“This is just the beginning,” Eric said, unscrolling the design plan for Coach T.’s approval, Gwen flanking him, smelling strongly of perfume. Katie, behind everyone, unable to see.
“We’ll have to go dark,” Coach T. said, reading glasses slipping down his nose. “And find another place to practice. But hell, I’m grateful.”
During practice, high up in the family viewing section, all the parents could talk about was the pit.
“Teddy’s been dragging his feet on this for years,” Molly Chu said to Gwen. “And you and Eric, it’s all because of you two. Our pit at last!”
Gwen twitched a smile. “It’s simply required for a competitive gym,” she said. “And why Teddy hasn’t installed one is a major concern for me.”
“The building owners wouldn’t allow it,” Molly said. “That’s what he told me.”
“He told me good spotting means you don’t need one,” Kirsten Siefert said.
But there were whispers among the boosters that Teddy’s true reasons were more personal. Rumors of financial strain—two sons at expensive colleges and one in law school, a house renovation, a new deck. It was his gym, of course, but given the high fees he charged, couldn’t he invest more in BelStars? And when Eric filled out the booster club’s tax forms and saw how much Teddy paid himself, he had to admit to Katie that it was frustrating.
“Well, now we have everything,” Katie said, looking down at Eric on the gym floor, hands on Devon’s shoulders, talking and talking and talking.
Construction took place during the Summer Olympics, the BelStars buzzing with Olympic fever, holding viewing parties and even, among the boosters, a small betting pool.
Practice was relocated to the nearby middle school, an arrangement made possible, of course, by Gwen, though no one knew how.
Meanwhile, under Gwen’s vigilant watch, a crew of men of Portuguese descent worked seemingly around the clock to dig the pit, splitting the floorboards like matchsticks, pouring concrete all day.
When one of them fell ill, a substitute worker arrived in the form of Coach T.’s pool boy, a lean-hipped young man named Ryan Beck.
This was how Ryan came into their world.
Chapter Three
The Foot might have been an end. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning. The Fall might have been an end too, were it not for the Pit, which offered a second chance.
But the Pit brought Ryan Beck. And Ryan Beck, that sweet, chipped-tooth, handsome young man—well, he ruined everything in his own way.
Walking into BelStars with Drew, Katie caught her first glimpse of Ryan, with his long tanned arms swinging a piece of rebar like a baton, laughing at something one of the workers had said. Ryan was always laughing.
Over the next two weeks, everyone came to watch the construction of the pit. And to see Ryan.
Each morning, he stripped down to his undershirt, jeans hanging low on his waist, and climbed down into the pit, eight feet beneath the gym floor. And then it began, all the gymnasts, ages seven to seventeen, making excuses to visit, taking turns peeking over the pit edge, hoping for one of his smiles. And many of the booster moms too.
But it turned out Ryan was already taken, by Hailey, everyone’s new favorite tumbling coach, who tended with such care to the younger girls, hands on their curling spines, their sprigged thighs, somersaulting them. The pair had been spotted sharing French fries at the Sundae House, their foreheads nearly pressed together, like Archie and Veronica.
“I’m glad for Hailey,” Gwen said, and all the mothers agreed. Because Hailey was adored, and no one knew why she had so much trouble keeping a boyfriend.
Soon enough, Hailey started coming to the gym too, arriving in her sprightly purple car and sitting in the bleachers as Ryan worked and leaving only when practice required her to. Finally the other girls got the hint and stayed away.
Only little Drew remained.
He was supposed to be in the game room, but Katie and Eric found him hovering a few feet from all the activity, watching the concrete mixer spin and whir.
Inside the pit, Katie could see the back of Ryan’s head, the delicate curve of his neck. Earbuds in, he smoothed the concrete with the power trowel, his arms floating back and forth gracefully.
“Ryan said it was okay to watch,” Drew told them, “if I stand back just this far.”
“Well, he doesn’t know,” Eric said, pulling Drew away by his jacket hood. “He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know what’s safe.”
As if he had heard, Ryan glanced up at them but only grinned.
Looking down, Katie wondered how deep they would go, digging that pit. How deep Teddy and Eric would make them go.
Ryan seemed down so far that he might disappear.