London Love

Later that night she was on the phone with her best friend, Tyler. Just talking about London and her trip made her feel so much better. She was actually smiling and laughing for the first time since the club.

“So what’s with all the cryptic messages on your blog,” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she responded playing it down like it was nothing.

“Oh, come on, I know you better than that,” he stated. She could feel him rolling his eyes from halfway around the world.

“Ok, fine. The night of the opening ceremony I met Michael’s Phelps’s mom and sisters in the hotel pool. Then I ran into them at the natatorium the night he broke the record and they invited me to join them all for dinner. Then I went to a club with a bunch of the swimmers the other night,” she explained.

“Gee, you sound so excited about all of that, you met one of the greatest, if not the greatest, athlete in the world and you’re acting like it was like meeting some joe smo on the street,” he said sarcastically. “Now seriously, what’s going on, I can tell something’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” she lied. She could hear the anger in his voice.

“Catherine.”

“What?” she asked, trying to sound innocent.

“Spill. Now,” he demanded.

“Fine. Michael is the one that asked me to go to the club and gave me his phone number. We danced and it felt….idk…amazing. But it’s too good to be true, I don’t want to get close enough to get hurt. You know me. I’m not good enough for the guy next door, why the hell would I think I could ever be good enough for Michael Phelps. Better to have one night of fun and have that be it. He’d forget me as soon as we returned to the states anyway,” saying all of this caused her to burst into another round of tears.

“Cath….God you frustrate me. You claim that no one wants you but when someone tries, you just push them away. Give the guy a shot. You’ll never get what you want if you don’t let anyone get close,” he yelled through the phone.

“Yeah, like he’d want anything to do with me if he knew how screwed up I was,” she sobbed.

“Explain it all to him. I’m sure he’s got some baggage of his own. You don’t know any of that unless you give it a shot. That’s all I have to say,” he said, clear frustration in his tone. “I have to go, talk to him Catherine.”

She ended the call and curled into a ball on her side. She really didn’t know what to do. She really did like him. He made her feel something she had never felt. 'What the hell, it’s worth a shot isn’t it'. She sent a message to Michael apologizing for not responding to any of his texts and asking if they could talk later. He responded that he’d let her know when he was back for the night and then they could talk. With that she hopped into the shower to make herself look semi-human again.