She recognized many familiar faces, but none contained the crystal clear eyes that she desperately wanted to see. Sometime during the last hours of the race, when her body was exhausted, her mind unable to fight the fatigue, her heart had taken over.
She loved Shannon. It was that simple. It was so simple she couldn’t even see it until her cluttered mind was empty. She heard Shannon’s words in her head and very easily could repeat them word for word. She had been in love with Shannon in high school but had attributed it to a rite of passage everyone went through at that age.
And as she had always thought, that love was supposed to be intense, fleeting, and as a result, painful. It had been all three but also all wrong.
Her feelings for Shannon had been intense and painful, but Caroline realized they were not fleeting.
The way they had avoided each other for years, never sharing more than a few words when their two different racing tours coincided kept her feelings for Shannon buried. But they were just below the surface all along, and after that night, that wonderful night, could never be buried again. Her name was called and Caroline stepped forward.
After the pomp and circumstance of the awards ceremony, the interviews and countless pictures, Caroline was finally alone in her hotel room. Her medal hung heavy around her neck and it clunked loudly as she dropped it on the oak table. She grabbed a bottle of cold water from the minibar and kicked off her shoes. There was a knock on the door when the lid on the bottle cracked open. Her heart jumped and the first name that came to mind was Shannon. Having finished fourth,
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she didn’t need to be at the awards ceremony and she wasn’t. Other than their discussion in her tent last night, Caroline had successfully avoided Shannon for most of the week. She prayed her luck had not run out. She still had no idea what to do with her feelings for Shannon going forward.
Looking through the peephole, Caroline sighed, unlocked, and opened the door. “Hey,” was her greeting as Fran walked into the room.“Hey yourself. Where’d you run off to? We looked for you at the party. Your parents sent me on the search mission.” She hesitated. “You okay?”
Caroline didn’t want to get into it with Fran. She was physically tired, emotionally exhausted, and for one frightening moment she thought she was going to cry. She’d made her views known, told Shannon to leave her alone, never speak to her again. How could she go back to her now? She was going to cry over Shannon Roberts. Been there, done that, and she was going to do it again and again.
“Yeah, fine. Just a little tired.” Caroline busied herself with opening her bottle of water. She offered one to Fran who shook her head as she plopped in the chair by the small desk. She knew Fran well enough to read her body language and Fran had just settled in for a long, probing interrogation.
“Come on, Caroline.”
Caroline crossed the room and pulled the curtains to shut out the setting sun. She took a long moment before turning and facing Fran.
“There is nothing to talk about. We got together for old time’s sake. She moved on and so have I.” It was a rather succinct explanation.
It was the truth. At least the first two parts. She was going to have to work on the third.
“And?” Fran wasn’t going to accept her explanation at face value.“And nothing. It happened, and it won’t happen again.” Caroline didn’t know if she was trying to convince Fran or herself. She kept talking to do both. “I don’t fit in her life and she definitely doesn’t fit in mine.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come on, Fran, you know what I’m talking about. We haven’t
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said more than three things to each other in ten years. Other than riding her bike and sleeping with more women than I even know, I have no idea what she does with her life. And it doesn’t matter. It was just a trip down memory lane. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You are so full of shit. How do you even stand yourself?” Fran hadn’t moved or even raised her voice. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.
I’ve seen the way you can’t keep your eyes off her. You knew every minute of every day where Shannon was this week. And you wanted to be with her. Just admit it and stop pretending she doesn’t still mean something to you.”
“Shut up, Fran,” Caroline said louder than she intended. “Just shut up. You have no idea what I want and certainly not what I’m thinking. The season is over. I’ve done what I wanted to do. I won the championship. I’m the best rider in the world. Now it’s time to grow up and be a big girl. In three weeks, I’ll be standing in front of six people who will judge me like I have never been judged before. They will control whether or not I get to do what I’ve always dreamed of. Those men will have my future in the palms of their pompous, fat, little hands.
I don’t need any more pressure right now and I certainly don’t need any more shit about Shannon Roberts, so please just shut the fuck up.”
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ChaPTER TwENTy-ThREE
Shannon smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles out of her pants and centered the gleaming silver buckle on her belt. She was more nervous than she expected to be. She still wasn’t sure why she was here. She had nothing in common with these people except for the fact that they had gone to the same school ten years ago. She hadn’t spoken to any of them since the day Caroline’s father walked into Caroline’s room and changed Shannon’s life forever. If not for the pictures in Facebook, she probably wouldn’t recognize any of the people here if they walked past her on the street. It still wasn’t too late to turn around and leave. And do what? Go back to her empty hotel room and drink? Worse yet, think, remember? She’d been doing enough of that lately, especially the drinking part. Whoever said drinking washed away sadness never had her heart broken by Caroline Davis.
The tastefully ornate sign indicated the Grand Ballroom was to her left. The lobby of the Marriott Royale Resort was as stuffy and pretentious as she remembered from the time she and her parents stayed there when they had come to visit the campus of Mount Holyfield. Good God, was it almost fifteen years ago when they had spent the weekend touring and interviewing with the administration and faculty? For a moment Shannon wondered if Dean Phillips would be in attendance.
What would she say to her now?
Subdued music led her to the large room decorated with balloons—green and white, the school colors of MHA. A large sign that read WelcOMe aluMni hung over the wide double doors. People floated in and out of the room chatting and laughing, many of them holding champagne glasses.
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Shannon hung back observing the scene. The women were immaculately dressed in an assortment of cocktail dresses and evening wear. They were all thin, almost to the point of being emaciated, and made up to the point of being comical. More than one pair of surgically enhanced breasts passed in front of her.
The men were equally stylish. Some had donned tuxedos for the event, others simply wore dark suits with conservative power ties. They were as tan as if they had just stepped off the tennis court or a week on a yacht. The people and the place reeked of old money, superficial smiles, and air kisses. And what in the hell was she doing in the middle of it? She had absolutely no idea but kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Unclenching her fists, Shannon walked to the registration table.
Three women way too perky to be for real greeted her. “Hello, welcome to our reunion. Your name?” The women looked at her, searching her face for anything that would jog their memories for Shannon’s name.