The Favorites: A Novel(56)

“Well, your secret’s safe with me. And if you want to let people think I’m your girlfriend, that’s fine.”

He smiled. “Are you seriously volunteering to be my beard?”

“I mean, I kind of am already?”

“The way we skated tonight isn’t going to hurt those rumors, is it?”

“Not at all.”

Garrett gestured to the champagne bottle in my hand. “Shall we toast to that?”

“I don’t know how to open it,” I admitted.

“Allow me.”

Garrett popped the cork with a practiced twist, and foam spilled into the surf. He took a sip before handing me the bottle. The champagne was lukewarm, and despite how much I’m sure the stuff cost, my face screwed up in disgust at the tart taste. I made myself swallow, then took another gulp for good measure.

We sat on one of the flatter rocks in the breakwater, facing the hotel. Though the performances were over, the party was still going strong, with a DJ spinning remixes of pop songs. Over the breeze, I could make out the soaring chorus of “Somewhere Only We Know.”

Garrett draped his suit jacket over my shoulders, and we spent a few minutes passing our stolen Dom Pérignon back and forth.

“You want to go back to the party?” he asked.

“So some dude old enough to be my grandfather can try to grab my ass when his third wife isn’t looking? No thanks.” I took another swig of champagne. “Besides, I’d rather steer clear of—”

“Heath?”

I almost told Garrett about the moment in the elevator. How close I’d come to ruining everything.

“It’s got to be hard for him,” Garrett said. “Seeing you with another guy.”

Classic Garrett Lin: always able to put himself in someone else’s shoes, to empathize even when the other party didn’t deserve it.

“He used to hate all this,” I said. “The parties, the schmoozing with fancy people. Now he’s better at it than I am. I swear, they take one look at me, and they can sense it.”

“Sense what?”

“That I’m small-town Midwestern trash.”

After learning Garrett’s big secret, my own seemed trivial in comparison.

He wrinkled his brow. “I thought you were from Chicago.”

“North of Chicago—this tiny suburb called ‘The Heights.’ Very different.”

I’d spent most of my waking hours with Garrett over the past few years, but we rarely spoke about anything besides skating. That night on the beach, it felt like we were meeting each other for the first time.

“Trust me,” he said, “they’re all as self-conscious as you are. Everyone’s way too busy worrying how they look to look twice at anyone else.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re rich.”

“My mother’s rich.”

“Same thing. You grew up in this world.”

“That’s true. But she didn’t.”

I looked at him. “What?”

“She grew up in Sugar Land, Texas. Her family owned an office supply store.”

“What?”

“They lived in an apartment above the storefront. Sheila’s not even her real name.”

“What’s her real name?”

“Lin Li-Mei. She changed it when she left home, I guess. Her parents both died in the ’90s, but that’s what it said in their obituaries. ‘Survived by a daughter, Lin Li-Mei.’?”

Garrett tipped the bottle back again, then passed it to me; there were only a few swallows left. My head was swimming, but I couldn’t tell how much was from the alcohol and how much from what he’d told me.

“Bella never mentioned any of this,” I said.

“She doesn’t know. At least, I don’t think she does.”

More secrets between the twins. I’d truly believed they told each other everything.

“I always knew she was hiding something about her past,” Garrett said. “I thought it would be…I don’t know, scandalous or shocking. But her parents sounded totally normal.”

That was exactly why she’d hidden them. Their mundanity didn’t fit into the narrative she wanted to create. The legend of Sheila Lin.

Bella told me once about how, when she and Garrett were kids, they’d spend hours combing through newspaper clippings about the male gold medalists from the Sarajevo Games, searching for any family resemblance. Why only the gold medalists? I’d asked her.

Because, she said, whoever our father was, he must have been exceptional. Otherwise she wouldn’t have decided to keep us.

Now I know Garrett better, and I understand what he was trying to tell me: the Sheila Lin I idolized wasn’t real. She was a carefully constructed character, a beautiful mask not even her own children could glimpse behind. But that night, fizzing with expensive champagne and Olympic dreams, that isn’t at all what I heard.

Learning Sheila had come from nothing and nowhere didn’t disillusion me. It gave me hope—that I could transform myself as completely as she had.

The champagne bottle was empty. I stood up, swaying a bit—the hazards of being an infrequent drinker with an elite athlete body-fat percentage. Garrett stood too, and had to grab the edge of the rock to steady himself.