Chapter 27 Nineteen years old
Nineteen years old
Sam
“Kath’s great,” Seb tells me, stepping into the shower next to mine as the others leave. “She’s so easy to have around, and she’s really chill about our swimming schedule, even though she travelled far to get here.”
“I know.” I smile. He’s right. Having her here feels so easy. Too easy. “She gets it, always has. I think it’s because she’s seen me training since I was eleven. And she works hard too. She’s really dedicated to medicine.”
“Yeah. But it’s rare to find someone who doesn’t mind you getting up at 5 a.m. to leave for practice.”
“She used to get up and drive me to the pool before school,” I tell him. He looks confused, and I realise that I’ve never spoken to my teammates about this. “When my mum got sick, Kath took her driving test so I wouldn’t miss any training. Also, with Kath driving me, Mum could rest during chemo.”
I never talk to my friends about my mum.
She would’ve loved them though. She would’ve laughed at AJ’s stupid jokes and been charmed by Austin’s banter.
She would’ve baked endless brownies for Seb.
I wish she could know them too. I push the thought away.
I don’t want to think about her. I don’t want to think about the ways I let her down.
It’s difficult to describe the feeling, though I’ve never really tried—at least not out loud. How in one part, swimming saved me during that time. The routine. The ability to shut off my thoughts and worries. The knowledge that there was a schedule and something that I could control.
But equally, the way I slightly started to resent it afterwards.
How I realised it was time I hadn’t spent with my mum, and that all those mornings at the pool were times we could’ve had breakfast together.
Times I could’ve heard another one of her stories or laughed at one of her jokes.
Now it just makes me feel like I need to prove to myself that those sacrifices were for a reason.
“Well, what Kath did sounds pretty incredible,” Seb says quietly.
“She is incredible. But, sometimes, it bothers me that she’s had to sacrifice so much on my account. I just don’t feel like I can ever make it up to her.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would do anything she didn’t want to,” he says. “And I’m sorry about your mom.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice unsteady. I try to give him a smile, glad that the shower is hiding my watery eyes.
I’m suddenly overtaken with fragments of memories.
Like the time I went to a race one weekend after she’d just made the decision to stop treatment.
Mum insisted that I go and that said that she’d watch every second on the television.
So I went. But only afterwards did I realise that it was one of the last weekends we could’ve spent together.
When I’d come home from that race she’d looked even frailer than when I’d left, the changes in her body noticeable from day to day.
I rinse my hair in silence, and Seb doesn’t interrupt. Instead he clasps me on the shoulder as we head to the changing room.
Of course my attempt at silence is immediately interrupted by AJ.
“Kath’s hot,” he remarks as he comes to change next to me. “Sorry, I meant KitKat.”
“Kath to you,” I tell him with a scowl and he howls with laughter.
“You’re a dummy.” He fondly ruffles my hair.
When I get to the café at the front of the swimming pool, Kath’s sitting there with her textbook, highlighters and an iced coffee.
“Hey, you.” I reach down and tug on a stray lock of hair. She smiles up at me, T-shirt sliding off her shoulder.
“KitKat,” AJ grins and drops into the seat next to her. “Have you been here all morning?” He ignores my glare as he wraps his arm around her shoulders.
“Yep.” She laughs. “Just studying; don’t worry. I’ve been productive.” Her notebook sits next to her and all the text is colour-coded. It reminds me of when we revised for our GCSEs together. Kath’s notes were always better than any textbook I looked at.
“Want to grab some breakfast with us?” I ask her. “Well, second breakfast technically.”
“Sure,” she offers, packing up her books and standing up. “What do you guys want to do this afternoon? We have a whole eight hours until your next session.”
“I was thinking the pair of us could drive to the beach?”
“Sounds perfect.” She shoots me a smile.
“You guys coming?” I call to Austin and Seb who are walking out behind us, chatting. They look between each other.
“Nah,” says Austin. “I’ve got some stuff to do.”
“Me too,” Seb adds. “I need to get started on a history essay. The Romans were weird. This Suetonius guy. He knows way too much about the sex lives of the Caesars.”
Austin chuckles as they split from the rest of the group to walk back to our accomodation.
“Are they a thing?” Kath whispers to me as we follow the rest of the group to the chosen breakfast destination.
“What? Who?” I hold out my hand to take her backpack from her.
“Seb and Austin?”
“What?” I turn, baffled, watching the two of them walking away. Austin’s arm is slung over Seb’s back. But they always walk like that. Seb reaches across to mess with Austin’s hair and I can hear him laugh.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Sorry, I obviously misread that massively. How was training?”
I let her change the conversation, but I keep mulling it through in my mind. I’d know if they were a thing. We all would. Or am I so wrapped up in swimming that I’m oblivious to everything else?
***
“How are you feeling about the Olympics next year?” Kath asks as we drive to the beach after I finish my second breakfast.
“Excited,” I tell her, indicating to turn off the highway. “I haven’t made the team yet, but hopefully I will. If I do make it, you can come watch, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
I have to resist the urge to take her hand and squeeze it. She just got here, and I’m already missing her, anticipating the moment she leaves.
“Maybe we could take a trip after?” I suggest, and she gasps.
“Sam Fletcher, offering to take a break from training? I never thought I’d see the day.”
I chuckle. She’s right though. I can’t remember the last time I took a break from training.
“Just a week,” I clarify.
“Sounds perfect.” She smiles at me and reaches for the radio, flitting between the channels until she finds something she likes.
“I’ve decided I love country music.” She turns up the Tim McGraw song and starts to hum along slightly off key. Some things never change.
“One day we can do that road trip we talked about years ago, and we can listen to country music in bars across America,” I tell her.
“Two holiday suggestions in one day? Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
I chuckle. “Maybe I’m just suffering from a rare case of relaxation-induced delirium.”
She’s about to say something, but the chorus of the song starts and she can’t resist joining in.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. “Can you grab that out?” I ask.
“You know the password, right? I just want to check that nothing’s changed with the training schedule.
Someone mentioned a possible change in the morning session tomorrow. ”
“Sure.” She reaches around the console and fishes around in my pocket. In hindsight, that was a very bad idea. My mind knows that she's off limits, but it seems that my body has a slightly different reaction to her hand right by my groin.
“Got it.” She sits back up and unlocks the phone.
Within seconds she’s laughing. “What?” I shoot her a confused look, and she just shakes her head around another fit of giggles.
“Who are the ‘Amphibi-bros’?” she manages to get out eventually. “Oh my god, I can barely say the name without cracking up. This sounds like some terrible superhero group. I have to tell Tom.”
I let out a sigh. I told them the name was stupid.
“The swimming group,” I explain. “Well, most of us. Those of us who do most of our training together. It’s AJ, Austin, Seb and some guys you haven’t met.”
“This group is gold. Oh my god, look at these memes. Sam. What is this?” She’s laughing again.
She starts typing.
“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.
“Just updating everyone about our trip to the beach and your apparent new-found obsession with holidays.”
“Kath,” I warn her, hands clenching on the steering wheel. But she’s got me; she knows that I can’t stop her while I’m driving.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to embarrass you in your bro group.
” She smirks at me and then spends another few minutes engrossed in my phone whilst I try my hardest to stay concentrated on the road ahead of me.
When we pull into the parking lot, I snatch the phone off her, quickly scrolling through the texts and letting out a sigh of relief when I see it’s mainly just her trading jokes and memes back and forth with the guys.
I grab our bags and we make our way down to the sand, setting up towels in the shadiest spot we can find. I’ve only been reading my book for twenty minutes when Kath rolls towards me. Her expression is oddly serious.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.” I close my book and turn to face her.
“OK, don’t get upset about what I’m about to say,” she warns, pushing her sunglasses up her nose to rest on her head. “But why don’t you talk about your mum at all?”
My stomach sinks. The few words with Seb this morning were hard enough, I don’t want to do this again.
“Um, what do you mean?”
“I was just thinking that over the past few years I don’t think I’ve ever really heard you talk about her.”
I swallow. This is the problem with having someone who knows you so well. They know you well enough to realise when you’re lying to yourself.
“I just don’t like talking about it.” I avoid her gaze.
“That’s understandable, Sam. There isn’t one way to grieve. Grief doesn’t have an end point. Just because it’s been a few years doesn’t mean that things are miraculously better.”
I swallow hard. Again. Her eyes are full of concern. That deep brown I know so well feels like it is boring its way into my soul.
This is Kath. I can talk to her about this. She’s always helped untangle the things in my head. I dredge up the words, part of me relieved that I’m talking about it, another part screaming at me to be quiet.
“I know we’re a year out, but the coaches keep on talking about how this is the build-up to the Olympics. And all I can think is that she won’t be here to watch it like last time.”
That’s only some of it, but I don’t think I’m ready to face the rest. The thought that if I don’t win, I’ll be letting her down, but if I do win, I’ll have to look out into the crowd from a medal podium and realise she isn’t there.
I know I chose this. But I never chose to do it without my mum by my side. And without my best friend in the same continent.
“God, that’s so hard, Sam.” She holds my gaze. “She’d be so proud of you though. If you ever want to talk about her, you know you can talk to me, right? The fun memories, and the sad feelings. You can have both.”
I roll away from her, staring at the sea. “I just don’t have it worked out enough in my own head to know what to say.”
“You don’t need to have it all worked out and neatly packaged up for me. You can talk about her, and we can process it together. Or you could talk to Josh.”
“But you always know how you feel,” I tell her.
Kath’s always so sure of herself that I don’t think she could really understand what goes through my mind in moments like this.
How much I doubt myself sometimes. How I spend ages over-analysing everything.
The constant thrum of worry I have in almost all situations.
“Nope,” she says. “Sometimes I do, but sometimes it takes me ages. Everyone has insecurities, Sam, or things that they don’t like to talk about. It’s normal. It’s just part of life.”
“Maybe. Anyway, we should go in the sea; you can compare it to the Devon coast.”
“If that’s what you want,” she says after a pause.
But as we wade into the waves I can’t work out what I do and don’t want.