13. The Banquet
The Banquet
Reese walks into the small gym across the hall from the pool locker rooms. She’s with a few of her old teammates, the sound of their laughter still echoing down the hallway. All chatter stops the second they reach the doorway.
The gym is unrecognizable.
Blue streamers hang from basketball hoops like jellyfish tentacles. White and clear balloons cluster along the walls. Near the podium, there is one of those cardboard cutouts where you stick your head through; this one has King Triton wearing an Everton coach polo.
Reese blinks. “This was… a choice,” she says, fighting a laugh.
Across the room, Maren is crouched near a long row of crock pots, wrangling power strips like it is a new competitive sport. Her clipboard rests on the table beside her, and a whistle dangles from her wrist. She looks up, catching Reese’s eye.
“I guess you could say that,” Maren replies. “Coach didn’t give me any direction on what he wanted, and the summer theater camp did The Little Mermaid. So, I outsourced.”
Reese laughs. Really laughs. For a second, the sound seems to surprise them both.
“No one will ever accuse you of being inefficient, Clarke.”
“Or of going over budget,” Maren says, straightening a chair.
The tables are arranged by graduation year, with small, printed cards marking each seat.
She moves methodically, setting them in neat rows, double-checking names.
When she reaches her own table, she slides a card for Jules between her and Reese’s.
A small, quiet precaution, the kind of planning Maren has always done.
Reese watches, that old mix of admiration and ache curling through her. It has been years, but somehow Maren still looks like she is exactly where she is supposed to be.
The streamers flutter every time the door opens. Maren props the doors open just until the program starts. The sound of paper rustling every thirty seconds is already making her skin crawl.
The smell of cooked meat and barbecue sauce hangs heavily in the air. Tables are lined with hamburger buns, dozens of crock pots filled with sloppy joes, and bowls of chips at the end of the buffet. A hurried parent rushes across the gym with one last pot.
“Maren, can we get a sticky note on this one? The spicy batch really bites back!” She yells, setting it down before chasing after one of her kids.
Reese sets her purse down at their table and walks over to stand beside Maren. She stands there for a moment in silence, just taking it all in. Old school, old sounds, old smells. Only Coach Hensley would think sloppy joes belonged at a retirement banquet, she thinks. Talk about leaving a legacy.
“Oh God,” she says out loud, “please tell me he did not make you do the chip thing again.”
Maren looks over at the table with four different flavors of chips piled high in bowls. “Tradition,” she says. “He said the crunch builds character. We have flavor options this time.”
“Character and heartburn,” Reese mutters, grabbing a chip from the nearest bowl and crunching down.
The buffet line begins to form. Maren nudges Reese forward to grab a plate, then sits back to watch the room. Behind her, one of the guys from the swim team explains to his date, “You have to put the chips directly on the sandwich. Coach always says, ‘Crunch or it doesn’t count.’”
His date hesitates, adds a single chip.
“No, like this.” He grabs a whole handful, drops them on top of the meat, and presses the bun until it crackles. “See? It has to crunch.”
As the crowd settles with their plates, Maren finally makes her own and returns to the table, now missing only one chair.
The open seat is between Jules and Reese.
Her stomach dips. She checked those name cards three times; she was supposed to be between Jules and Ava. This was not part of the plan.
Coach Hensley makes his way around the room, stopping to greet each table. When he reaches her, he rests a hand on her shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t let anyone touch the slideshow remote!” He warns, giving her shoulder another squeeze before moving on.
Reese smiles softly, shaking her head. “Some things never change, I see.”
“Thankfully,” Maren says, half distracted, still trying to figure out how she ended up next to Reese. She breathes in, one, two, three, four. “Not everything has to change.”
A loud screech tears through the PA system, followed by a flat, “Test, test, one, two, three.” One of the high school AV students fumbles with the microphone, then reaches back to shut off a row of lights.
The projector hums to life, casting a soft golden glow across the gym floor.
Dust drifts through the beam and sparkles on its own.
The slideshow begins on the far wall, thirty years of photos, both in and out of the pool.
Maren laughs with her table when they reach the “Pasta Night” picture from her senior year.
She and Reese are both covered in red sauce, trying to feed a spoonful to Coach Hensley, who looks like he just walked off the set of a slasher film.
Still smiling, Maren glances toward Reese and realizes she is not watching the slideshow. Reese’s eyes are on her instead.
On the wall, the photos keep coming, state meets, age-group invitationals, too many smiles to count, but all Maren can feel is the weight of Reese’s gaze.
Coach Hensley clears his throat, the microphone squealing once more before settling into a faint buzz. He looks out over the crowd, a little flushed, tie still crooked, eyes shining in the low light.
“Well,” he begins, “you’d think after thirty years I’d be ready for this.” Laughter ripples through the room. He smiles and waits for it to fade.
“I was told to keep this short, but if you’ve ever swam one of my practices, you know I’ve never been good at short.” Another round of laughter. “Thirty years of early mornings, late nights, and a lot of chlorine later, I figured I’d share one last thing.”
He glances toward the slideshow still rolling through its final photos, teams lined up on deck, swimmers mid-start, the shimmer of water catching light.
“When you coach for this long, you start thinking about all the races you’ve watched.
The ones we won, the ones we didn’t. And after a while, you realize most races are decided in the same place. The last five yards.”
He pauses, letting the quiet settle. “That’s where you find out what you have left.
It is where the swimmers dig deep, where they decide if they are going to glide in or fight for the wall.
Life is not much different. You spend a lot of it just pacing yourself, and then one day, you look up and realize you are in your own last five yards. ”
He gives a small, self-deprecating chuckle. “I guess that’s where I am now. My last five yards.”
The crowd goes still. The slideshow ends on a photo of him standing on the pool deck, whistle around his neck, sun hitting the water behind him. Someone claps softly. He shakes his head.
“Don’t clap yet,” he says, voice rough around the edges. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that none of us ever finish this alone. You win those last yards because of the people who stayed beside you.”
He scans the tables, eyes finding Maren near the front. “And for me, that has been folks like Coach Clarke here. The ones who stayed when things got hard. The ones who showed up even when they didn’t have to.”
Maren feels the catch in her chest. Around her, the applause rises again, slow and warm. Reese’s hands stay still for a moment longer, then she claps too, the sound sharp in her ears.
Coach Hensley smiles, steps back from the mic, and gives a little wave. “Alright,” he says, “let’s eat dessert before it melts.”
Applause swells and then softens. People stand and stretch. Chairs scrape against the floor in an uneven rhythm. Someone taps the microphone off with a small thunk. The projector fan winds down, and the room quiets.
Dessert appears in pieces. A cart with ice cream cakes. A bowl of strawberries that are already half gone. A stack of paper plates that keeps sliding sideways. Parents start a loose line that curves around the tables. The blue streamers sway in the open doorway and settle again.
Maren tucks the slideshow remote into a Tupperware of spare batteries and labels it with a sticky note that says do not lose.
She moves through the small chaos with easy precision, lifting a cake knife from the box, finding the pile of napkins she hid earlier, setting two forks by the coffee urn. It is work that steadies her pulse.
Reese helps where there is a gap. She catches a plate before it skids to the floor.
She directs a group of freshmen to the end of the line.
She waits for a lull and then cuts herself a narrow slice of cake, the frosting too sweet and exactly right.
When she turns, Maren is behind her, reaching past for the coffee stirrers.
Their hands skim. Not quite a touch. Close enough to feel the heat.
“Nice line about the last five yards,” Reese says, voice low, eyes on a stack of cups.
Maren gives a small nod. “He has been saying some version of it since my freshman year.” She sets two creamers on the table and aligns them out of habit.
Reese watches Hensley across the room, surrounded by parents and alumni, arms in motion. “I think he saved the best version for tonight.”
They carry their plates back to the table. Jules has moved one chair down to make space and is telling a story about a relay start that went wrong, and they still won. The laughter is bright, then brighter. Maren smiles and listens and counts her breaths in the quiet parts. One, two, three, four.
The crowd thins. People linger to hug Coach Hensley. A few younger swimmers make a game of popping the balloons as they peel them off the walls, until a parent gives a warning look, and the game dies. The gym returns to normal volumes.