Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Halfway into an eight-kilometer trip, I’m tossing in a wave, desperately reciting a new mantra about nuts and cheese.
For Adrian’s challenge, we’re using one of my endurance sessions to head out into open water.
Our destination is Angel Island, which sits nearly halfway into the massive and wave-tossed San Francisco Bay.
Adrian has promised snacks when we arrive.
That’s just about all that’s keeping me going.
It all started out well enough. We left the peaceful calm of the inlet with sun already warming our shoulders and glimmering off the water in rippling jewels.
I soon hit the swinging strokes I usually find in my endurance sessions and was able to lose myself in rhythm, arms and legs moving together in unconscious harmony.
The problems started when we passed our first shipping container.
I dutifully angled my bow perpendicular to the boat’s wake so it would roll along my hull instead of ramming into it, tossing me side to side.
Unfortunately, just as I crested the second wave, a motorboat zipped past, throwing off more wake at a completely different angle.
I was caught in the crosshairs, waves slamming into me from both directions so that there was nowhere to turn.
I eventually got a grip without further incident, but ever since, I’ve been on edge, paddling with more anxiety than ease.
Nuts and cheese, I repeat to myself. Just four more kilometers until nuts and cheese.
“Parker?” Adrian asks. He’s a dozen or so feet from me, bobbing atop the waves with the ease of a surfer waiting behind the breaks. “How’re you doing?”
Before I can answer, another unexpected wave rams my hull. My boat jerks and my breath catches. My next stroke is awkward, plunging into the surface at an odd angle. I quickly feather it to keep from catching a crab.
“Kath,” Adrian says. “You’re okay.”
Clearly, my nerves are visible. I scan the horizon, searching for a bit of calm water, an escape from this situation. My stomach plummets as I register more ships and a towering sailboat streaming toward us, more wake flowing off its back end.
“This isn’t going well.” I try to take another stroke forward, but my knees are quaking so hard that the hull seesaws. “I’m getting nervous and—”
“You need to stop fighting the conditions and trying to solve the problems with your brain,” Adrian says. “Out of your head. Into your body.”
Another motorboat thunders toward me.
“I don’t know what that means,” I say desperately.
My hands are vises on the grips, my knuckles ashen. My abs are clenching so hard it’s like I’m trying to blow out a thousand birthday candles.
Trying to reassure myself, I mentally retread our safety precautions.
I’m a strong swimmer. We both have our phones, radios, and life jackets stashed behind our seats.
I’m practiced at getting into my boat from open water.
And if all else fails, Adrian has a volunteer at the boathouse ready to hop in a launch and drive out to rescue us.
Yet none of this logic dispels the quaking of my knees or the fluttering of my heart.
“Katherine Parker.” Adrian’s voice bites over my vibrating mind. “You’ve got this. You get to choose to be okay.”
He’s wrong. Everything is spiraling out of control.
Getting worse by the moment. My hands are so sweaty I’m losing my grip, not just on my oars, but on my mind.
Reality disintegrates around me, colors and shapes pulling at odd angles.
I’m so lightheaded that it feels like I’m disconnecting from my body.
What happens if I pass out? I could tip and hit my head. I could drown. I could—
“Take a deep breath,” Adrian commands.
I can’t. “What?”
“You need to suck in a big gulp of air. Don’t worry about anything else. Take a breath. Do it now.”
As I keep moving my blade in panicked, feathery strokes, my lungs drag in air, a choking, spluttering feeling that rattles through my torso.
“Good. Inhale again.”
I take another stroke and suck in more air. It snags in my tight throat.
“Again.”
I breathe again. It’s deeper this time, nearly filling my lungs, instead of the half inhales I’ve been taking for the last few minutes.
“Breathe in again, but now focus on what you smell.”
My lungs expand as I suck in air through my nostrils.
Salt water.
Motor oil.
“Again,” Adrian says. “But this time what you feel.”
Cool grip pads under my palms. The soles of my feet against the footplate. Wind on my face. The smooth motion of my legs as I take another stroke, gliding up and down the rails.
“Sounds.”
The call of a seagull. A revving roar spilling from a motorboat engine. The blast from a far-off barge.
“Breathe again, Kath. One more deep inhale.”
I suck in another breath. It shoots a ripple of calm across my mind.
“And what do you see?”
My eyes find Adrian over the rocking waves.
He’s paddling steadily in front of me, keeping himself close enough that he doesn’t need to shout for me to hear him.
The sun glints off his sunglasses. His hair moves with the flutter of a breeze.
His forearms flex, strong and solid, as he rolls through his next stroke.
You. I see you.
Adrian nods. “There you go.”
I flex my fingers against the grips, feel the weight of my seat, let my back and legs move with the rhythm of a pendulum. Waves toss me underneath, but bit by bit, I’m gliding, slicing instead of tossing. I’m finding the calm rhythm of progress.
“Yes!” I hear Adrian yell over the wind.
I pick up the pace, and the bow drives forward. Sunlight glitters in the footprints of my oars as we approach the next set of waves. But this time, as I crest the first one, I focus on my breath. I take a deep inhale. And my boat rises.
“That’s it, Kath!” Adrian yells beside me. “Out of your head! Into your body!”
I pull. And we fly.
. . .
Warm sand pricks the backs of my legs. I’m spread out like a starfish, chest heaving and heart full. Our shells and oars are sprawled near the waterline and we’re surrounded by craggy rocks that slice out from the hillside, carving out our own private beach.
Triumph courses through my humming veins as I, yet again, replay the image of myself sailing over the rise of waves and crashing through the breaks. For the first time in the longest time, the glide of my legs and the rhythm of my oars were unstoppable. Inevitable.
I’ve experienced this magical feeling many times since I started rowing.
The one where everything aligns and the boat and I start flying—like we’re working together instead of at odds.
Since I can remember, though, I’ve always believed it was something that happened to me.
Something that either clicked or didn’t. That it was out of my control.
But Adrian taught me an important lesson today. That feeling is a choice. Not something I arrive at through a checklist or a rubric or a training program. It’s not a place I get to by eating lemon bars or touching my oarlocks.
I get there by getting out of my head and choosing to connect with my body instead.
Those words would have made no sense to me a few months ago, but now they are obvious. Life-changing.
“Kath.”
To my side, Adrian’s watching me, sitting with the crook of his elbows hooked around his knees. His Lycra is damp, clinging to the long lines of his rigid torso. His biceps and quads are still swollen from our exertion. He tilts his head and lifts his chin, eyes lingering on mine.
A tingle traces from my spine to my hairline.
Sometimes, I’m shocked by how easily I react to this man. All it takes is a glance or a tip of his chin and my skin is already buzzing. Maybe that should scare me. But, sitting on this private beach with a pair of skylines over our shoulders, I feel too safe to be afraid.
“I’ve never been more impressed by you,” he says.
My next breath sharpens in my lungs. “Even though I panicked?”
“Especially because you panicked.” I tilt my head in question and he slides toward me until his knee grazes my thigh. “The accomplishment isn’t that you did it. It’s that you did it even though you were afraid.”
“I couldn’t have without you,” I say truthfully.
Adrian touches the inside of my elbow and drags his fingers along the veins of my forearm, like he’s tracing a stencil. I’ve always been self-conscious of how prominent those veins are, but his touch is so soothing that I can’t help but melt into him.
“I can only encourage,” he says softly. “I can’t paddle for you. I can’t change your mind for you. You did that.”
When his eyes raise to mine again, his pupils are heavy. One of his hands is braced next to me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body rolling off him. I inch my fingers into the spaces between his, drawing up tiny piles of sand underneath.
He swallows. I watch it descend the long line of his throat.
“So, do you admit it?” he asks.
“Admit what?”
“That you’re extraordinary.”
My heart thumps, misses a beat, then resumes its steady pattern.
Extraordinary.
It’s not a word I’ve ever used for myself.
Hardworking, yes. Strong, sure. Obsessive, definitely.
I am all these things and more to make up for everything I’m not. I don’t have an aptitude for my sport like so many elite athletes do, either in some perfect combination of genetics or effortlessly flawless technique. It’s taken me a decade of hard work to overcome that fact.
And yet. Sometimes when I see myself reflected in Adrian’s eyes, I feel this prick of awareness. It’s like I’m expanding, escaping the boundaries of what usually makes me myself. Today, still sprawled out in the sand, muscles softening, the coarse edge of triumph humming along my skin…
Today, just maybe.
Even though it’s not something I can put into words, maybe I can still feel it to be true.
“Kath,” Adrian says, eyes glued to my lips. “Tell me you know how strong you are. Tell me you know how special you are.”