Page 62 of Let the Games Begin
Ever since she’d met him, Olivia had felt her guard coming down around Zeke… And it scared her. She didn’t want to get sidetracked and didn’t particularly fancy getting her heart broken at the end of August, again. But what really scared her was letting someone in enough for them to see every part of her. It wasn’t like that summer with Tiago when she’d felt like another person for a few weeks. No, it was quite the opposite. Whenever she spent time with Zeke, she felt herself opening up beyond the point that she’d allowed herself to be comfortable with. She felt herself becoming lighter, freer, and more herself.
Falling in love was fun, until it wasn’t. Even with Tiago, a part of her had been relieved she could blame the end on him. A sharp, quick ending was always better than a summer spent watching affection slowly start to fade away. So, whenever she felt someone’s interest begin to wane, she was the one to cut things off. She wouldn’t let her heart be so easily broken.
“With Zeke, I don’t know, it was different. And maybe I ran away from it. But if he’d wanted me enough, he would have run afterme,” she said, unable to hold the tears back as Aditi came over to her side of the table to hug her.
Olivia’s lunch break was only an hour, so, despite Aditi’s attempts at persuasion, she had to go back to the Village. Once there, she distracted herself by attacking the huge pile of goodiebags waiting to be filled. She’d only planned on working on the goodie bags for as long as it took to get ahead of tomorrow’s events. But without meaning to, she spent hours in the packing room. By the time she looked up at the clock on the wall, it was already 6:41 p.m. Her shift should have ended an hour earlier. But she wasn’t ready to go home and face her feelings yet. So, she increased the volume on her headphones and picked up her phone.
The phone was where her problems had started in the first place, but she couldn’t help but absentmindedly reach out for it. She was scrolling while trying not to think about Zeke, when her finger landed on an image that sent a bolt of adrenaline through her body. Olivia clicked on it and froze. Because she was looking at a post that Valentina had just sent out to the world. It was a four-photo carousel with the caption “People I love.”
The first slide was a black-and-white photo of Valentina with her gymnastics teammates holding their medals up and throwing their winners’ wreaths into the air. The second was a photo of her, Zeke, and Haruki dancing at a bar the night she’d won her gold medal. And then Olivia saw the third picture. It was a photo of Valentina dancing hand in hand with a girl who was looking straight into her eyes. She wore the gaze of someone in love. The final photo was a picture of Valentina with that same girl, kissing as they stood in colorful outfits right next to a parade.
Olivia stared at the photo, her thoughts racing. Zeke had asked her to just give him a chance, to believe in him rather than jumping to the worst-case scenario. But she had jumped to the least-trusting conclusion. However, as she looked down at thephotos she felt a small flicker of hope. It wasn’t too late to fix things.
She glanced around the goodie bag room and then back down at her phone. It was 6:48 p.m. She had to find Zeke, and she had to find him fast.
50Zeke
DAY EIGHT OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
“Zeke?” Fiona said, looking up from her desk in surprise.
“Is it okay that I came here?” he asked as he walked in, much more nervous now than he had been when he’d decided to walk to the other side of the Village to see her.
“Of course, I’m glad to see you,” said Fiona, the Team GB therapist, as she left her desk and made her way over to her usual seat.
“I can make an appointment,” he said.
His plan had been to search the whole Village until he found Olivia. To apologize for not running after her, to explain the photos, and tell her how he really felt about her. But as another wave of anxiety washed over him, he’d decided to do what he’d been putting off for years—actually have a conversation with his therapist. Now, before he could change his mind.
He recounted the moment the ambulance had taken his father away. Told her that he’d received his offer to run for Team GB less than a month after. Talked about how he’d numbed himselfto negative emotions so he could live alongside the grief. She listened as he explained the ways he’d fallen short of being the man he thought his father wanted him to become. How his dad had always dreamed of him competing for Team Zimbabwe, but that Zeke had never had the guts to leave the security of what he knew. Zeke explained that sometimes he got a tightening in his chest when he thought about his competitions, and that while he wanted to win his final, the thought of how it would change his life kept him up at night. He’d seen the way Haruki’s and Valentina’s lives had changed after winning their gold medals. The brand deals and the late-night talk show appearances, but also the intense online scrutiny and pressure not to just represent their country but to be the kind of public figure onto whom people pinned their hopes and hatred.
And then he told her about Olivia.
The tightness in his chest began to ease. Things were a mess, but he couldn’t help but smile as he talked about her. Shared the story of how they’d met, confessed the feelings he had for her, and explained how they’d left things.
“Why didn’t you follow her?” Fiona said, not a hint of judgment in her voice. Zeke had been thinking about that all day. He paused for a moment, and then he found his words.
“I think that… it was almost easier to let her walk away now than to fall in love with her and watch her change her mind,” Zeke said. “Because people change their minds. And the thought of that is so hard to take that I’d almost rather not let myself go all in.”
He knew that it probably had to do with losing his dad so suddenly. He’d realized at a young age that grief was an inevitable part of love.
Fiona looked at him for a moment, holding space for what he’d just revealed.
“Sometimes we act against our better interests so we can control the situation,” she said. Zeke tilted his head as he listened. “Not chasing the things we want allows us to know the outcome.”
He’d read about athletes who let themselves lose races they could have won easily. He understood the feeling. Sometimes it was easier to hold himself back and lose than give something his all and risk losing. It wasn’t right, but there was something comforting about being able to blame a loss on himself instead of becoming a victim of fate.
“Throwing the game,” he said with a nod.
“Exactly,” said Fiona. But before they could finish their conversation, there was a knock on the door; it was time for Fiona’s next appointment. So, Zeke said goodbye, booked another time to see her, and then stepped back out into the Village.
Zeke had been running for as long as he could remember. His mother always told their friends that he’d learned to run before he could walk, and when he saw home videos from his childhood, he could see what she meant. Since childhood, he’d been moving his feet faster than his body could handle. His toddler-self had always been running across the house, around the garden, and after his older brothers. Falling over his tiny baby shoes in glee. At primary school, he’d discovered his competitive streak and just how much he loved the overwhelming joy of winning a race. Back then he’d always been running toward something: to his family, to his friends, to the finish line.
But when his dad died, something shifted. Running stopped being a thing he did because he loved it and started to become thething that kept him afloat. The steady sound of his feet pounding against a running track had felt like a heartbeat; a constant amid a time of such internally turbulent uncertainty. Whenever he was feeling anxious, he went for a run. Whenever he felt the grief creeping up, he went for a run.
As he walked through the Village that day, he realized that he’d spent the first fourteen years of his life running toward what he loved and then the last ten years running away from all of his fears. The realization came with such clarity that he stopped in his tracks.
What was he waiting for? He needed to go and find Olivia. She hadn’t picked up any of his calls, so either her phone was off or she’d blocked his number. If she was still in the Village, his best chance at finding her was to go to the Hub. But as he launched into a sprint, he came face-to-face with… Coach Adam, who was leaving the canteen after dinner.
