Foto: Instagram Layne Fargo
Roman Layne Fargo z naslovom Favorita je srca oboževalcev osvojil že ob prvi izdaji januarja letos. Knjiga, ki jo je navdihnil roman Viharni vrh — osredotočen na elitna umetnostna drsalca Katarino Shaw in Heatha Rocho — je bil tako vroč kot opolnomočujoč, še posebej kar zadeva njuno burno razmerje.
Če knjige še niste prebrali in si ne želite kvarnikov, prosim ne berite naprej.
Toda če ste se kdaj spraševali, kaj je Heath počel v tistih skrivnostnih mesecih, ko je izginil in nihče ni vedel, kaj je počel in kaj se je v resnici zgodilo med njim in drsalno tekmico Bello Lin, imate srečo.
Nova izdaja knjige Favorita v mehki vezavi, ki bo v angleškem jeziku izšla 30. septembra pri založbi Penguin Random House Trade Paperbacks, vsebuje dve novi dodatni poglavji, v katerih bomo skozi oči Heatha spoznali zgodbo – in pri spletnem portalu People so nam ponudili ekskluzivni prvi vpogled.
V nadaljevanju v angleškem jeziku prilagam ekskluzivno dodatno poglavje iz nove izdaje v mehki vezavi.
VOLUME 2: 2010–2013
February 23, 2010
Dear Katarina,
You had to be the one to leave this time. I didn’t have the strength to do it again.
When I ran into Bella last night outside our room, I was actually coming to find you. Isn’t that pathetic? You threw the ring I gave you on the floor like it was trash. You threw us away, and all because, what? We won an Olympic medal and it was the wrong goddamn color?
And yet, if you’d said the word, I would’ve run back to you like a loyal dog and let you kick me all over again. You wouldn’t even have needed to apologize.
So I’m not going to apologize either. I feel sick, absolutely disgusted with myself. If I took a million scalding showers I still wouldn’t be able to scrub away the stain of what I did. But I can’t say I feel sorry. Even though you’ll never read this — cause it’s not real, cause I’m back to talking to you in my head like a madman, the way I did in Moscow — I don’t want to lie.
You said there was nothing I could do, and I just kept hearing that word over and over, throbbing like another bass line in the music they were blasting at the party.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. You’re nothing.
Would you believe me if I said I don’t know who made the first move? That’s the truth, whether you accept it or not. It all happened so fast, so frantic, like Bella and I both knew if we paused even for a second, we’d lose our nerve.
But I did know it was the worst possible thing I could do. The most profound betrayal, the only thing extreme enough to tear us apart for good, free us from this cycle of heartbreak and suffering.
You interrupted before we went as far as we could have, but the damage was done. Everything destroyed, and I don’t know that either of us got a second of pleasure out of it. Bella was using me to hurt you. I was using her to hurt myself. Her body felt like a blade I was dragging across my skin, shallow cuts and then deeper, drawing blood.
If I’d found you last night instead of Bella, I don’t know what would have happened. But there’s a good chance you’d have kissed me and put the ring back on and acted like you never said those things, and nothing would have changed. And I needed it to change, Kat. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t feel like that, like my whole existence was about you. Like I was only real if you were touching me.
I don’t know what I want. But not that. Not anymore.
May 1, 2010
Dear Katarina,
I figured you went back home after Vancouver. I wasn’t sure, though, until those pictures came out. When I saw the death glare you gave the photographer, I couldn’t help smiling. Some things never change, huh? Not that you care, but I’m in Los Angeles. Bet you never thought I’d live in La La Land willingly. I keep telling myself it’s temporary, renewing my lease month by month.
Right after the Olympics, our spectacular flameout was still getting a fair amount of coverage, and I was worried people would recognize me. I started letting my beard grow, but I shouldn’t have bothered. People only know me as half of Shaw and Rocha. Without you, I’m invisible.
Well, maybe invisible isn’t the right word. I got a job at this record store, and I swear every day some woman is scribbling her phone number on a receipt and sliding it across the counter with a wink. (The occasional guy too; it’s West Hollywood, after all.)
Every day I think about calling one of them. I try to imagine what it would be like, to go on dates, to dinner and a movie or whatever it is that normal people do. To touch someone who isn’t you. To imagine a future without you in it.
And then I fold up the receipt and shove it in the cash register drawer with the rest.
July 12, 2010
Dear Katarina,
I picked up an extra shift today cause I wanted to be so busy I wouldn’t have time to think about the fact that it’s my twenty-seventh birthday.
Of course it was the slowest day at the record store ever. Far from the worst birthday I’ve had, but I swear each minute felt like an hour.
Until, right as I was closing up, I had a visitor. I thought I was hallucinating at first, but there she was: Bella Lin, standing on Sunset Boulevard with a single cupcake in her hands.
I hadn’t seen her since the Olympic Village. She looked okay, I’m not going to pretend she’s not gorgeous, but she looked tired. Dark circles under her eyes, hair hanging loose instead of up in one of those fancy braids she likes to do.
We ate the whole cupcake and chatted through most of the new The Maine album before Bella told me why she seemed so stressed. Garrett got in a car accident. A pretty serious one, I guess. I didn’t hear anything about it on the news, so you probably didn’t either. Sheila buried the story, I’m sure. He’s been in some fancy rehab facility out near Joshua Tree for weeks now. They say he might be able to skate again one day, but he definitely won’t be able to compete.
Her showing up out of the blue like that suddenly made sense. I assumed she was going to try to convince me to be her partner again, to train for next season, maybe a run at the 2014 Olympics. I started to demur, even though she hadn’t actually asked me yet.
Took me a second to interpret the look on her face, cause I’d never seen Bella like that before. She was hurt. She’s been lonely without her twin, she admitted. Adrift without skating, without driving toward the next competition. She thought I might understand.
I felt like a jerk for automatically assuming ulterior motivations, but — well, it’s not an unreasonable assumption, right, that Bella Lin would only come to see me if she needed something. I guess she did need something, but it wasn’t a skating partner.
She needed a friend. I suppose I did too.
From THE FAVORITES by Layne Fargo. Copyright © 2025 by Layne Fargo. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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