Chapter 13 Liam #2
"Okay." He didn't push. Opened the laptop back up, scrubbed to a different clip—Marcus and Thompson's double, some other pairing I didn't recognize. Making notes in a small notebook balanced on his knee, pencil scratching in his cramped handwriting.
I sat on the erg. Feet still strapped in.
The rubber mat beneath the machine was cracked along one edge.
A water stain on the ceiling above the far row of ergs had been there since last winter—brown and vaguely shaped like a boot.
I'd stared at it during hundreds of erg sessions. Knew every contour.
I didn't want to think about what I was about to say. But it came out anyway.
"Can I ask you something?"
Remy looked up. Waited. Pencil still between his fingers.
My mouth had gone dry. The question was formed—sitting right behind my teeth, pressing forward. What was it like? Coming out on this team. Were you scared? Did anyone look at you different after?
What came out instead was: "Thursday. You think we can get back to Monday?"
Remy's expression shifted. Barely. The corner of his mouth pulling in—like he could see the outline of the question I'd actually wanted to ask through the shape of the one I'd substituted.
"Depends," he said. "You going to tell me what went wrong this morning?"
I shrugged.
"Then I don't know." He set the pencil down on his notebook.
"But I'll tell you what I saw on Monday.
I saw two guys who forgot they were supposed to hate each other.
Whatever was in their heads—rivalry, personal shit, all of it—it went away the second they started rowing.
They just moved." He paused. "That's rare.
Most pairs spend weeks building that. Some never get there. "
The erg room was quiet. Just the tick of the clock above the whiteboard where Hale posted weekly erg rankings. The River Jack glared down from the wall behind the ergs, broad-shouldered and painted in peeling burgundy. Judging, as always.
"You know," Remy said, "when I got to Riverside, I thought the thing that would break me was the obvious stuff.
Being the smallest person in the boathouse.
Having to earn respect from guys twice my size every single morning.
" He looked at his laptop again. "I figured that was going to be the fight. "
I didn't move.
"Turns out that part was easy. I'm good at what I do. I knew that before I got here." He picked at the edge of his protein bar wrapper. "The part that almost got me was something else. Trying to figure out how much of myself I was willing to hide to make other people comfortable."
"And?" I heard myself say.
Remy looked up. Met my eyes. "And I decided I'd rather be real and deal with whatever came than spend four years performing for people who didn't actually give a shit either way."
I nodded.
"Nobody cared as much as I thought they would. Turns out most people are too busy drowning in their own problems to spend that much time worrying about yours."
He said it simply. No weight behind it. No grand statement. Just a guy stating what he'd learned.
He went back to his footage. Scrubbed through a clip. Made a note.
I pulled the erg handle. One stroke. Then another. Steady state. Nothing heroic. Just the rhythm—legs, back, arms—and the flywheel spinning and the chain moving through the housing with that familiar rattle.
Remy didn't say anything else.
We existed in the same room the way we existed in a boat—him watching, me pulling, both of us doing our jobs in the quiet.
The afternoon light came through the windows at a low angle, cutting across the rubber mats in pale bars.
Dust floated in the beams. The river was visible through the glass—flat, grey, patient. Waiting for Thursday.
I rowed for twenty minutes. Nothing hard. Just enough to feel my body working, to remember that I had a body and it was good at this one thing even when everything else was falling apart.
When I stopped, I wiped the erg down with the gym towel hanging from the handle. Unstrapped. Stood.
"Liam."
I turned at the door.
Remy hadn't looked up from his laptop. His pencil was moving across the notebook, marking something.
"Whatever's in your head.. leave it on the dock Thursday morning. You and Harrington have something. Don't waste it because you're scared."
The word scared landed in my chest and stayed there.
I walked out. Down the stairs, past the bay with its racked shells and its smell of wax and its heavy quiet. Out the side door into the cold.
The gravel path crunched under my shoes. The river sat wide and flat to my left. Across it, barely visible through the trees, the stone and glass of the Kingswell boathouse caught the sun.
Alex was over there somewhere. Probably in class. Probably performing his way through another day of being Thomas Harrington's son. Carrying the weight of what his father had said about me—the charity case—and not telling anyone.
And I was over here. Walking back to my dorm with a word I'd never applied to myself sitting in my chest like something swallowed whole.
Bisexual.
Not a phase. Not confusion.
A normal variation of human experience.
Back in the dorm. Noah was gone—Tuesday seminar. The room was quiet. His side neat, bed made, index cards stacked on his desk. My side the usual disaster—sheets twisted, crew bag spilling gear onto the floor, three empty water bottles lined up on the windowsill.
I sat on the bed. Pulled out my phone.
One notification.
Emily
Still good for dinner Wednesday? I'm craving Thai food.
Wednesday evening across a table from Emily, eating Thai food while I smiled and performed.
Thursday.
5:30 AM on the water with Alex. Two thousand meters. Everything on the line.
Two versions of who I was supposed to be, scheduled twelve hours apart.
I stared at the text.
Don't waste it because you're scared.
Remy. I set the phone on the mattress. Screen up. Unanswered.
And sat there in the quiet with the weight of something I was only just beginning to name.