Jo had almost never felt so relieved to touch the ground.
Landing herself in the room where she'd stay until her event, she spent a good while sleeping off the jet lag before she had to meet with the rest of her teammates to discuss the games ahead.
After opening the door, the space went quiet. "The hell you all staring at?" she asked with a frown, looking over her shoulder. "There's not some weirdo behind me, is there?"
"Just come sit down, Josephine," the captain of the team politely requested. She was holding court with a squishy chair as her throne, sporting her team jacket. "Good to see you looking better than you were on the plane."
Jo found the last empty space and plonked herself down, feeling the need to take up as much space as she could.
"Alright, ladies, we're here. This is it. I'm sure you all have some nerves spinning around, eh, but now is the time to forget about them. You're all so incredibly talented at what you do and I'm so blessed to have been voted as captain-" she began her sappy spiel she'd given before every big meet since getting her spot. She could jump over hurdles like nobody's business but when it came to coming up with speeches she'd slammed right into a wall.
That visual made Jo exhale to herself, covering her amused smile with her sleeve.
"Something funny, Josephine?" the captain asked politely, appearing miffed in her body language but not in her smile.
"Nah, continue, please," Jo insisted, waving it off.
Her phone conveniently started buzzing in her sweatpants pocket. "Oh, sorry, gotta take this." She didn't wait for permission to leave, heading for the hallway that led to the bedrooms. She caught a "now we can be serious" from the captain, followed by sparing laughs from her teammates, and frowned to herself.
Trying to ignore the new rock in her stomach, she looked down at the number plastered across her phone screen. It was one she hadn't seen in a long while. She didn't even have the contact properly named.
Why is he calling me now?
She clicked the answer button. "Hello?"
"Jo! What's up? Been awhile, huh."
"How on Earth did you get this number? You've still got a few years on that sentence, don't ya, ankle chains?" Jo asked, surprised for once and also confused. She hadn't really communicated with Duncan consistently since one visit to his prison some time after she'd finished therapy to get over the repetitive nightmares she'd been having involving beetles a couple years back. She'd been too busy training ever since to go back, let alone call him.
"Got it off a friend of a friend. She visited a couple weeks ago." He sounded the same as ever, albeit more sleep deprived and dehydrated. "And yeah, not done here just yet, but I heard through the old grapevine you're in big league territory these days! The TV in this joint plays a lot of sports, keeps the real scary guys from losing it." She heard a clanging sound on his end, as well as a few other, more masculine voices. "It's not always effective."
"So, what, you're using your call to tell me…what, exactly?"
"To kick ass over there in big London Town! I wonder if it's as shit as it was when I tried to ditch the show. Good times, good times…" he sounded slightly bitter. "I know you probably don't get much positive feedback, being who you are—and I love that about you, strong chicks are somebody's thing!—and I'm just happy to know someone competing in the Olympics. Figured, hey, make it part of my community service to hype you up, ha!"
Jo stopped herself from smiling at his joke, even though he couldn't see her if she did. "Wow, you're so charitable," she replied with sarcasm. "I haven't seen much of the place since I got here, and probably won't. Gotta focus on winning." She leaned against the hallway wall. Little snippets of what the captain was saying in the other room reached her ears but she didn't pay much attention to it.
"That sounds about right. Wanna see that gold next time ya swing by. Hell, maybe I'll see it on the little screen in the recreation room first. Might have to wrestle with the guard to change the channel from synchronized swimming, but hey, it's worth a shot, right?"
"Good luck with that, jumpsuit."
A pause. "Ah, they're tellin' me to get off the phone. Timer's up already?" He sighed dramatically. "I said what I wanted to say, anyhow. What day's your event?"
"Uh, one sec-" Jo tried to remember off the top of her head. "The third-" He had hung up, or had been hung up. She stared down at her phone. "He did say his time was up…idiot, should've asked earlier." She put away her phone and walked back to the room with her team still listening to the captain yap on and on…
"Oh, the whole Canadian team is going out for dinner tonight after the opening ceremony! So bring something nice to wear when we go, eh. Yes, it is mandatory." The captain smiled.
Jo had stopped listening to her droning. She was thinking about the jog she'd go on tomorrow morning to get back in the groove of running and still wondering who had given Duncan her number. She missed a few important details from the captain but she'd figure it out…probably.
