1 - Abs Aged Better Than Reputation
Part One
“I fucking hate you.”
1 - Abs Aged Better Than Reputation
Liam
The water was my confession booth, and this morning, I had sins to atone for.
The pool deck was silent at five in the morning except for the hum of filtration systems and my own breathing, which was measured, controlled, and the only thing in my life that still was. With a deep breath, I dove in, letting the cold shock my system awake, and started my first set of butterfly strokes.
One length. Then two. By the third, I could feel that fraction of a second where my timing was off, where my body wasn’t quite syncing with my mind. My fingertips brushed the wall at fifty-four point three seconds.
It should have been fifty-three point eight.
Half a second.
But in swimming, that was the difference between gold and going home. Or between being ‘Liam James, Olympic Champion’ and ‘Liam James, Remember Him?’
Coach Ricardo stood at the edge, stopwatch in hand, his weathered face carefully neutral. We both knew what those numbers meant. He said nothing, just nodded for me to continue.
He said nothing, and that was worse than yelling.
Once upon a time, the 100m butterfly had been my entire identity. Olympic gold, world records, and magazine covers calling me unstoppable.
Now? I was the guy with a six-pack and a scandal attached to his name.
Apparently, abs aged better than reputation.
The pool had always been my church. The only place where the noise stopped, where I could be just a body moving through water instead of Liam James, Olympic gold medalist turned professional disappointment with commitment issues.
I pushed harder on the next set, trying to find that rhythm again. The one that had won me gold in Tokyo, which had made me the fastest butterfly swimmer in the world. But my shoulders were tired in a way that had nothing to do with lactic acid, and everything to do with the fact that I had been running on empty for longer than I cared to admit.
The fire was dimming. I could feel it, that hunger that used to consume me every time I touched the water. Now it was just routine. Muscle memory and going through motions that used to mean everything.
“Take five,” the coach called out.
I grabbed the edge, breathing hard, and that’s when my phone buzzed nearby. Seven missed calls from Xavier, my publicist. This is never a good sign.
Before I could reach it, my mind did what it always did during rest intervals. It drifted back to places I had spent a decade trying to avoid.
I was eighteen again, standing in the hallway of my high school, watching Ethan Kane, my best friend, kiss Kiara Sharma.
My heart ached because they were meant for each other. I had made sure that they got together because Kiara was brilliant and kind. Ethan was sweet and head over heels for the Indian firecracker ever since they were kids.
And he wasn’t the kind of guy who broke things just by existing near them.
I never told anyone about the heartbreak. Not Ethan, not Kiara, certainly not my parents, who were already disappointed enough that I had chosen to swim over the family business.
That night, I made a decision that love wasn’t for people like me. People who were always chasing something, always moving, never quite able to stay still long enough to hold on to anything real.
It was easier that way.
My phone buzzed again, snapping me back to reality.
I hauled myself out of the pool and grabbed it, water dripping onto the screen. Xavier’s name flashed, and I sighed.
“Please tell me you’re calling with good news,” I answered, already knowing better.
“Define good,” Xavier said, his voice tight, which meant he already had four espressos, and it wasn’t even seven in the morning. “Have you seen Elite Gossip this morning?”
“Xavier, darling,” I crooned, knowing his jaw was clenched. “I’ve been swimming. I haven’t seen anything except chlorinated water and my own mediocre fucking times.”
“Right,” he said tightly. “Well, according to Elite Gossip, you’re currently dating three women. Simultaneously. There are photos of you with the Swedish gymnast, the model from that charity gala, and… wait for it—Sofia.”
I closed my eyes. Sofia, the Portuguese swimmer I went on exactly one date with three months ago. She wanted something serious, while I wanted to go home and watch Netflix. Alone.
We had agreed to disagree.
“The Swedish gymnast and I had coffee. One coffee. We talked about carb-loading strategies.”
“Sounds riveting and very romantic.”
“The model? I said hello to her. Just once at a gala I attended for exactly forty-five minutes.”
“And the yacht party photos?”
“I left that party at ten because I had training at five, which, shockingly, is where I am right now,” I said, rubbing my face. “Xavier, I haven’t even—” I lowered my voice, even though Coach was the only one here. “I’ve been celibate for four months. I have forgotten what pussy feels like. I’m more concerned with which hand lotion—”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?”
“Liam. Your entire brand is built on being the charismatic playboy athlete. The sponsors eat it up, and the fans go crazy over it. And you’re telling me it’s all—”
“Smoke and mirrors? Yeah, pretty much.” I grabbed my towel, suddenly exhausted. “Most of those women? We didn’t even kiss, let alone hold hands! The media sees me talking to someone and runs with it.”
“But can you at least try to look like you care about your image?” Xavier said, sounding as if he were strangling his phone. “The James family brand is getting nervous. Your father called me yesterday.”
Of course he did. My father, who built a luxury watch empire and expected his only son to be the perfect ambassador. Instead, he got me. An Olympic champion, yes, but also the guy who couldn’t seem to keep his face out of the tabloids for the wrong reasons, and couldn’t keep it in his pants.
“Tell him I’m handling it.”
“Are you, though?” Xavier said, his voice softening. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re self-destructing in slow motion.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said, not knowing how. “Just... give me some time.”
After Xavier hung up, I sat on the bench, staring at my reflection in the pool’s surface. Twenty-six years old, Olympic gold medalist, millionaire from endorsements and family money.
And completely, utterly hollow inside.
Ethan had finally proposed to Kiara two weeks ago. I had stood there with a champagne flute, watching my best friend slip a ring onto the finger of the girl I loved when I was a kid, and felt... happy.
Genuinely fucking happy.
Of course, I didn’t want her anymore, but I craved what they had. That certainty and that solid, tangible thing that didn’t disappear when the cameras stopped flashing.
I wanted to feel something that wasn’t performance.
My phone dinged again. Another tabloid notification. I was about to close it when a name caught my eye.
Deepika Sharma: Hollywood’s Jealous Problem Child?
I shouldn’t have clicked. I had my own PR disasters to deal with. But something made me open it. Maybe boredom, maybe that dark curiosity that made me read articles about myself, even though they always made me feel worse.
It was as if the article was dishing out insults in that typical internet way, where being mean was just part of the show.
‘Depika’ couldn’t let her sister be happy. ‘Depika’ was difficult on set. ‘Depika’ was jealous, unstable, and unprofessional.
“They couldn’t even bother to spell her name right,” I muttered to the empty pool deck.
I scrolled through the comments, each one worse than the last. People tearing apart her body, her acting, her right to be upset about her boyfriend cheating on her with her own sister.
I should have felt vindicated because Deepika Sharma had hated me since we were eight years old.
The memory hit me as if it were yesterday. The harsh summer sun falling over us as Kiara’s cousins visited San Francisco from LA. Some business connection between our fathers that meant I had to ‘be nice’ to their daughters. But only one of her cousins showed up, Deepika.
I was showing off in our pool, doing flip turns and underwater handstands, because that’s what eight-year-old boys did when they wanted to impress people. Or in my case, when I wanted everyone to know I was the best at something. Even better than Ethan, the quiet, grumpy kid who was attached at the hip with Kiara.
Deepika had been sitting at the edge, feet dangling in the water, wearing this frilly pink dress that looked expensive. She couldn’t swim well. I remember her saying something about only knowing how to float, but I was too busy being a cocky little shit to care.
“Watch this!” I shouted and dove deep, coming up right next to her with an enormous splash.
Water went everywhere. All over her dress, her face, and her dark hair in a cute ribbon.
And all over her hand that donned a delicate gold ring (that was loose on her small finger) with a tiny stone that caught the sunlight. I watched her face change as she looked down at it and watched the ring slip off her wet finger in what felt like slow motion.
It hit the pool deck and bounced once. Then it rolled right into the pool.
It was gone.
Her face crumpled. “That was from my grandmother,” she whispered, staring at the water where the ring had disappeared. “She died last year. It was her ring.”
I was frozen, suddenly aware that I had done something terrible, that there were some things you couldn’t just apologize your way out of. The ring was at the bottom of the deep end, twelve feet down, and Deepika couldn’t swim well enough to get it.
“I didn’t mean—” I started.
But she didn’t let me finish. With both hands, she shoved me hard, and we ended up in the water together. What started as her trying to dunk me in revenge turned into both of us thrashing around, each trying to prove we were stronger, better, and more capable of drowning the other.
My mom had pulled us out, both of us sputtering and furious, and the Sharmas had left early.
I never apologized properly, and she never forgave me.
We had been enemies ever since.
The last time we met was two years ago at some industry party where Hollywood and the sports world collided. She had looked at me with those sharp dark eyes and said, “Still the same arrogant, over-hyped pretty boy with more ego than talent, I see.”
I smirked and winked at her. “And you’re still a wannabe starlet who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.”
She walked away, and I felt hollow for the rest of the night, the way I always did after our encounters. Like we were both reciting lines from a script we had memorized too well.
I bet she writes out all her disses in her notes app. Just like I do. Probably even recites them in the mirror if we ever end up stumbling into each other.
I can’t prove it, but I’m sure of it.
Every charity event, every industry party where our worlds collided, we circled each other like sharks, all sharp smiles and sharper words, still eight years old and drowning in that pool.
I hated her because she hated me first.
But reading that article, seeing the comments dissecting her like she was something less than human...
I felt something uncomfortably close to pity.
Nobody deserved it. Not even Deepika Sharma, with her devastating smile and her ability to make me feel like an idiot with just one perfectly arched eyebrow.
‘Depika,’ I read again, shaking my head. The disrespect was almost impressive in its laziness.
My thumb hovered over the share button. Some petty part of me wanted to add to the pile, wanted to screenshot and send to the group chat with a laughing emoji.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I closed the article and tossed my phone aside.
The water was calling me back. The only honest thing in my life and the only place where I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone except exactly who I was.
A guy who was only good at swimming and increasingly bad at everything else.
I dove back in, and for twenty-five meters, I almost felt like myself again.
Almost.
