work now. We were both out, really out. My entire team knew both their coaches were gay. Their parents knew. The article that had come out a few weeks ago had talked about it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.
“I wanted to see you,” she said, walking into the room and turning around to face me.
“You did?”
She nodded and flopped on my bed, spreading her arms out and sighing happily.
“Yeah, I did. Are you nervous?”
