Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

25. #InRed, February 2018

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeong Chang were in full swing.

"Earth to Daya! You're missing all the curling!" he called to the kitchen from the couch.

Daya fiddled with celery sticks and cucumber slices. The only thing he was looking forward to on her tray were baby tomatoes.

Carrots had been banned last week on suspicion of the dark side ability to spike his blood sugar. He lived to the age of twenty-seven in blissful ignorance of the notion that the root vegetables were sweet. Luckily, he had never liked raw carrots, so their absence from his life didn't hurt him.

The candy bars, on the other hand... he couldn't resist, despite finding their taste cloying. Unfortunately, he couldn't share this breakthrough with Daya.

"I'm coming," she said. The warning was unnecessary, given that it only took a few steps from the counter to the couch, but her voice was a welcome alternative to that of the commentator.

On the screen, the athletes mopped the ice with a commendable dedication.

Mike watched Daya instead out of the corner of his eye. "Apparently, we kill in curling. Imagine that." 

She had wanted to watch the Olympics together. She had painstakingly frozen the images until he pretended he could see the difference between the toe loop jump and the loop jump, but he couldn't shake gnawing anxiety.

Did he imagine the strain in her neck because he wanted a reason to rub it away? Or had he forgotten it was always there? He had seen little of her in the past weeks. She was always looking for an opening to be on the ice, or squeezing in a dance class.

Or she was avoiding him. No, no. She was doing exactly what he had insisted she'd do. Oh, good Lord, I'm an idiot...

He focused on the screen where the curling coverage switched to the highlights. The running text promised the figure skating lady singles final next.

The commentary focused on Sarah Blackwall, the top Canadian contender, and her Russian rivals, a fifteen year-old Polina Rakova and a nineteen year-old Liza Morozova.

After watching competitions so far, Mike started to clue in why Daya had felt she had missed her chance. Figure skating seemed to work on the crib to podium conveyor belt principle. Canadian Blackwall, the same age as Daya, was a decorated veteran.

The Russians, as young as they were, spoke breathlessly of the teenagers who were pawing the ground in the wings, dying to turn fifteen. Once unleashed, they'd shatter the senior ladies' figure skating world with their multiple quad jumps. The scoring charts would be topped. Men would have to train quintuple jumps, impossible according to the laws of physics. 

Bloodbath and mayhem would follow. The world of sequins, gauze skirts and charming smiles had all the gentleness of the mortal combat arena after the Hells froze over.

It seemed inconceivable to him that someone would want to step back into the rink after getting away. Forget everyone else. He cared about Daya, and she said Calgary was tolerable. Not the highest praise, but it was better than nothing. 

The way she glanced at him sometimes, the soft gaze from under the veil of lashes, turned the world on its head. And she was chomping down the celery stick on his couch, while his deadline to return to Toronto was ticking down even now. It had to mean—what? 

Why don't you just ask?

He fiddled with his glasses to find a distraction. The Olympics, damn it, the competition that had its stakes inflated by its rarity—and he found his unfashionable but light frames more intriguing. What if the Canadians won the most medals? What if they didn't?