Josh
Especially now he was back with his crew.
Eight by land. Eight by sea.
Lake and river, actually. And if you didn’t factor in Liam, the cox.
Details.
He was a big-picture kind of guy and a natural-born leader.
He hadn’t needed to know everyone’s names or run a Reign of Terror to get here either.
Not with his pedigree. He was a sixth-generation Regis gracing the halls of the East Coast’s most exclusive prep school.
His crew were some of the wealthiest teenagers in the USA.
If you didn’t count Cam. They razzed him about being a scholarship kid, but everyone knew bank balances didn’t matter when you were in the boat. Earning your seat did.
Meaning, the Josh Regis style of leadership was more…
benevolent. He’d finished his stuff-a-kid’s-head-down-the-toilet phase years ago.
The rest of the crew, too. Apart from Quaid.
He’d given a guy a swirly last year, but he’d had his reasons.
And he’d filled the tank with Evian beforehand.
Quaid was thoughtful like that. And he gave great piggybacks.
Which is why the team was always there to back him up.
That was how the Easton Eagles’ rowing team rolled.
Sometimes, though? A leader needed to knock some heads together. Remind them of the mission. Winning. After this morning’s inaugural practice session? Six of the guys needed to demand refunds from their training camps or admit they hadn’t gone.
Cam had probably spent the summer brooding under the hoods of cars he could only dream of driving, let alone owning.
How that townie had come back looking so ripped was a mystery.
He rowed in whatever seat Coach put him.
Apart from Josh’s. No one who glowered that much could sit in stroke seat.
Actually, no one apart from Josh could sit in stroke seat.
It would stay his until the day he threw off his graduation cap to make some waves at the college of his choice. Or at least that was the plan.
The Easton Eagles had fallen off the map of crews to watch. Making it Josh’s responsibility to put it back on recruiters’ radar. That meant going Chad Alpha on the team. It was time to make some waves. His future depended on it. Meaning, theirs did, too.
They didn’t need to know why. Or what happened in Baltimore. They just needed to win.
“Right, boys.” Shower time was as good a time as any to dole out the tough love.
“We need to wash off today’s disaster and start fresh.
” He grabbed the bar of soap his girlfriend, Britney, had given him last night with instructions to use it after practice because she didn’t like it when he smelled like “wet lake.”
Wet lake? What other kind was there?
Whatever. It kept her happy and as it was the first day of the fall term, he knew she was as busy as he was, setting the stage for them to continue their reign as King and Queen of Easton Prep.
The bar wouldn’t lather. Yet another thing that wasn’t performing the way he wanted it to. He threw it into the next stall. “Catch, Crabby!”
Crabcatcher—the pipsqueak at the back of the boat—caught it, lost it, caught it again, then somehow sent it flying into the trash can. Everybody cheered. All of which set the stage for Josh to towel off and jump up on one of the cedar benches with the grace of a tiger.
And then he let rip, detailing where they’d gone wrong, how to turn it around next practice, and what would happen if they didn’t.
Half an hour later, he and Ryder, the team’s number two rower, led the pack up to the school’s main quad. As Noah, the team’s brainiac, started talking about all the books they were meant to have read over the summer, Josh caught up with his cousin.
“How was Baltimore?” asked Ryder.
“Intense.” Josh wasn’t going to give anything away. “Princeton?”
“Same. Their team is full of giants.”
Any college team worth joining was.
“We’re still growing. We’ll be the same when we get there. But better.”
Fist bumps.
Ryder had wanted to go to Johns Hopkins with Josh, but he’d nixed it, framing it in a way that made it look like he only had his cousin’s best interests at heart versus what it really was—pushing him away.
It was always a delicate balance with Ryder because a) they needed him on the crew if they stood any chance of winning, b) he was a loyal right-hand man, and c) they were related.
Unfortunately for Ryder, his mom was the poster girl for the black sheep side of the family.
The side Josh’s dad not-so-secretly called “The Egregiouses.”
“Hold up.” Josh stopped Ryder with a hand on his chest. “Girlfriends. Twelve o’clock.”
The rest of the team formed a semicircle behind them.
“What are we looking at?” Bronson, aka Baloo, looped his mammoth arms around their shoulders.
He was the team’s powerhouse, chief of the boat’s “engine room,” and its cheerleader and heart-on-his-sleeve peacekeeper, too.
He was always saying “Don’t fight, guys, please” whenever the team got into one (which they did on a daily).
“Britney. Amber. Determining the new year’s world order.”
“Ohhhh…” Baloo knew the drill. Josh’s girlfriend was his twin sister. “Britney’s doing her Queen Bee thing with the newbies?”
That she was.
“Anyone running for the hills?” asked Perry, not bothering to look up from his phone, which was in selfie mode, as per usual, tweaking his platinum-blond hair into a state of perfection before hitting the quad.
Job done, he extended his phone. “Team photo! Strike a pose.” Perry did, no one else.
Also, as per. Perry examined the picture and gave it a satisfied grin.
“No wonder I have the most followers of anyone on the team.”
Josh watched his girlfriend in action. She and Amber were sidling up to someone he hadn’t seen before.
A girl around their age with blonde highlights.
Judging by her lack of fear when Brit approached, she had no clue that this exchange would pretty much establish her social status at Easton.
In, out, or, like Juliet Morny, an outlier.
Kind of like Cam, but a billion times richer.
Juliet lived her life so far outside the proverbial box that she and Brit had an unspoken “let’s not go there” deal.
Queen Bee was about to sting.
“Want to get front-row seats?” asked Ryder.
Josh grabbed his arm, held him back. “You play Amber. I’ll do Brit.”
Ryder put on his version of an English accent, nothing at all like his girlfriend’s, but it did the trick. “Hi there, New Girl. Are you lost?”
Josh put on Britney’s chirpy voice. “We’ll help you, New Girl.” She wouldn’t unless, by some freak turn of events, she proved useful. “I’m Britney Garner, student council president. Garner like the senator.”
New Girl didn’t go into raptures. Mistake number one.
“Anybody know her name?” Josh asked.
“Teagan.”
Josh caught his double take short. How the hell did Cam Dillinger know New Girl? It didn’t sit well, Cam having an edge on Easton intel. That was his domain.
Ryder, oblivious, was being Amber again, rabbiting on about how she was chair of the dance committee when Josh’s phone rang.
Perry.
What the—? Ah. Genius. He put the call on speaker. Perry had sidled up to the girls, his back to them, and, future spy-in-training that he was, called the guys so they could tune in to the actual conversation.
“You’re probably super intimidated by the school’s whole vibe,” Britney said in a warm, friendly tone Josh knew well. “You’ll get used to it. Everyone’s pretty chill.”
If your idea of chill was Lord of the Flies Extreme Edition.
New Girl—Teagan, apparently—looked relieved. “Nice to know it’s not just yacht bros and pretentious horse girls.”
A couple of the guys blew low whistles.
“New Girl’s got balls,” Baloo said, impressed. Even when it came to his sister, Baloo was like Switzerland. He didn’t take sides. Stuck to doling out bear hugs as and when. Hence the nickname.
“Hmm.” Britney’s smile dropped temperature. “I’m captain of the equestrian team.”
“Which is very impressive,” Teagan backpedaled.
She’d learn soon enough that there was no backpedaling with Brit. Once there was an X on your back? You never got rid of it.
A helicopter flew over, drowning out the conversation. Students arriving from Boston or New York.
When he looked back, The Britney he knew his audience—“I didn’t want to be.”
Cackles filled the room. Power play complete, time for phase two. Operation New Girl.
She was parked in the back next to Juliet. As they watched him approach, Juliet whispered in her ear like she was doing a wildlife documentary commentary.
The Alpha Male of the pride enters the room… a hush… as the king of this jungle…
Josh met Ryder’s high five, ignoring the seat beside him in favor of sliding onto New Girl’s bench, pretending he had no idea they weren’t meant for three. She shot him a pissed off look when he budged her over.
Baloo was right. New Girl took no guff.
“Mr. Regis,” Wu said through gritted teeth. “As you’re late, you can do us the courtesy of reading the first stanza.”
Oops. “My bad. I didn’t bring the book.”
He looked at Teagan, and held eye contact until she pushed her book over. “Thanks.” He rearranged himself to face her, then gave Byron the Regis Treatment. “She walks in beauty, like the night/of cloudless climes and starry skies…”
He glanced up, even though he knew her eyes were glued to him, trying to figure how on earth an athlete like himself could make a two-hundred-year-old poem sound so relevant, so personal. People always forgot athletes needed a good grade average to get into the Ivies.
“… and all that’s best of dark and bright/meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
He let the book drop, no mic.
“What do you think it means, Mr. Regis?” Wu asked wearily.
Eyes still on Teagan, Josh said, “I think Byron was trying to smash.”
Teagan shot him the same look she’d thrown at Liam, then looked away.
“Mr. Regis,” Wu chided. “If you put as much effort into your English class as your rowing, you’d actually get somewhere.”
Teagan’s head whipped around, eyes shining up at him like he was a Greek god. “You’re on the rowing team?”
Aha. So she was a boat bunny, was she?
He nodded, all casual. Refused to throw a bone.
She turned back around to Juliet. “Can you show me the boathouse later?”
He smiled to himself. Made a mental note to tell the team they were about to get an audience…