Page 97 of Salto

He wasn't wearing his usual sweats.

Instead, he had on a pair of black swim trunks and a charcoal-gray T-shirt that fit him just a little too well. His sunglasses rested on top of his head, and the evening breeze ruffled the strands of hair falling across his forehead.

He looked...

I immediately stopped that train of thought. We had a contract.

Friends.

I needed to remember that.

“Hey,” he said casually as I walked over to him.

“Hey.” I gestured to his normal-people clothes. “You clean up nice.”

“Thanks,” he said. His gaze swept over me for the briefest second before returning to my face. “You too.”

He cleared his throat.

My mind immediately jumped back to the booth yesterday, when he'd called me devastatingly beautiful—hypothetically.

I flushed.

Stop it. You suck at this.

I forced the words out of my head and looked down at the pair of jean shorts I’d thrown on with my favorite gray T-shirt over a one-piece black swimsuit.

“Thanks,” I said, reaching up to fiddle with the end of my ponytail, but it wasn’t there because my hair was down. My hand awkwardly hit my shoulder before falling to my side again.

He pushed himself off the truck.

“Ready?”

I nodded, going around to the other side. I got into the passenger seat and buckled in.

We pulled out of the parking lot and started down the main road.

“So…” I said. “Will a lot of your gymnastics friends be there tonight?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Most of the men's team. Lexi'll be there too.”

“Lexi?” My eyebrows rose. It took me a second, but then I remembered. She was the girl who'd asked if I was okay in the locker room the other day. “You two are friends?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She dated Dean for a while. He’s my best friend, and even after they broke up, they stayed friends. We’ve all kind of been one big friend group ever since.”

“Is it weird being a coach now, going to these things when not that long ago you were attending as an athlete?”

He let out a dry laugh. “Yeah. It's definitely taken some getting used to.”

“Did they take you seriously when you started?”

He smiled to himself. “Not at first.”

I shook my head. “I can't imagine the guys made that easy.”

“They didn't.” He chuckled. “The first few months, it was really awkward. Dean still gives me crap every chance he gets. But once they realized I wasn't coming back to compete and that this was my life now, it got easier.”

“So they see you as Coach Rove now?”