Chapter 23 Alex
Igot on the bus early because that's what Harringtons did.
First to arrive. Best seat secured. The appearance of preparedness masking the fact that I'd been awake since five and couldn't sit still in my dorm room any longer.
I'd left three tabs open on my laptop—a half-finished essay, the course portal, an unanswered email from my professor.
All of it still there when I'd finally closed the lid and left—it was time to row.
The charter was nicer than what either program usually traveled in—cushioned seats, actual legroom, an overhead rack that didn't rattle. Eldridge's doing. He'd made a call to the alumni travel fund, which was Kingswell code for someone's father wrote a check. Possibly mine.
I took a window seat toward the back. Left side. Plugged in my AirPods. Put on the meditation app I'd been using all semester.
My intention for the day was to not throw up from nerves.
The bus filled in waves. Kingswell guys first—Collins and Mason claiming seats in the middle, Derek already asleep before the engine started, which was a talent I envied more than his four years of varsity experience. Eldridge settled into the front row with his newspaper.
Then the Riverside contingent. Tyler's voice before his body. Two novice rowers I didn't know by name, one with a freckle on his cheek. Jace boarding quietly, taking the second row.
Remy came on a few minutes later. Laptop already under his arm. He took a window seat three rows ahead of me, set up his clipboard-tray-table contraption, and had race footage playing before the bus left the parking lot.
Ethan appeared beside Remy. "You mind? I've got footage to review and you've got footage to review and we can be antisocial together." Remy shifted his bag without looking up and Ethan dropped in beside him.
I'd been assigned to room with Ethan in Boston. The email had come through earlier in the week. I hadn't thought much of it. Ethan was easy. He'd edit on his laptop while I did my pre-race routine and we'd coexist the way we'd learned to after rebuilding something that had once been broken.
The bus rumbled to life. Through my window I could see the boathouse—the dock where we'd posted the 16:28 two days ago. The river beyond it, flat and grey. The water that had carried us back to each other.
Movement in the aisle.
I looked up.
Liam was walking toward the back. Duffel over his shoulder. His Riverside hoodie zipped to the chest, hair still damp at the edges the way it got when he showered and didn't bother drying it. He moved through the bus the way he moved everywhere—shoulders first, no apology for the space he took up.
He passed Tyler. The seat beside Tyler was open. The obvious choice—his friend, his program, the person he'd rowed with since freshman year. Tyler glanced up. Liam kept walking.
My pulse did something stupid.
He stopped at my row. Looked down at me. The overhead light catching the green of his eyes.
"This seat taken?"
I pulled out one AirPod. "It is now."
He swung his duffel into the overhead rack. Dropped into the seat beside me. The cushion dipping under his weight, the warmth of his body immediately present in the space between us.
He was sitting with me. In front of both teams. In front of both coaches. Liam Moore—the Riverside scholarship kid who'd spent a month performing indifference toward Alex Harrington—had walked past his entire program and chosen the seat next to me.
The British meditation woman was saying something about releasing tension in my shoulders. I turned her off.
"Morning," Liam said.
"Morning."
The bus pulled out of the parking lot. Through the rear window, the boathouse shrank. The river disappeared behind a line of trees. Ashford falling away.
Nobody said anything about Liam sitting with me. Nobody needed to. But I could feel the bus recalibrating—the subtle shift in attention that happened when something unexpected occurred and thirty people decided simultaneously whether to acknowledge it.
They didn't. Which was its own kind of acknowledgment.
Remy had turned back to his laptop. But from three rows up, I caught the angle of his head—tilted slightly, the way it tilted when he was processing information. Then he went back to his footage. Whatever conclusion he'd drawn, he kept it.
Ethan glanced back once. Caught my eye. The smallest nod. Then he leaned over Remy's shoulder to critique whatever was on the screen, because Ethan couldn't look at footage without having an opinion about the lighting.
"You've never been to Boston," I said.
"Is it that obvious?"
"You're already looking out the window and we haven't left campus."
"I'm looking at the road."
"Very interesting, huh?" I couldn't help the sarcasm in my voice.
The guard was thinner today. The bridge had done something to it—loosened the hinges on the door I kept slamming shut.
"The Charles is wider than our river. More current.
And the turns are real. There's a section near the Eliot Bridge where the course narrows and the crowd is so close you can hear people talking. "
"You've raced it before?"
"No. But my father has. He talks about it like other people talk about church." The words came out before I could filter them. The honest version instead of the polished one. "He'll be there tomorrow."
"I know."
"Having dinner with donors tonight. At the hotel."
Liam's jaw tightened slightly, then relaxed. "Let him watch."
"Yeah?"
"We'll give him something to see."
His knee touched mine. Under the armrest. Invisible to every person on this bus. The contact warm and deliberate and steady—not an accident, not a brush. A choice. The same choice as the seat.
I left it there. Didn't move. Didn't calculate. Just let his knee rest against mine and felt the warmth spread through my entire body.
I was just sitting on a bus next to the person I wanted to sit next to, going to the city where the biggest race of our lives was waiting.
***
The magazine surfaced somewhere around Worcester.
"Yo—who's got it?" Tyler's voice from three rows back. "Collins, pass it up."
A copy of New England Rowing Magazine sailed over headrests. Marcus caught it—reflexes sharp, always—and flipped through with the casual confidence of someone expecting to find his own name.
He found ours instead.
"Page thirty-six." He held it up. "The joint program golden boys."
The magazine made its way through the bus. I tracked its progress by sound—Tyler whistling, someone reading a pull quote out loud, Mason saying "actually a solid photo."
Jace got it. Studied the spread for a moment. Looked back at us over his shoulder. A nod. No words needed. From Jace, a nod was a standing ovation.
Remy scanned it.
Ethan intercepted it from Remy's hand. "The lighting is criminal. They had you facing east at 2 PM. That's backlit. I would have shot from the south wall with a reflector."
"Nobody asked about the lighting," Remy said.
"Somebody should have."
The magazine reached us. Liam took it. Held it between us on the armrest.
"Crossing the River: How a Joint Program is Rewriting College Rowing." A full spread. The boathouse. A pull quote from Eldridge about "innovation meeting tradition." And the photo—Liam and me standing by the double, hands on the hull. Looking at the camera. Professional. Partners.
"You look constipated," I said.
"That's my serious face."
"It's your constipated face."
"Says the guy who looks like he's posing for a J.Crew catalog."
"At least I know what a J.Crew catalog is."
He kicked my foot under the seat. I kicked his back.
Then Liam whispered: "we look damn good."
I couldn't help but smile.
Marcus's face appeared between the headrests behind us. "You two really are the story of the season." His voice was warm. Almost wistful. "Enjoy it, boys."
He disappeared back into his seat. The comment hung in the air. Harmless on the surface.
I closed the magazine. Set it on my lap. Cover up.
"You okay?" Liam asked. Quiet enough that only I could hear.
"Yeah." I turned the magazine over. "Fine."
But something about the way Marcus had said enjoy it—the careful emphasis, the smile that didn't quite reach his eyes—stayed with me longer than it should have.
Liam's knee pressed against mine. Still there.
Hours later, Boston assembled itself through the windshield.
Suburbs first—strip malls thinning into denser neighborhoods. Then the skyline. Glass and steel and stone rising above the highway. The city materializing like something stepping out of fog.
I'd been to Boston before. Twice. Once for a Kingswell alumni event with my father when I was fifteen—a ballroom at the Four Seasons, men in suits, my father's hand on my shoulder steering me through conversations I was too young to understand.
Once for a junior regatta on the Charles—I was fourteen, rowing a single in the youth division.
I'd finished seventh and my father had been quiet the entire drive home.
Neither trip had felt like this.
The bus crossed the bridge and the Charles River opened up below us. Wide. Dark. Real.
Boats practicing on the water already—eights and fours and doubles cutting lines through the current. The bridges spanning the river at intervals, stone and steel arches that would be packed with spectators in a day.
Beside me, Liam was leaning toward the window. Not trying to hide his reaction. His eyes wide. His mouth slightly open. Taking in the scale of it—the river, the city, the bridges, all of it—with the unguarded awe of someone seeing something for the first time and not being ashamed of it.
Most people would have tried to look unimpressed. Liam didn't bother. He just looked.
And watching him—watching the city reflect in his eyes, watching him absorb a world he'd never been given access to—something turned over in my chest. Not the usual ache.
Something fiercer. The urge to give him this.
To give him every version of this. Every city and every river and every stage that the world had built for people like me and fenced off from people like him.
"That's Anderson Bridge," I said. Pointing. "Ethan's going to be up there with his camera."
"And that one?"
"Weeks Bridge. Where the course narrows. The turn everyone's afraid of."
He stared at the river. The water that could change his life.
"It's big," he said.
"Yeah. It is."
The bus pulled up to the hotel. Glass doors. A lobby visible through the windows, marble floors, leather furniture, and fancy lighting.
Hale stood at the front. "Listen up. Rooms are assigned—check the list at the front desk. Gear stays on the bus until tomorrow. Dinner is at seven. Restaurant across the street. Be there."
The aisle filled with bodies and bags. The bus emptying in the disorganized rush of thirty athletes who'd been sitting for three hours.
I grabbed my bag. Stood. Liam stood behind me in the aisle. Close. The bus nearly empty now.
We stepped off into Boston. The air was different from Ashford—sharper, colder, carrying the sounds of a city that never went quiet. Traffic. A siren somewhere distant. The hum of a million lives stacked on top of each other.
Liam stepped off behind me. We stood on the sidewalk. Bags over our shoulders. The hotel above us. The Charles River somewhere beyond the buildings.
"We're here," I said.
He looked at me. I looked at him. And in that moment, I knew everything was going to be okay. I wasn't sure why, it was a feeling. It was me and Liam, still together, after everything we'd been through. We made it here.
Tomorrow we'd race on the Charles. And somewhere in this city, scouts were waiting and my father was watching and the anonymous texter was doing whatever anonymous texters did when their targets left town.
But right now it was just us. On a sidewalk. In a city where nobody knew our story.
And that felt like freedom.