“You make our ceremony outfits look really cute,” Kinsley said.
She was lying; the outfits were way over the top. The Olympic committee had enlisted a young designer, Lorena Lefray, and she’d decided that every athlete from the United States should rock a bright red jumpsuit. I felt like I was about to parachute out of an airplane so, yeah, clearly, I didn’t understand high fashion.
“Thanks,” I muttered, staring out past the living room window. I could just barely make out the mountain range in the distance.
Kinsley and Becca carried over our bowls of granola and took their seats at the table. For the first half of breakfast, I ate in silence, more than happy to listen to their conversation take place without me.
“What’s wrong?” Kinsley asked. “You’ve hardly touched your granola when most mornings you almost eat the spoon on accident.”
“I’m just not that hungry.”
“Are you having cramps?”
I shook my head.
“Diarrhee-ree?”
I smiled. “No.”
“She’s lonely,” Becca offered.
“No I’m not.”
“When’s the last time you felt the touch of a man, Andie?” Kinsley asked.
I squeezed my eyes closed. “Never,” I lied. “I’ve never felt the touch of a man. Let’s drop this.”
“I have a brilliant idea!” Becca said.
I glanced up to take in her wide smile. “No thanks. I’m fine. No brilliant ideas needed.”
Becca already had her phone out and she was scrolling through the app store. “I’ve heard this rumor…”
I focused on my granola and tried to pretend my hearing had gone so they’d leave me alone.
“Apparently a ton of athletes are using Tinder to find hookups during the games.”
Kinsley leaned forward. “Are you serious?”
I caught Becca’s nod out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah, Michelle and Nina were telling me about it yesterday. There’s like a thousand athletes on there and you can narrow down the distance so you only see the profiles for other people in the village.”
“Cute. I hope they find love,” I said before scraping my chair away from the table and carrying my half-full bowl of granola over to the sink.
Becca continued, “Look, I know we were being hard on you the first few days we were here. We just didn’t want you to go loco. But we can tell you’re depressed from all of this Freddie stuff, and sometimes the best way to get out of a slump is to get a good hump!”
“Yes!” Kinsley said, high-fiving her for the rhyme. “It’s settled then. We’ll make a profile for Andie. I already have this photo of her in a bikini I was going to use for blackmail someday.”
“NOPE!” I shouted from the kitchen. “No profiles needed, but thanks!”
They ignored me. Kinsley scooted her chair around the table to join Becca. They dropped their heads together and got to work. I washed out my dish and loaded it into the dishwasher, listening as they giggled like two schoolgirls.
“I think we should say she’s ‘a fun-loving girl with a heart of gold’.”
Becca shook her head. “Boring. How about ‘A leggy blonde with lots of room for love’.”
I closed the dishwasher. “That makes it sound like I have a huge vagina or something.”
They ignored me.
“I think we should just say how it is,” Becca said. “‘A desperate but pretty soccer player in need of a good fuck.’”
I ran to the table and ripped the phone out of their hands so fast, I nearly took Becca’s finger with it.
“No!” I held the phone up above my head so they couldn’t get to it. “No Tinder profiles. I don’t need to sleep with a random athlete to feel better. Ugh! I’m fine!”
Kinsley turned to Becca. “Hmm. Better add ‘cranky’ after ‘desperate’.”
EVERY ATHLETE WAS expected to meet in the lobby by 9:00 AM so we could locate our rendezvous point and get placed on buses that would take us to the stadium for the opening ceremonies. It sounded like an easy task, but we had to wait for an elevator on our floor for ten minutes, and when one finally arrived, it was already filled with athletes.
“C’mon, let’s take the stairs,” Kinsley said, leading us toward a side stairwell where we joined the crowd of people making their way to the first floor.
“OUT OF THE WALKWAY!” shouted a woman standing on top of a chair off to the side of the lobby. She was trying to convince a group of British guys to move and clear a path for people to walk. They’d taken up residence right at the foot of the stairs so that even if we wanted to join the athletes from our country, we couldn’t.
“American athletes move to the left of the rope! Great Britain to the right!” the woman shouted again, trying to amplify her voice with a piece of rolled up paper. Most everyone completely ignored her. They were rowdy and excited to see the friends they’d made during the last Olympic games. Whoever thought amassing a couple hundred athletes in one lobby was a good idea should have been fired.