Page 12 of Let the Games Begin
After his morning workout with Haruki, Zeke and his teammates gathered around the track for their first practice. One of their team traditions was to watch each other practice on the first day. Usually, they competed at the same time, so they rarely got to cheer each other on. But on that first day, they all sat around the empty athletics field and watched their teammates do what they did best. They clapped as Sammy Nolan, the triple jumper, skipped three times and landed on the sixteen-meter mark. They cheered as Amina Aziz, the pole vaulter, defied gravity by launching herself over the five-meter bar. And shouted in excitement as Johnny Campbell, the shot putter, spun around with the elegance of a dancer, then threw the shot with the might of a warrior.
When it was Zeke’s turn to practice his 100m, he gave it his all. The first-day team training was just a warm-up. But Zeke surprised himself, his teammates, and all their coaches by reaching the finish line so quickly that he unintentionally beat his own record. He was high on adrenaline and fulfilled ambition.
As he walked across the Village, an excited group of teenagers wearing the uniforms of the Guatemalan team ran toward him. There were thousands of athletes in Athens that summer, but Zeke was anathlete’sathlete.In the same way that incredibly famous actors fangirled over Beyoncé or award-winning musicians got starstruck near Meryl Streep, other athletes became awestruck when faced with Zeke Moyo. He was a star, and he didn’t hate the attention.
He took a group photo with the Guatemalan teenagers and wished them luck with their diving competition. When he went to get a postworkout smoothie, he noticed how the girl working at the juice bar let her eyes linger on him as he walked in. Then he smiled to himself on the way out as he saw the number she’d scribbled on the back of his cup. Maybe hewouldcall her.
After he left the juice bar, he scrolled through his mentions and laughed at the thirst tweets people had attached to the photos he’d taken for hisGQcover shoot. Somehow, he’d become the internet’s crush of the month. With the sun on his arms and the world at his feet, Zeke began to walk across the Village like it was his own personal kingdom. His mum was always quoting Bible verses about humility and scolding him through pointed prayers like “Humble my son, Almighty God! Make him remember that the Olympian is also a boy who must take out the bins at his mother’s house.” His brothers teased him down to earth, and his teammates were so talented that he never got complacent. But when Zeke was having a good day, he stepped into the most confident version of himself and became capital “E” Ezekiel Moyo.
If Zeke hadn’t beaten his own record that morning, he wouldn’t have put on his noise-cancelling headphones to listen to his favorite playlist. If the Guatemalan teenagers hadn’t treated him like a god, then he wouldn’t have felt like one that afternoon. If he hadn’t been allowing his own hype to get to his head, he would have noticed Olivia walking across the pavilion at 3:28 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of July.
If Olivia’s first day had gone according to plan, she wouldn’t have even been walking past the athletes’ apartments that day. If she hadn’t seen Lars’s Instagram page, she wouldn’t have been asannoyed as she was that afternoon. If she hadn’t been so focused on the photo of Lars with his arm around a tall, silver-medal-winning sprinter, she would have noticed Zeke as he walked across the pavilion at 3:28 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of July.
If Olivia hadn’t had such a terrible day and Zeke hadn’t had such a brilliant day, they would have never crossed paths. But they did. And before either of them had the chance to look up and realize they weren’t the only person walking on the path, they crashed right into each other.
11Olivia
ONE DAY BEFORE THE OPENING CEREMONY
Olivia collided headfirst into a tall, solid wall. The wall fell down, and she fell with it. One second she was glaring at her phone screen, and then the next she was descending to the ground and holding onto what was not in fact a wall but instead a tall, muscular man. It happened so quickly that she couldn’t take in the details of the collision. Still, she was pretty sure he’d been the one to cause it. But rather than accidentally knocking her to the ground—which with his height and weight should have been the natural gravitational outcome—she’d been the one to fall onto him. He lost his balance, fell backward, and took her down with him.
She looked down and instantly recognized who she’d just fallen on top of. Zeke Moyo. The silver-medal-winning track star of Team GB athletics. She’d watched Zeke win his 100m final at the Tokyo Games from her parents’ living room and cheered along with the rest of the country as he stepped onto the podium. Everybody back home was a Zeke Moyo fan—he wasa national treasure. And as she looked down at him, it became pretty clear why he’d won the status of a heartthrob too. His ridiculously fresh trim, perfectly sculpted face, and warm brown eyes were impossible to miss. Objectively, he was a stunningly handsome man. If she’d collided with him that morning outside the Village gates, she would have been knocked off her feet in averydifferent way. But Olivia had met Zeke at the worst possible moment. Only seconds after finding out that Lars Lindberg was friends with Zeke.
Olivia had just seen a photo of Lars sitting on a beautifully set outdoor dining table overlooking a crystal-blue slice of the Amalfi Coast. And Zeke was at the table with him. In fact, Zeke had just signed a multimillion-pound deal with Zeus Athletics. The Lindberg-owned family business was one of the biggest sponsors of this year’s Games, which had no doubt been the reason why Lars had got the internship that she’d worked so hard to earn. Well, that’s what Olivia assumed.
So, she couldn’t help but instantly loathe Zeke.
“At least buy me a drink before you pin me to the ground,” Zeke said, his voice smooth as he looked into her eyes and smiled. It was the kind of smile he knew how to wear well. One that formed slowly, curved to the right, and clearly charmed everyone he met. If she hadn’t been in such a foul mood, she would have admitted that there were worse places to fall than onto Zeke Moyo’s lap. But he’d ruined her suit.
Her parents had forked out way more than they could afford to make her feel like she belonged in a place like this. And now the suit was covered in green juice and smelled like apples and limes. Olivia hated limes.
“Sorry,” she said, passive-aggressively.
“It’s all right, it was just an accident. I’m not upset—” he began. He clearly wasn’t hearing her tone right, so she interrupted him.
“No. ‘Sorry’ is the wordyoushould be looking for,” she said plainly. “You should be saying ‘I’m sorry for running on a public path, crashing into you, and spilling a whole cup of green juice all over your brand-new suit’… because that’s what you’ve just done.” The stain was the cherry on top of an already bad day.
“Well, some of the juice fell on me too. And I’m pretty sure I’m the one who was thrown to the ground,” he said casually.
“Are you blamingmefor this?” she said indignantly.
“Well, you weren’t looking where you were going either,” he shrugged.
Olivia couldn’t stand the way he was smiling up at her as if he thought she was happy to be in this position. Or the fact that she couldn’t break eye contact with him. Or that she couldn’t deny how handsome he was up close. So she climbed off him and stood up, immediately regretting the move as she felt the sharp sting of the blisters at the backs of her ankles. She tried to distract herself from the pain by reaching into her bag for wet wipes to dab some of the juice off her suit. He stood up too.
“For the record, I wasn’t running, I just have long legs, so I move quickly—”
Olivia glared at him. She was usually pretty good at biting her tongue and moving on. But after her day from hell, she couldn’t help but say exactly what she was thinking.
“You know that who you are doesn’t give you an excuse to dowhatever you want, right?” she said. “That being an athlete orwhateverdoesn’t mean that you can just walk around the Village like it’s your own personal kingdom?”
“I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t think it has anything to do with me,” Zeke said. Then he reached out, put his hand over hers, and silently pulled three wet wipes out of her almost-empty packet to wipe the splatters off his shirt. He didn’t glance away from her for even a second.
Olivia was appalled to the point of speechlessness. Partly because he was right, but more at the audacity he had to take something that belonged to her without asking. It was the second time that had happened to her in just one day. She knew that if she stayed, she’d definitely say something she would regret. So, she put her bag on her shoulder and turned her incredibly painful ankles to leave. But Zeke was still talking.
“I can pay for your dry cleaning if you want. My treat,” he said with a bemused smile.
The patronizing way he said “my treat” and the fact that he still hadn’t apologized infuriated her.
