Chapter 21 Liam
I sat in my car in the empty parking lot behind The Riverside Club.
Engine off. Keys in my lap. Hands shaking.
The building was dark except for a single light in a back office. Someone cleaning up. Counting cash. Normal Saturday night work for them.
Nothing about tonight was normal for me.
My phone sat on the passenger seat. Four texts to Emily. Two calls. All unanswered.
The screen lit up again. Noah asking where I was. If I was okay.
I couldn't go back to the dorm and lie in my bed staring at the ceiling for eight hours trying not to think about tomorrow.
The invitational. Ten AM. Me and Alex in a boat together.
After tonight. After Emily. After everything. I didn't have any options left.
So I picked up my phone, and called my mom.
It rang three times. I almost hung up—it was after midnight, she had to work tomorrow, she needed sleep—
"Baby?"
Her voice. Warm and worried and exactly what I needed and couldn't handle all at once.
"Hey, Mom."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just—"
"Liam. What's wrong."
Not a question. She knew. She always knew. Could hear the shape of a lie in my voice before I'd finished telling it.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
"Baby, talk to me."
"I'm fine. I just—" My voice cracked. "I needed to hear your voice."
Silence on the other end. She was waiting and listening. It was the kind of patience she'd perfected raising a son who never talked about anything until he was already falling apart.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"In my car. Parking lot."
"At this hour?"
"Yeah."
"Why aren't you in your dorm?"
I couldn't answer.
"Liam." Her voice got softer. "What happened?"
Everything. Everything happened.
"Emily broke up with me," I said.
The words came out flat. Not even close to the truth but the only piece of it I could give her.
"Oh, honey."
"Tonight. At this event. She just—" I stopped. "She ended it."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's my fault." The words rushing now. "I messed it up. I've been messing it up for months. She deserved better and I couldn't—I wasn't—"
"Hey. Slow down."
I pressed my palm against my eyes. Hard.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Mom." My voice getting tighter. "I don't know who I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to want or—"
"Baby—"
"Everyone has these expectations. Coach, the team, the scholarship, Emily, you—" I stopped. "And I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to be what everyone needs but I don't—" My voice broke. "I don't know if I can keep doing it."
The tears came before I could stop them.
Not the quiet kind from Noah's dorm room.
The ugly kind—the kind that came from somewhere deep and primal, the kind I hadn't let out since I was a kid and my dad left and my mom held me on the kitchen floor and told me it wasn't my fault.
I sat there in my car in an empty parking lot at midnight crying into the phone like I was twelve years old again and she was the only person in the world who could make it stop.
"Oh, Liam." Her voice so soft. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on."
"I can't."
"Yes you can."
"I don't even know how to say it." I wiped at my face. "I just—I feel like I'm drowning. Like I can't breathe. Like everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong and I don't—" I stopped. "I don't know how to be normal."
The word hung there.
Normal.
"Baby." Her voice very gentle now. "You don't have to be anything. You just have to be you."
"But I don't know who that is."
"Then you figure it out. That's what being twenty years old is."
I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob.
"You don't have to have everything figured out," she continued. "You're allowed to be confused. You're allowed to not know. You're allowed to change your mind about what you want."
"But the scholarship—"
"The scholarship doesn't own you."
"It's the only reason I'm here."
"No." Her voice firm now. The voice she used when she wasn't accepting arguments. "You're there because you work harder than anyone I've ever known. Because you're talented. Because you love rowing."
"I don't know if I love it anymore. I don't know if I ever did or if I just—" I stopped. "If I just needed it to get out."
Silence.
"Do you remember," my mom said finally, "when you first started rowing? You were fourteen. Came home from that summer program at the community center and you couldn't stop talking about it. About how it felt on the water. How everything made sense in the boat."
I remembered. Sitting at the kitchen table, still sunburnt, talking so fast she'd had to tell me to slow down.
"You didn't start rowing for scholarships or college or to get out of Brackett Lake," she said. "You started because you loved it. Because it made you feel free."
My throat was too tight to answer.
"And maybe you've forgotten that. Maybe all the pressure and the expectations made you forget why you started. But that doesn't mean it's not still there."
I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel.
"Whatever's going on," she said, "whatever you're dealing with—you're still my son. Nothing changes that. Ever."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"You hear me?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I don't care if you lose every race. I don't care if you quit rowing tomorrow. I don't care about the scholarship or what anyone thinks or—" She stopped. "I care about you. About you being okay. About you being happy."
"Mom—"
"Are you happy, baby?"
The question sat there in the dark car like something with weight.
Am I happy?
"I don't know," I said finally. "I don't think I've been happy in a long time."
"Then that's what matters. Figuring out what makes you happy. Who you are. What you want."
"What if what I want is—" I stopped. The words right there. Right on the edge. "What if it's not what people expect?"
"There's no such thing as what people expect."
"Yes there is, Mom. You know there is."
It was like she heard exactly what I wasn't saying and was leaving the door open for whenever I was ready to walk through it.
"There's just what other people assume. And what you actually are. And you don't owe anyone an explanation for who you are."
I couldn't speak.
The silence between us felt different now. Full. Like she was waiting on the other side of something and I was standing at the threshold.
"Whatever you're working through," she said, "and I know there's more you're not telling me—you take your time. You figure it out. And when you're ready to talk about it, I'll be here."
I know there's more you're not telling me.
She knew. Maybe not the specifics. But she knew something bigger than a breakup was happening. And she wasn't pushing. Just leaving the door open.
The tears were coming harder now.
"I love you," I said. Barely sound at all.
"I love you too, baby. So much."
We sat there in silence for a moment. Me in a parking lot in Ashford. Her in our small house in Brackett Lake. The distance between us feeling both infinite and nonexistent.
"Do you have practice tomorrow?" she asked.
My stomach dropped. The invitational. I hadn't told her.
"Yeah. Early."
"Then you should get some sleep."
"I will."
"Liam."
"Yeah?"
"Whatever happened with Emily—that's her loss. You're a good person. A good man. And someday you're going to find someone who sees that. Who appreciates that. Who doesn't make you feel like you have to be someone you're not."
The words sat in my chest like something warm and heavy.
Someone who doesn't make me feel like I have to be someone I'm not.
Alex's face. The hallway. The way he'd kissed me like I was the only thing that mattered.
"Thanks, Mom."
"Get some rest. Call me tomorrow after practice."
"Okay."
"I love you."
"Love you too."
The line went dead.
I sat there in the silence. In the dark. My face tight from crying. Eyes stinging.
My mom's words echoing: You don't owe anyone an explanation for who you are.
My phone buzzed.
Noah
Dude. Come back to the dorm. You're scaring me.
My best friend. Who already knew. Who was waiting.
I started the car.
Tomorrow would come whether I was ready or not. The scrimmage. The boat. Alex.
But tonight my mom had reminded me of something I'd forgotten: I started rowing because it made me feel free. Not because it was a ticket out. Not because it was what people expected. Because on the water, everything made sense.
And the last time everything had made sense on the water—
Was with him.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back to campus.