Maybe Nice Guys Don't Always Finish Last

Mira was sitting at the top of the drop in for the freestyle competition the next day, waiting for her third and final run. Since she won gold last year, she was prequalified first which means she was the last rider to go. She had so much more than just the contest on her mind. Cory hadn’t shown up. Mira was beyond pissed. She called him before she left for her first run and broke up with him. He wasn’t even awake when she called. She was going to hang up after it rang like ten times, but he ended up answering. He seemed too out of it to know what was going on.

Of course, Blake wouldn’t talk to her. She was starting to get over it. She did her best to try and fix it, but he denied. There wasn’t much more she could do to change his mind. The thing that bugged her the most was Adam. She wanted to talk to him about so many things, but couldn’t. He wouldn’t talk to her. She saw him and Blake walk past her trailer a few times, staring, but they never stopped to talk.

She shook those thoughts aside as the announcer’s voice boomed through the arena. Butterflies filled her stomach, but not the good kind. From the start she had a bad feeling about her whole run. When she dropped in she was sitting in third. She didn’t think she could better her score at all. Her time was running out and wanted more than anything for it to be over. She just had one jump left. For some reason, she wanted to attempt the Flying Dutchman that she landed twice on dirt, but were sketchy. She hadn’t even seen Blake pull it off. She left the ramp and immediately knew it was going to go way wrong. Her rotation stopped on the 360 and she bailed out right as she was at the highest point of the trick. As she was falling, she tried to take as much speed off of her landing as she could. The result was her taking all the weight of her body on her left side, mostly her lower half, but she landed towards the bottom of the landing and smacked her head on the hard ground. Her vision was blurred and she was starting to lose consciousness fast. She was able to make out someone running towards her in the distance. She expected it be a medic, but was surprised to see Blake kneeling next to her. She started to move towards him, but he stopped her.

“No, lay still. You’re going to be fine. I’m not leaving you,” he said as he was pushed back by people in red shirts.

Mira completely blacked out. Blake, on the other hand, was having a hard time keeping his composure. Adam came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He nodded to him in acknowledgement. The more the medics moved her, the more nervous Blake got. Her body was so limp and her leg was twisted in an awkward way. Joey came running towards them as they got Mira on a stretcher. His look mirrored that of Blake and Adam’s.

“Are any of you immediate family?” one of the medics asked the three boys as they took Mira away.

Joey and Adam looked at each other and pushed Blake forward.

“He’s her fiancé,” Adam said as Blake looked back at him.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” Blake asked through his teeth so the medic couldn’t hear.

“I think Mira’s a hell of a lot more important then a couple medals right now. Go,” Adam said as he gave him another shove forward.

He got the hint this time and started running towards the ambulance. He was trying so hard to keep from freaking out at the sight of Mira. Most of her face was hidden from a brace, she already had numerous tubes going into her, and she wasn’t moving. The only movement she showed was the slight up and down movement of her chest from breathing. That’s the only thing that kept Blake together. She was breathing. Once they got to the hospital, Blake had to wait out in the waiting room. Mira wasn’t as stable as the doctors would like. As he waited Adam showed up.

“Heard anything yet?” he asked as he sat across from him. He just nodded his head no. “Joey said he would come as soon as he could. He wanted to call some people,” he went on.

He still didn’t get much of a response from Blake. Now Adam was worried about two of his friends. About ten minutes later and no words being exchanged by the two, a doctor came out. He explained her injuries to them. As they added up, Blake cringed. None of them were life threatening, but would take her a while to recover. She had a broken her left leg, three broken fingers on her right hand, a bruised back, pulled rib muscles, minor cuts and bruises all around and a concussion.

“You can see her whenever you want. Her rooms the last one on the right,” he said and left.

“Do you want me…” Adam started but didn’t get the chance to finish.

He was going to ask if Blake wanted him to go with him to see her. Before he could even ask he was all the way down the hall. He sighed, expecting the worst so he wouldn’t be surprised and went down to Mira’s room. He stopped in the doorway when he saw Blake. He was just standing there staring at her. He had so much pain in his eyes. Seeing Mira still not moving tore Blake up. He snapped out of his daze and pulled up a chair to set by her. Gently, he reached out for her hand. Her left one. In his mind, he willed her to just give his hand a little squeeze. She never did. What they didn’t know was that Mira couldn’t see what was around her, but she had her hearing.

“Why do I feel so guilty?” Blake asked glancing at Adam.

“It’s not your fault man,” he replied with.

“Joey told me she was stressed out. Our little incident last night didn’t help things. If I had called her back she probably wouldn’t be her right now. All of us would be back at X smiling as we got or medals. Now look at us. This is so stupid,” he said getting frustrated.

“But she’s fine,” Adam said trying to look on the bright side.

“You call this fine?” he asked looking back at her. “Adam, no one has any idea how much I like her.”

“I think we have an idea,” Adam said with smirk.

“Just everything about her is amazing. I love everything about her. I love her competitiveness, her attitude, and her fearlessness. Everything that makes her her is just incredible. I went to tell her that last night, and apologize, but she wasn’t in her room,” he said while looking at Mira.

“She needs a good guy, Bilko,” Adam said.

“How’d I get so mean to her? I never wanted that to happen. I just wanted to talk about that night at the club and turned into this huge barney,” he said as she squeezed her hand slightly, but didn’t open her eyes.

“I think we all got a little too mean towards each other. Don’t beat yourself up over this man. You could tell she liked you just as much. I’ve known Mira for a long time. If she likes a guy, she just ignores him and anything that has to do with him completely… like she did with you,” Adam said with a small smile.

“Really?” Blake asked as small sliver of happiness went through his body.

He looked back at Mira and saw that her eyes were twitching. He willed her to open them. The only thing he wanted was to see her sparkling blue eyes. Her eyes eventually fluttered open and were unfocused. They fell on him and grew wide.

“Blake?” She said with a raspy voice.

“I’m here, Mira,” He said as he tightened his grip on her hand slightly.

“Blake I’m so sorry about everything,” she said as she started getting upset. She started to shake.

“It’s ok. You’re fine. I’m here for you,” he said trying to get her to calm down.

He climbed onto a space on her bed and pulled her close to him carefully. She gasped from the sharp pain she got, but it went away fast. He apologized, but she managed to smile at him. Adam said that he would give them a few minutes as he left the room. Her shaking slowly stopped. He wanted to talk to her more, but realized she was asleep. He smiled at her and kissed her on her forehead and watched her sleep.