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  He takes a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "I just do, okay? But if we aren't going to practice, then I'm leaving. I've got other shit to do."

  Van's giving me a look to keep egging him on but I decide not to. Whoever this girl was, Dylan really liked her, enough to write a song about her, so I'll cut him a break, at least for now. Besides, I know he'll get enough jokes from Van, his roommate and best friend.

  Dylan and Van went to high school together here in Chicago, and then ended up at the same college. Van had originally planned to go out East for school but then his parents divorced and he decided to stay here for his sisters. They're younger than him and didn't take the divorce well so he wanted to be here for them. Van's annoying at times, but overall he's a good guy. He has a big heart. He fits the stereotype of the sensitive artist, but that's what makes him a good musician. He literally feels the emotion in the music and can tell when a note is off. And he's awesome at writing lyrics, most of which are based on his past relationships. That's why he's being so hard on Dylan. Dylan is usually the one making fun of Van for writing songs based on girls, but now it's the other way around.

  I position my guitar and strum out a few notes. Dylan gives me a grateful nod for finally playing, then moves up to the mic and starts the song. Whoever this girl is, she brought out Dylan's softer side. I mean, seriously, a love ballad? That's the last thing I would've ever thought he'd write.

  It just shows what a girl can do to you. I've seen girls change all three of my brothers, and now I'm seeing it happen with Dylan, after meeting a girl one time.

  I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I don't want some girl coming in and changing everything. Not that it's always bad. My brothers are happier than they've ever been. But so am I. Being single doesn't bother me. I like my freedom. My life is fine just the way it is, so why complicate it with some girl?

  Chapter Two

  Kira

  "I just got into town," I say, relaxing back on the couch. "Do we really have to go out tonight?"

  Amber stands over me, her hands on her hips. "First of all, you didn't just get into town. You've been in Chicago for a week. And every night you have an excuse for why you can't go out. Now it's Saturday, and we're not sitting at home on a Saturday night."

  "It's not we staying home, just me. You can still go out. I'd just rather stay here."

  She sits next to me. "What's your deal with going out? We used to go out all the time."

  "That was in high school. I'm not a big partier anymore."

  "This isn't a party. It's a bar. With music. We'll listen to the band, have a couple drinks, then come home." She touches my arm and talks to me in the same concerned tone my mom uses. "It'll be good for—" She stops herself and fakes a smile. "I mean, it'll be fun. You'll have fun. I know you will. Now come on. Let's go get ready."

  "If I'm going, I'm wearing this. I'm not changing."

  "Jeans and a t-shirt? That's not going out clothes. Let's go to my room. You can wear something of mine."

  "Amber, really, I don't want to get all dressed up. If I'm going, I'm going to hear the music, not find a guy, so it doesn't matter what I wear."

  She smiles. "You never know. You might find a guy."

  I sigh. "For the last time, I don't want a guy. I need to stay focused." I see that look on her face. The one that says I need to accept that it's over and move on. She's given me that look every day since I got here and I can't take it anymore. So I'm just going to say what she wants to hear. "On school. I need to stay focused on school."

  "School doesn't start for a week, which means you have a whole week to date someone."

  "Yeah, a week-long relationship. That'll be great."

  "Actually, it could be. Sometimes you connect with someone right away. You don't always need that long to—" She stops when her phone dings. "Shit. Matt's downstairs. I have to finish getting ready. Can you let him in?"

  "And there's another reason why I shouldn't be going out with you tonight. I'll be a third wheel on your date."

  "Matt doesn't care. In fact, when I told him you were coming along, he thought it was a good idea." She runs off. "When he gets here, tell him I'll only be a few minutes."

  "More like a half hour," I yell as her bedroom door closes.

  "Ten minutes, max," she yells back.

  She's such a liar. It'll be at least twenty minutes, but more likely a half hour. She always takes forever to get ready.

  Amber and I have been friends since we were kids. After high school, she went to college and I stayed in Michigan to train full-time.

  I'm a gymnast. Or I used to be. No. Scratch that. I'm still a gymnast. It's who I am, no matter what my parents or Amber or anyone else says.

  Gymnastics has been my life for as long as I can remember. Amber is also a gymnast. That's how we got to be friends. We used to be really competitive, but in a good way. We always pushed each other to do better and spent hours together at the gym. Then our junior year of high school, she joined the cheerleading squad, started dating the quarterback, and was named prom queen. She had no time for gymnastics so she quit, but she still supported me in my dream to make it to nationals. And I achieved that dream.

  After high school, I trained all day, every day, and all my hard work paid off. Competing at nationals was the greatest day of my life and gave me a new goal to shoot for, which was to make the Olympic team. As soon as I got home from nationals, I started training even harder. I pushed my body to the limit, hoping to reach the elite status that only a few gymnasts achieve. I knew it was a long shot. I had a good coach but not the best, and I didn't do that great at nationals, but at least I'd made it that far, and I knew if I trained hard enough, I could make it there again.

  But then the accident happened. It was at a regional meet. I was doing an aerial back flip on the balance beam and as I was coming down for a landing, my foot slipped. It happened fast but in the moment, it felt like slow motion. My foot went to touch the beam, but I only felt the very edge of it, and that's when I knew my body would soon crash to the ground. And it did. I landed with a thud, my leg hitting at an odd angle and with such force that I shattered bones. I heard them crack. And then the pain hit like a lightning bolt, exploding up and down my leg. It was so bad I passed out and didn't wake up until I got to the hospital. By then, they were pumping pain meds in me and rushing me into surgery.

  That one tiny misplacement of my foot changed everything. I was supposed to ace nationals and earn a place at the Olympic trials. Yeah, I know the Olympics were a stretch, but that doesn't mean I couldn't try. It was my dream and I wanted it so bad. Not just for me, but for my family; my parents and three younger brothers.

  My parents sacrificed everything for me. Their time. Their money. With four kids, I know my parents always wanted a larger house but they couldn't afford one. Because of me. And my poor brothers, stuck spending their childhood being dragged to my gymnastic meets, and yet they rarely complained. Because they believed in me. They believed in the dream just as much as I did.

  But now they don't. Nobody does. My parents keep telling me it's over. That I'll never do gymnastics again. And what's even worse is that Amber agrees with them.

  Amber. My best friend. A fellow gymnast who knows how hard it is to get to that level. How could she take my parents' side? I thought of all people, she'd support me. Encourage me. Tell me I could compete again. She was a freaking cheerleader, for crying out loud. She should be cheering me on, telling me to never give up, to keep trying. But instead, she pities me, just like everyone else. Even now, a year after the accident, she still gives me that look that says she feels sorry for me. And not because of what happened, but because I refuse to accept that it's over. As if I'm crazy for even thinking I could ever go back to gymnastics again.

  It can't be over. This is what I've trained for my whole life. I don't know who I am without it. And more importantly, I owe it to my family to keep trying. They nearly went broke paying for my training, my coach, my travel exp
enses. And now they have nothing to show for it.

  The guilt I feel over that is overwhelming. It eats away at me every day. I have to pay them back. That was the plan. As an elite gymnast, I'd hoped to make money from endorsements and pay back my parents all the money they spent on me. I'd buy them a better house and new cars and I'd buy my brothers all the stuff they wanted but couldn't have all those years my parents' income went to my gymnastics training. It wasn't fair they had to sacrifice everything for me and I promised myself that someday I would make it up to them.

  So I don't care what anyone says. My gymnastics career isn't over. The past year I've spent every day trying to get better. I didn't miss a single physical therapy appointment even though each session hurt like hell. And whenever doubts entered my head, I'd shove them away. I have enough people doubting me. I don't need to do it myself. So I force myself to stay positive, which isn't always easy, especially when my leg is aching, like it is right now.

  That's why I didn't want to go out tonight, but if I tell Amber that, it'll just be more ammunition for her to use against me. More proof that my leg will never be the same. Another reason why I should give up on my dream.

  I've only lived with Amber a week and she's already driving me crazy, watching me like a hawk to see if I'm limping. I think she'd secretly be happy if I was, because it would give her yet another opportunity to try to convince me to move on and accept that my gymnastics career is over.

  My parents have been trying to do this for a year and their attempts have gone nowhere. So when I was offered money for college, my parents were overjoyed, assuming college would give me something new to focus us. Plus, they couldn't afford to send me to college themselves so having someone else offer to foot the bill was like a gift from God. My mom even cried when she found out.

  The college money came from a car dealership in my hometown. After going to nationals, I became kind of a local celebrity and was hired to do some local commercials, one of which was for this car dealership. The commercials ended after the accident, but the owner of the car dealership felt so badly about what happened to me that he offered to pay for my college.

  As soon as Amber found out I was going to college, she called and suggested I go to the same school she goes to, saying how fun it would be to go to the same college, and how I could live in her apartment. That's when her cheerleader side came out. Just like my parents, she was hoping college would help me move on.

  So here I am, living in Chicago and sharing an apartment with Amber. It's late August and I start classes in a week. I turned 21 last week so I'll be an old freshman. Amber is also 21 but she's halfway through her junior year because she takes classes every summer.

  I hear knocking on the door and get up to open it.

  "Hey, Kira." Matt smiles at me and it's that same sad smile Amber gives me whenever the topic of gymnastics comes up. So she told Matt what happened to me? Why did she tell him? Now whenever he sees me, he's going to give me that smile. I don't want him looking at me that way. Feeling sorry for me. Because there's nothing to feel sorry about. I'm going to compete again. I am. I have to.

  "Hi." I step aside. "Come on in. Amber's still getting ready."

  I wait for Matt to go past me. I don't want him seeing the slight limp I have from the pain and stiffness in my leg. It's because of my workout yesterday. As soon as I got into town I joined a gym, and yesterday I went a little overboard on my workout. But it's what I have to do if I want to compete again. I have to train hard and suffer through the pain. As the saying goes, no pain, no gain.

  "So how do you like Chicago?" Matt asks, sitting on one of the chairs. I take the couch.

  Our living room furniture is from Amber's grandma, who moved into a nursing home last year. We have a floral print couch, two pink velour recliners, and a wooden coffee table that's been painted white. The furniture is pretty hideous, but it was free so we can't complain. And at least Amber's parents bought us a new TV. It's a 42-inch flat screen which is currently sitting on the floor until we can find someone who knows how to hang it on the wall. We bought the bracket. We just don't know how to install it. Amber asked Matt to do it but he has no handyman skills and we didn't want to risk having him try to install it, then have the TV crash to the floor in the middle of the night. So for now, it sits on the floor, resting against the wall.

  "I like it," I say. "I've been to Chicago before. My brothers like the science museum."

  "How old are your brothers again?"

  He says 'again' because we already talked about this. Matt came over last night for dinner and asked me all these questions about myself, but I'm sure he forgot half of what I said. He wasn't really listening. His attention was all on Amber. He really likes her.

  "Josh is 15," I say. "Nate is 12, and Luke is 10."

  "Do they play sports?"

  "Yeah. Josh plays football, Nate plays basketball, and Luke plays baseball."

  "I used to play baseball," Matt says, "but I sucked at it."

  Matt doesn't look like an athlete. He's around 5'9 and on the thin side with not much muscle. But he has a good-looking face. Very symmetrical and his eyes are a rich brown color that match his dark hair. I don't know him that well, but so far, he seems like an easygoing, nice guy. But he also seems kind of boring.

  The room is silent except for the sound of Amber's blowdryer, which we can hear from the bathroom down the hall. It's not a very big apartment. There's an open living area that includes the kitchen, and then two small bedrooms and a bathroom.

  "You said your dad's an insurance agent?" Matt asks, trying to fill the silence.

  "Yeah. And my mom helps run the office." I already told him all this last night. I need to find something else to talk about. "So you know anything about this band that's playing tonight?"

  "Not much. I've heard of them. I've just never heard them play. I only knew they were playing tonight because the lead singer came into the shop yesterday."

  Matt graduated from college last May and got a job as a project manager at some company downtown. But soon he'll have to start paying off his student loans, so he's working at a men's clothing store to make extra cash. He worked there all through college and said it's an easy job because the store only sell suits and most guys go there to buy, not to shop. Matt makes a commission on each sale so it's basically easy money.

  "If he's in a band, why does he need a suit?" I ask.

  "The band's just a side thing. He's in college, in his senior year. The suit is for job interviews, but he didn't end up buying one. He said he'd come back later. Anyway, we got to talking and he mentioned the band and suggested I stop by to hear them." He shrugs. "Even if they're not that great, it's something to do. And I told him I'd go so I feel like I should." He motions to the bathroom. "How much longer do you think she'll be?"

  "Another twenty minutes. Maybe more." I smile. "You should know this by now. You've dated her for over a month."

  "I usually check my phone while I wait so I guess I don't notice."

  Is he saying the time is going slower because he's talking to me? I check the clock on the wall. It's only been five minutes. Damn. Time IS going slow. Painfully slow. Matt and I have nothing to talk about.

  "You want to watch TV?"

  "Sure." He smiles, like he's relieved we no longer have to talk. I'm relieved too. The awkward silence was getting to me.

  Thirty minutes later, Amber finally emerges, wearing a short black dress. Her blond hair hangs in big waves that look natural, but took a half hour, a pile of products, and at least two hair tools to create. I know because I've done it myself. Sometimes when I went out with my high school boyfriend, I'd curl my hair like that and it took forever. My brothers would be banging on the bathroom door, telling me to hurry up.

  "You look great," Matt says, getting up from the chair.

  "Thanks!" She gives him a quick peck on the lips. "Ready to go?"

  Seeing her in a dress, I feel like a slob in my baggy t-shirt and old jeans. "I
think I'll change my shirt."

  "Okay." She smiles. "We'll wait."

  Matt sighs, but in a joking way. "Is this going to be another half hour?"

  "No, I'll be quick." I hurry back to my room and find a black t-shirt that isn't great, but it's a lot nicer than the shirt I'm wearing. At least it's fitted and not baggy. I change into my newest pair of jeans, a dark boot cut, then slip on some shoes. There isn't time to do much with my hair so I just run a brush through it, then put on some mascara, and I'm done.

  "Okay, I'm ready," I say, hurrying back to the living room.

  "See?" Matt says to Amber. "It's possible to get ready fast." He gives her a kiss.

  "Maybe, but don't get your hopes up." She loops her arm around his and they head to the door.

  I can't tell if Amber likes Matt. I mean, I know she likes him, but I'm not sensing any passion between them. They almost act like an old married couple, and yet they've only dated for a month. Shouldn't they still be hot for each other after a month? The flame shouldn't have fizzled out already. They should be all over each other, and yet when I snuck out of my room to get a snack the other night, I found the two of them just sitting on the couch watching TV. When I moved in with her, I thought she and Matt would be going at it in her room all night long, but that hasn't happened, at least not yet.

  We take Matt's car and I sit in the back, already feeling like a third wheel. Matt has a Prius so there isn't much room back here. But at least he has a car. So does Amber. She has her mom's old Ford Focus.

  I'm carless and probably will be for years. I have no money to buy one, not even a really old used one. Back in Michigan I borrowed my parents' car whenever I had to go somewhere. It was actually my car. The man who gave me money for college also gave me a car from his dealership. It was a used car but only a couple years old and in great shape. He thought I'd need it at college, which I do, but my parents need it a lot more than I do. They only had one vehicle; a minivan that was rusted out and barely worked. So when that man gave me a car, I gave it to my parents. After all they'd sacrificed for me, I didn't even consider keeping it for myself.