Sushi (gxg)

Chapter 6

My body knifed through the water in the lane closest to the diving well. I'd been going for two hours, and every time I took a breath I shot a look over at the 10 meter platform, where I could see Kit talking to Coach McGinty. She'd been doing the same dive the entire time she was up there, though it had increased in frequency as the men's team had slowly filtered out and the line of divers got shorter. You could really see the difference, as the men had been just practicing preliminaries, and then doing one or two of their more difficult dives over and over.

But not Kit. Every single time, she'd take her strides, do her hop and then jump into her forward tuck as she started the somersaults. She was coming so close too, but just wasn't completely vertical on the entry, so it made a bigger splash. And yet, after all this time, she was obviously exhausted. Not just from the dives, but the swim back, and then climbing the tower over and over again. I was getting very worried for her, because it seemed like a pointless exercise to make her do this. What was the goal of pushing her so hard? There had to be other dives that were of the same degree of difficulty that she could do!

I had hoped to see something different from the training, because I felt like I just couldn't say anything after watching a single session. It was the first day after all, but it looked scary to me. I finally stopped swimming after a third hour, and then took a small break before heading up to the fitness center. I know that may seem like a lot of swimming, but the 10k race took almost two hours to complete, so I always did extra. Kit was still taking turns on the tower while I dried off, and I may have made sure to catch her eye as she climbed the ladder, but she shot me a little shake of the head, and I grimaced before I turned my back on the situation. After I changed into workout gear, I went upstairs for a workout.

But of course, I did my best to keep an eye on her while I was in the fitness center. Every time I finished a set, be it back, legs, shoulders, arms, I'd look down through the window overlooking the pool to see how she was doing. It was getting on towards dinner time, and I knew she had to be exhausted and low on energy. I'd seen her finish a few bottles of water, and take a few bathroom breaks, but otherwise they'd been going at it nonstop. I walked back down to the pool area, and they were still at it, with nobody else even still in the center but us. With a sigh, I went back in and put my swimsuit on. Kit was the only one in the pool now, everyone having gone back for dinner or rest, and I wasn't going to leave her there alone with a coach I didn't trust.

I dove back in, and started doing some slow laps, just to cool off after the workout. After a few laps, I swam under the barrier, and hung onto the side of the pool, just inside the diving well. Even from where I was, I could see her climbing gingerly and not putting her full weight on her left ankle as she made her way up the ladder, and I was almost seething in anger. And then on her next attempt, she slipped, flipping over out of control and plummeting towards the water.

I was swimming towards her before she hit the surface.

She hit back first, and I heard a muffled groan as she sank, and I dove down, pushing myself forward like the gold medal was on the line. But in this case, Kit was even more important. She was trying to swim, I could see it, but she was just too damned tired. I reached her quickly, grabbing her hand and pulling her upward until we broke the surface. Pulling her over to the side of the pool, I saw her eyes fluttering open, and she looked at me with a smile.

"Thank you again," she whispered.

"Are you okay?" I asked, whipping the water from her face. I could hear Coach McGinty climbing down the ladder but didn't care.

"I'm tired. So tired."

"Maybe we should head back, and I'll bring you dinner again," I suggested. "You shouldn't be diving anymore." Coach Ellis had mentioned food being served here, but I hadn't seen any so I wasn't sure what happened. Maybe because it was the first day it hadn't started?