(rivals to lovers, small town, sports) [WATTYS 2024 SHORTLIST] (Season 3 coming soon) After a devastating Olympic loss puts her career in a downward spiral, an aging skier returns to her laid-back mountain hometown to rediscover her love of her spor...
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Juniper rolled her yoga mat out flat on the cork floor. She'd left the lights off and the sun wasn't up yet to spill through the big glass wall of the studio. Only the soft green glow of the exit sign gave a faint light.
After her concussion six years ago, the doctors had recommended meditation. She had rolled her eyes and as soon as they had given her a clean bill of health, she had stopped. But now, she thought it might be worth another go. She was desperate. If sitting in a dark room until her toes went numb could stop her mind from betraying her at every turn, she was willing to try.
She folded her legs and rested her hands on her knees. She pulled in a long, slow breath through her nose, then blew it out softly through her mouth. In-out. In-out. The air was cool, and goosebumps lifted on her legs.
Letting her eyes drift closed, she began to catalogue the morning's damage. Faint aches in her shoulders from the pull-ups she'd done yesterday. A low-grade heat in her knees that might turn into something to worry about sooner than later. Tightness in her hips. A general, bone-deep weariness. She was twenty-seven years old, and she'd been skiing almost since the day she could walk. She was starting to feel it.
Some days she was at peace with her aches and pains, no matter how much she might swear about them. She'd earned her bruises through a lifetime of turning her body into a finely-honed tool that enabled her to do her dream job.
On other days she looked at the empty spot on her wall where she had hoped to one day hang an Olympic medal and wondered if it had all been worth it. Lately, those days were more common than the other kind.
Lately, it was hard to remember why she'd ever wanted to ski at all.
She chose the sore spot between her shoulder blades and breathed into it, imagining the oxygen filling it and the muscles knitting back together. Then she breathed the ache back out. One by one, she worked through all her twinges this way.
Distantly, she felt herself relax. The weariness faded. She stopped noticing the cold air.
In the broader picture of things she worried about, her body giving out on her wasn't the biggest concern. She'd fallen her fair share of times on the ski hill, but she'd never had any career-threatening injuries. No chronic illness promised an unavoidable decline. She would age out of the sport eventually, that was inevitable, but plenty of women skied well into their thirties with great success.
Juniper might be getting older, but when it came to her career slump, her body wasn't the problem.
Focusing on her breath, she let her thoughts drift away. She imagined snow, as though she was walking into a blizzard so thick she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. This storm was silent. No wind. Just whiteness. Calm.
When she'd first noticed that her usual race jitters were becoming something more debilitating, the sports psychologist had recommended visualization. Think about the starting gate enough times, imagine your skis on the snow and the sound of the starting signal as it counted down, and when you step up there for real it will be just one more time you're doing it. No novelty, no reason to be afraid.
