Chapter 25 Alex #2
The bus crossed a bridge. The Charles River below. Crews already on the water. Eights and fours and singles cutting lines through the surface. The bridges starting to fill with early spectators—dark figures against the grey sky, leaning on railings, pointing at boats.
We pulled into the boathouse complex.
The scale of it hit me—and I'd been here before. Fourteen years old, rowing a youth single, finishing seventh while my father sat in silence on the drive home. I knew this river. Knew its width and its current and the way the wind came off the bridges.
But I'd never seen it like this.
Hundreds of boats. Hundreds of athletes.
The boathouse area was a controlled chaos of crews unloading trailers, carrying shells to the water, rigging oars, checking equipment.
Uniforms from every program in the Northeast—Princeton's orange, Dartmouth's green, BU's scarlet, Yale's blue.
National media cameras stationed at the launch area.
Officials in white with clipboards and megaphones.
And on the banks—the scouts. I could see them from the bus window.
Small clusters of people in khakis and windbreakers, standing apart from the spectators, watching the crews with the specific attention of professionals evaluating talent.
Clipboards. Phones. The quiet intensity of people whose job it was to find the next generation.
Those people could change Liam's life.
The thought arrived without calculation. Without self-interest. Just the clear, simple recognition that the boy beside me—the one who'd texted I want to go to the Olympics at 2 AM like it was too big to say in daylight—was about to row in front of the people who could make that real.
We unloaded. The team moving with the practiced efficiency of athletes on race day—no wasted motion, no extra words. Oars out of the trailer. Shells off the racks. Gear organized on the dock.
Jace managed it. His last race in a Riverside jersey and he spent it making sure every boat was rigged, every crew had their lane, every rower knew the warmup schedule. The captain who led by doing.
Remy had the course map in his head. He walked Liam and me through it one final time at the water's edge—the three of us standing on the dock, the Charles stretching in front of us, the bridges visible in the distance.
"Eliot Bridge at twelve hundred meters, the course narrows. Other boats stack up. Stay inside on the turn and don't let anyone push you wide."
"Got it," Liam said.
"Weeks Bridge at two thousand. Current shifts. You'll feel it in the starboard blade—compensate early, not late. The crews that lose time here are the ones that react instead of anticipate."
"We practiced that," I said.
"I know. I'm reminding you anyway." Remy looked between us.
His face unreadable—the coxswain's mask, the expression that gave away nothing and saw everything.
"Anderson Bridge at twenty-four hundred.
That's where Ethan is. That's where the crowd is loudest. Don't let the noise pull your rating up.
Stay at twenty-eight until Liam calls the sprint. "
"How long is the sprint?" Liam asked.
"As long as you can hold it." Remy paused. The mask cracked—just a fraction. Something underneath that might have been pride. "You two are the fastest double in this program's history. Don't overthink it. Just row."
He turned and walked back toward the team staging area. Small. Compact. Unhurried.
Liam and I stood on the dock.
Around us, the Head of the Charles was coming alive.
Announcements over the PA system—heat times, lane assignments, the official's voice carrying across the water.
Other crews launching—the splash of oars, the calls of coxswains, the organized chaos of hundreds of boats preparing for three miles of river.
I looked at the river. Three miles of dark water stretching into the distance. The bridges overhead. The banks filling with spectators. The biggest race of my life.
Every distraction fell away. The texter. My father in the hotel lobby. The magazine with our photo. The fight. The reconciliation. The hotel room. The flannel. The bridge. All of it—every moment of this impossible, beautiful, terrifying semester—narrowing to a single point.
The boat. The water. And Liam.
"Ready?" I said.
He looked at me. His green eyes steady. The body I knew as well as my own—the shoulders that powered the stroke, the hands that gripped the oar handles with the same calluses as mine, the heart that had chosen me on a bridge in the dark.
"Let's go."
We stepped into the boat. Feet finding stretchers. Seats sliding into position. The hull settling under our weight—dipping, then steadying, then finding its balance the way it always did. The way we always did.
I pushed off from the dock. The blade bit the water. The hull glided forward.
The Charles River opened up in front of us. Three miles. Six bridges. Thousands of spectators. Scouts with clipboards. My father somewhere in the crowd. And the anonymous texter's words echoing in the back of my mind—Good luck at the Charles. I'll be watching too.
Let them watch.
We had a race to row.