Chapter Twelve #2
Behind me, Adrian claps. “Impressive as hell, Parker.”
I spin and he puts his hand up for a high five. I slap it with relish, so hard my palm stings. When our hands drop, Adrian’s middle finger hooks into mine.
“You leave me no choice but to ask for a rematch,” he says. Ever so softly, he runs his thumb over the back of my knuckles. My skin tingles under the feathery touch. “A chance to redeem myself.”
“I can do this all night,” I whisper.
He nods, another smile unfurling, and releases me. My chest feels two sizes too large for my rib cage.
Several rounds later, I’m still ahead. Adrian is nothing if not consistent—his score is nearly always around 200.
The variance on my scores is much bigger.
I don’t ever quite hit the 250 mark again, but I do get a couple near 220 and one under 200.
This, it would seem, mostly has to do with our very different strategies.
We both are remarkably consistent in form, it’s just Adrian never goes for the fifty. I do, but sometimes I miss.
“Bet you thought you were going to cruise to victory on the basis of having these machines at your disposal twenty-four seven,” I say as Adrian’s third ball of this set rumbles up the alley.
“You are unexpectedly good,” he says. “Although I should know better than to underestimate you. Is this your natural aptitude for anything competition-related?”
“We have a game room in the training center,” I admit.
He sends another straight up the middle. “Ah. So, you do occasionally let yourself have fun.”
“When it doesn’t interfere with training.”
“See, I think you have that backward.” His eyes cut to me like he’s about to say something else when my watch buzzes.
My stomach rumbles in response, and I realize I haven’t eaten since before the erg test. I drop to a knee and dig around my bag for my dinner: cold chicken, vegetables, and brown rice, all weighed and measured.
I’ll have to get in one more snack tonight to hit all my minimum nutritional benchmarks for the day, but I’m nearly there.
“Mind if I eat?” I ask.
Adrian shakes his head with a smile. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be training and hungry all the time.”
“Good,” I say as I click open the plastic travel case holding my utensils. “Then you also know why I won’t share.”
Adrian eyes my meal with no hint of disappointment. “We have some leftover pizza upstairs if I get really desperate. So, tell me, does the training center’s game room have as much character as this basement?”
I snort. “What it lacks in character, it makes up for in massages and state-of-the-art training equipment.”
“Sounds nice.”
Homesickness washes over me as I saw at my chicken with a fork and knife. I can practically hear the gentle hum of the halogen lights in the dining hall, smell the faint musk of the lake when it’s heavy with morning mist.
“It is,” I say quietly.
Adrian cocks his head. “What makes it special?”
He once again looks like the man I met in the pasticceria and not the tyrant who has subjected me to his modern-dance interpretation of a training program.
I swallow my bite. “I can’t imagine you care.”
“I do, actually.”
Maybe because of the job. If Adrian gets the coaching position with the junior national team, he’ll move to Florida to head up a series of development and selection camps.
It’s not exactly the same as my training center in Southern California, but I guess the setup is similar enough that he’d be curious.
“The facilities are incredible. The conditions are always basically perfect. But I think what I love most is…being surrounded by excellence, you know? Like, living there, I’m constantly inspired.
The athletes, the coaches, the trainers, the chefs.
It’s like, we’re all in it together, living and breathing the motto. ”
“The motto?”
“The Olympic motto. Citius. Altius. Fortius. It means ‘Faster. Higher. Stronger.’ It’s like…always strive to be better. The goal is improvement. You’re never done, but also, you’re always getting somewhere.”
I take a deep breath, trying to push out the negative thoughts that this inspires, too. Until recently, I always felt like I was living that motto. Until I started going backward.
“Anyway,” I say as I lift a forkful of vegetables, trying to focus on what I can control, “it also has a game room, as I mentioned, and the best-stocked weight room I’ve ever used. I’m sure the facilities in Florida will be similar.”
Adrian smiles. “That does sound pretty epic.”
“Yeah? I didn’t peg you for a state-of-the-art-facilities type of guy.”
“You’re right,” he says, turning back to the game, “but I like what you said about having a team.”
“Is that why you applied for the junior team job?” I ask as I shovel up some rice. “So that you’d have other coaches working with you?”
Adrian’s ball sinks in the ten cup and he winces. “That would be nice, but no. I’m happy with the job I have.”
“Then why did you apply?”
“My dad.” He sends another ball rumbling up the alley.
For the second time tonight, it misses widely.
Adrian lets out an impatient sigh and pushes back his hair, like he’s chastising himself.
Then he spins toward me without picking up another.
“He always wanted me to try my hand at higher level coaching. After he died, I applied. My mom thought it would be a good way to honor his memory.”
“Oh,” I say eloquently. I wish I had my own mom’s ability to say the right thing—something deep and impactful and loving, but still specific and totally not generic. Or Sofi’s ability to tell a joke that somehow dissipates tension while making me feel supported. “I’m sure she appreciates it.”
He smooths the front of his shirt, expression blank. “She’s happy when he’s happy, even now that it’s hypothetical.”
I watch him, unsure of how to respond to that. “She must be proud, though. It’s a big deal you’ve gotten this far in the process.”
Adrian turns to his final ball of the set. “It’s not that serious, only been a couple of interviews. I won’t get it.”
I squint at the side of his face. “USRowing flew you out to Italy. They’re asking me to evaluate you over the next two months. Carla wouldn’t make you jump through all those hoops if the board wasn’t serious about you.”
Mechanically, Adrian lets his ball roll. Sometime in the last couple of minutes, his shoulders have gone stiff and his arm has lost its smooth, fluid swing. The ball plinks against the thirty cup, flies wide, and buries into the lowest-scoring section.
He frowns after it before blowing out a long breath and turning back to me. “You’re saying I should take this more seriously.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Not at all. It’s your application. Take that as seriously as you want. I’m saying, regardless of how you feel, Carla and USRowing are clearly taking you seriously.”
Adrian’s eyebrow rises as he stares at me.
“What?” I ask, and wipe at my mouth with the back of my hand, wondering if I have food on my face.
“Nothing. I just thought…I don’t know. I assumed you’d be exacting in your standards. Expect other people to meet the same high bars you do.”
“Why, because I push myself?”
“Yeah.”
I lift a shoulder and stab at another chunk of chicken. “I push myself because I want to push myself. I always hate it when people tell me to lay off the gas or not take myself too seriously or lower my standards or whatever else. My standards are mine to set where I want and so are yours.”
Adrian doesn’t speak for a long moment, but he’s still looking back me with so much heat and heaviness in his gaze so that I can feel a tingle tracing up my neck. The game chimes, threatening another time out, but this time he ignores it.
“Well,” he says finally, breaking through the noise.
“Well, what?”
He tilts his head and a lock of hair falls over his eyes. My heart flutters. No idea when I started finding partial vision impairment so attractive.
“Well,” he says again as he leans in closer. “I’m glad USRowing is deluded enough to think I’m a good candidate for this job.”
I swivel to look at him in the eye. “Because you’ve always had a deep-seated, yet inexplicable desire to get crushed at Skee-Ball?”
“No. Because it means I get to spend the next two months with you.”
We hold each other’s eyes and heat unfurls over me, so intense it’s almost uncomfortable.
I can hear the blood pounding in my ears, and I’m too aware of my pulse, which is now skipping every third to fourth beat.
I feel completely out of control, like I’m falling. Like I’m standing too close to a fire.
My watch blares. I startle away, swivel the screen to see what scheduled activity I just missed. Then do a double take.
It’s nine forty-five. I should have already done my pre-bed routine.
“Crap!” I nearly scream. How have two hours passed? I’ve already missed my evening stretching and hydration session. Already moving, I slam my Tupperware closed and stuff it on top of the heap of dirty clothes filling my bag before wrestling the zipper closed. “I need to get home.”
I back up toward the stairs.
Adrian abandons our game, moving with me.
“Let me walk you,” he says.
Bad idea. That’s a bad idea. I should have ended this evening nearly two hours ago and not neglected my evening recovery routine. I open my mouth to say so, but instead what comes out is: “Okay.” And then: “I’d like that.”