Blind Landing (Flipped #1)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Carrie Aarons

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Editing done by Proofing Style.

F
eel the fear
and do it anyway.

I don’t know how many countless times I’ve heard this phrase from coaches. From the other elite gymnasts I practice with. From Olympic champions past who I’ve heard speak at competitions, seminars and training camps.

Do you know what that phrase does for me?

Absolutely fucking nothing. It’s just a bunch of words, not the antidote to cracking the mental hold my brain has over my body.

Which is why I stand frozen, staring down the sixteen and a half foot stretch of balance beam poised before me. It’s why my toes grip the sides of the four-inch wide block of wood and leather. And it’s why I can’t seem to hurl my body in a series of flips over the toothpick of material that sits four feet off the ground.

But let’s put my faulty brain aside for a minute. Do you know how difficult it is to train the human body to perfectly execute moves that require one to flip themselves backward with no ability to see what they’re doing? A degree of an angle off, and you fall. The slip of a pinky, and you’re smashing your face into the side of the beam. One foot that doesn’t land right next to the other, and you’re straddling the four-inch wide rectangle. Hard. As in, it will burn when you pee for weeks.

You can’t allow fear to invade your psyche, not for one minute. The skills have to be ingrained, honed after years and weeks and hours of practice. There should be no thinking in gymnastics, just doing.

I used to be her. The “fearless” one. The gymnast any coach could count on to get up on the beam, bars, floor or vault and throw a new skill without balking. The girl who would tumble sightlessly into a new trick without ever saying she was afraid. Or feeling that way.

That used to be me.

“Natalia, are you going to stand there like tree all day, or are we actually going to do something?”

Novak Filipek stares up at me from his spot a few feet away, his boorish face beginning to turn its signature shade of red.

I wipe my sweaty hands down my blue velvet leotard. Usually, I’d tell whatever coach was yelling at me to calm their tits. But the past month, I was too focused on the fear to be my typical wild child self. “I’m sorry, Novak, I just … I think the mat is crooked. I need a drink and then I’ll fix it.”

I hop down, landing on the chalky blue mats beneath the beam with a soft thud.

“No please, take short vacation! Is not as if we have anything to accomplish!” He throws his hands up, and his broken English becomes even more infused with his Polish heritage as he berates me.

Novak Filipek is the premier gymnastics coach in the United States of America. He decides who has potential, who gets favored, who makes the Olympic team, and ultimately, who becomes a champion.

After being expatriated from Poland for illegal sporting practices, Novak, and his late wife Anka, brought their European strategy of coaching and set up shop in South Jersey. Filipek’s Gymnastics is an intensive gym, training camp and breeding ground for Olympic hopefuls.

And to my parents, Polish immigrants themselves, Novak Filipek was a god. Hence why my entire life had been about one thing.

Gymnastics.

“You should just throw the dismount before he takes your dinner away.”

Peyton Adams unscrewed her pink water bottle and gulped down whatever protein drink was inside. I nodded, unscrewing my own clear bottle and drinking down half of the water inside before coming back up for air.

“Eh, I’ve lived on less. Now if he threatens to take away my cellphone, I’d do just about anything.” I joke.

We stand by the fence blocking the viewing area off from the rest of the gym, Peyton in a crazy, glittery silver leotard and me in my plain blue. Not that any parents are allowed to come watch their kids anyway, so the rows of benches are completely pointless. Novak says parents are a distraction, that they make us weak.

Not like my parents could come watch me anyway. They’re across the country in California, running our family’s life and looking after my two brothers. I haven’t seen them in a year. Between my dues at Filipek’s and the elite gym I typically train at in West Chester, Pennsylvania, they can’t afford any more plane tickets out here.

“Don’t think about it, just do it. Take it from a veteran, you don’t want to piss off Novak this early in the Olympic Trial period. He likes you, has you as a frontrunner. Don’t screw that up.”

Peyton walks away, her small curves enticing but unnatural for an elite gymnast. She was on her second go-round, and the only gymnast to return for more after the 2012 silver win for Team USA. Peyton was one of the best the sport had ever seen, but most gymnasts only got one shot at the title. Now twenty-two, she was ancient in gymnastics standard. Hell, I was bordering on elderly at the ripe old age of nineteen. But, she insisted she wasn’t retiring until she held team gold in her hands.

My gaze wanders around the beam gym. It’s essentially a warehouse where the floor has been covered in bright red and blue gymnastics mats. And out of the mats rise dozens and dozens of leather covered balance beams, all at varying heights. Some on the floor, some four feet tall, and others positioned right into the foam pit on one whole side of the gym. The pit, as we called it, was filled with light blue foam blocks that would soften your landing when trying new dismounts. It was essentially a swimming pool-sized hole in the floor that kept us from killing ourselves when attempting crazy tricks we had no experience with.

All of the gyms looked liked this, seven in total throughout the training compound. One for each women’s event, which made four, another that was staged exactly like it would be for a major international gymnastics competition, and two men’s gyms.

“Let us go, Natalia! We do not have all day! You need to get to the floor gym!” Novak yells at me, waiting by the beam I’d just stood frozen on.

He was right, I still had seven hours of practice ahead of me, and with only two months until the Olympic team was chosen, I had no time for dillydallying.

My gut turns before I ask the question. “Can I try it into the pit?”

“You want to dismount into the pit? On a simple Arabian double front? Pathetic. Do whatever you want and then haul your ass to the floor gym for warm-ups!”

He leaves, letting the door slam behind him. Shame and unworthiness heat my cheeks; the last thing I want to do, the last thing any gymnast wants to do, is disappoint a coach. I’d rather cut off my left hand. He didn’t even bother to stay and watch to see if I complete the dismount.

The one he’s calling simple. The dismount that requires I twist my body a hundred and eighty degrees around while flipping my body not once, but twice around.

And doing it with a blind landing. No vision to see where my body is going, what I’m falling towards. No ability to know if I’ll land on my feet.

Or if I’ll land on my neck.

After standing, frozen, on that skinny piece of wood, sweat trickling down my back and fear roiling in my stomach … I jump off and walk out.

I felt the fear. And I can’t do it.

A
nyone who gets
up before ten a.m. is fucking crazy in my opinion.

“Ayo, look at this! Spence Russell, up for the lunchtime rush. Now ain’t that a miracle!” Bessie, the chef who has worked in the Filipek’s cafeteria since I got here four years ago, nods and lifts her ladle in greeting.

“I figured the world needed to be graced with my handsomeness a little earlier this morning, beautiful. Load me up!” I laugh as I push my tray in her direction.

“What, you couldn’t be bothered to put a shirt on this morning? Proper men put on clothes before they come into my cafeteria.” Bessie slides a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and hash browns onto my tray. Even though breakfast is over, she always does special favors for me.

“It’s too damn hot in the gyms to make an effort. Plus, you love me. And secretly, you love this body.” I point to my muscles, clad in nothing but boxers, Filipek’s gym shorts and sandals.

“Go eat and get to coaching before Novak kills you with his bare hands.” She waves me off.

I turn and survey the rest of the cafeteria; it’s open glass walls and sterilized light blue lunch tables looking exactly the way they always have. My black and white sport sandals clack on the white tile as I make my way across the large, high-ceilinged room to a table where Duke and Jared, two of my gymnasts, sit.

I’m only about ten feet from their table when a chair shoots out, nearly tripping me. I stumble and try to hold my tray steady as I wobble for my balance.

“Good thing gymnasts have some of the best balance in the world. Otherwise, I’d be splat on the floor next to my eggs. As for grace, well, I guess not all female gymnasts have that.” Righting myself, I turn to stare at the back of a sleek blond ponytail.

“And if males in general had any awareness at all, you would have seen me pushing out my chair before you nearly tripped over it.”

Blond ponytail whips around, and her smirk wipes clear off her face when she realizes who I am. “Shit. Mr. Russell, I’m sorry …”

“Nah, don’t worry about it, babydoll. I won’t tell Novak you’re mouthing off to coaches. That is, only if you never call me Mr. Russell again.”

I flash my mega-watt smile at her, because I’m trying to make her feel better. But also because she is a very pretty girl. Or, woman, technically. Don’t girls refuse to be called girls after the age of eighteen? Something about respecting their feminine age or something like that? I’d have to ask my mom about this.

Natalia Grekov, whether she was a girl or a woman, was a very, very pretty one. Long blond hair, those exotic Polish eyes the shade of blueberries, with full, pouty pink lips. She had the body of a ballerina, not the stocky gymnast build so many of the girls here had. Natalia wasn’t big in the tits department, but her ass … damn. Plump, beautiful and one I wanted to sink my teeth into. I know because I’d been watching it since she got here two weeks ago.

“Okay then, what should I call you?” Her smirk tells me she can play the flirting game too.

As a coach, I shouldn’t be fraternizing with the gymnasts. But … when had I ever fully listened to Novak? I was barely twenty-two; this pretty girl would be fair game if we were on a college campus.

“Well, you can call me coach; it’s authoritative, domineering. I also like Mr. Incredible or Sexiest Man Alive. But for regular everyday, you can just call me Spence.”

Natalia tilts her head to the side and chuckles, not giving me the full belly laugh I usually expect to hear. You know how they tell a girl to laugh at a guy’s jokes if you want him to fall for you? Listen to that. There isn’t a girl I have brought to bed who didn’t crack up at my humor. Well, I’ll usually bring any girl who is willing to my bed … but that’s beside the point.

“Okay, Spence. Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but some of us have Olympic dreams to catch.”

I smile. She can’t possibly know she just twisted a knife lodged deep in my heart.

She begins to walk away, her juicy ass on full display in nothing but a blue velvet leotard. She dumps her tray of half-eaten salad and grilled chicken into the trash.

“Hey, I didn’t catch your name. You know, just in case I go to the trainer later and they tell me I have a sprained ankle. I’ll need to tell Novak who to blame.”

The grin spreading across her face makes her navy eyes sparkle. “Natalia, but everyone calls me Nat. Ice that ankle, Spence.”

I watch as she sashays out of the cafeteria, her gym bag slung over her shoulder. And while I’m gawking at her, a roll hits my square in the back of the head.

“Hey, asshole, quit being a pervert.” Jared’s southern voice rouses me, reminding me I have eggs to eat and Olympic champions to make.

Walking to the table, I survey Jared, so stoic with his short dirty blond hair and brown eyes. Duke laughs at me too, his thick auburn hair flopping over onto his forehead.

“Whatever, dude. You’re just mad because my abs look like this and your face looks like that.” I point again to my naked muscles and sit down next to them, noshing on the pile of bacon Bessie made me.

“You know you’re not supposed to sleep with the gymnasts. Especially the female ones,” Duke says through a mouthful of hamburger.

“When has that ever stopped me before?” My mind goes to dirty, dirty places.

Jared coughs and finishes the last bite of his pizza. “I’m tired of talking about your dick, Spence. So what event are we starting on today?”

Always the professional, Jared is the ultimate male gymnast. This will be his third Olympics, and at twenty-six, probably his last. He already has three gold medals and four silver, and he plans to make this his best Olympics yet. A southern gentleman, he’s the epitome of manners and good upbringing. He’s also boring as hell, which makes it so fun to rip on him.

I swallow a mouthful of cheesy eggs. “I’m gonna start you on rings today. Work you until you can’t feel your arms. Teach you how to do a real Iron Cross.”

“In your dreams. My Iron Cross will beat your Iron Cross any day.” Duke laughs as he shoves his hand down his training shorts.

“It’s never about size, Duke my man. It’s about how long you can hold it.” I wink and wave my fork at him, alluding to much more than the hardest gymnastics move known to males.

An Iron Cross is a skill on the rings, when a gymnast fully extends his arms parallel to his body with his legs squeezed tight together. Sort of like a cross position. What makes it so fucking hard is that you’re literally holding up all of you body weight just using your arms. The amount of arm strength required to do the move takes years to hone.

Not that I have that strength anymore.

I brush off the sadness threatening to creep in and focus back in on the guys. “So after all of this practice bullshit, where are we going out tonight?”

Jared groans. “I had to go on a cleanse for four days last time I went out drinking with you. Some of us have regimens to stick to, Spence.”

I glare at him. “Don’t be a pussy. We can drive out to Atlantic City!”

“You’re insane,” Jared shakes his head at me.

“Spencer, you just fly by the seat of your fucking pants. Do you ever have a plan?” Duke stands to throw his trash out.

I polish off the last bite of hash browns and follow him. “I make it a point not to.”