Teagan
“Hey, girl. Got your tryout. Meet Gravenhurst at the erg room at six-thirty. I know you’ll smash it. And remember? A deal’s a deal. Buh-bye!”
She looked down at the workout clothes she’d put on instead of the team uniform that was hanging in the closet.
“I was invited to erg with Gravenhurst.”
“Who are…?”
“Private school with the East Coast’s best rowing program.”
Her mom didn’t understand. “That sounds like a good way to burn nervous energy before the regatta.”
“Mom. It’s a tryout.”
“Oh? Gosh.” She gave Teagan a funny look. “So why aren’t you running around like a lunatic telling everyone?”
Because it was complicated. A lot more than she’d thought it would be when she’d told Britney to make the call. “I don’t want the guys to find out. They’d be hurt if they knew I was thinking of leaving them.”
“It’s only a tryout.” Her mom batted the concern away. “You could bomb!”
Teagan stared at her. It wasn’t only a “tryout.” It was her entire future at stake. “You seriously need to work on your pep talks, Mom.”
“Break an oar?”
As if her stress levels needed another shot of adrenaline, she spotted Cam with the coach’s daughter, Madison. Who shoved him toward her. Weird.
“Hey,” Cam said, all casual like he hadn’t just been pushed. “Morning. Where are you headed?”
She really didn’t want to lie to him again. Should she tell him? No. Definitely no. It wouldn’t be fair to upset one of her crew before the regatta. “Meeting my mom.”
“Cool,” he said. “Cool, cool.” He shot a look over his shoulder at Madison, who gave him a double thumbs-up.
“Ummm… I went by your room yesterday, but you weren’t in.
I, erm, I wanted to apologize. About the Josh thing.
No!” He held his hands up. “I’m not going to talk about Josh.
No more Josh. He’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. ”
She glanced at her phone. She really needed to get going. “Okay.”
“I was wondering if… would you want to hang out with me sometime?”
Yes! Yes, she did. “I’d love to.” But she also needed to hotfoot it to the erg room.
“Awesome! There’s a new Mexican food truck in town.”
“Tacos are my love language.”
Were they? He looked pleased, so yeah. Why not? Who didn’t love a little spice?
Behind him, she spotted Gravenhurst’s head coach go into the erg room looking like she hadn’t cracked a smile in a decade. She needed to go. “Super. Glad we sorted that out. Talk later?”
“Sure.”
He looked confused. So was she. In about an hour’s time, she’d explain. Maybe. “Awesome. Buh-bye!” She jogged off. Buh-bye? Since when did she say that?
Since the moment she’d accepted a favor from Britney Garner.
Gravenhurst’s head coach was even scarier up close.
“Thank you so much for inviting me,” Teagan blathered after a way too long introduction. Why had she said her middle name? “I really appreciate it.”
“It wasn’t my invitation,” the coach said. “I was asked to as a favor for the principal.”
Ohhhh. Duh. She looked about as happy to have Teagan here as Coach Hayden had looked when he’d put Josh back in stroke seat for the alumni race. Never mind. She could do with burning off some of these nerves.
“Well, thanks anyway.”
The coach showed her to an erg with the enthusiasm of a prison guard escorting a new inmate to their cell. “You won gold last year in the single, but now you’re coxing an eight?”
“Yes.” She knew it looked bad, like Teagan wasn’t focused on rowing, but launching into the entire story was too complicated. “But I keep my erg training up. The single is my passion.” That was why she was here, right?
“My girls train hard. The group you’d sit in if you’d stayed in singles hit seven-forty. Sometimes faster.”
“Great.” Teagan had been training with guys. Big, muscly guys. “Me too.”
The coach nodded at the erg. She’d wait to see the proof.
While the rest of the team strapped in, Teagan took a breath and found her way into the zone. She closed her eyes. It was just her and the erg. Every muscle in her body twitching like a racehorse waiting for the starting gun.
“Sit ready!”
The second the call came to row… she was back in her happy place.
Rowing had never been a duty. It brought her genuine joy.
Back straight, shoulders strong, legs locking into a rhythm she knew they’d never forget.
She didn’t need to beg her body to push harder, dig deeper.
It knew what to do. Didn’t care how much sweat poured down her face. How much her thighs burned.
When the coach called time, she pulled her forearm across her forehead, her eyes stinging with sweat.
The coach held up the stopwatch, her rock-hard expression gone. “Seven thirty-two.”
Teagan grimaced. “Shoot. My PB’s seven twenty-eight.”
Murmurs of disbelief filled the room.
“Everybody back to their erg,” Coach instructed. “You,” she said to Teagan, “are done for the day.”
What did that mean? Had she done enough? Been a show-off? Ticked a box on the coach’s To-Do list?
When the room filled with the whirr of cables extending, coiling back in, Coach signaled to Teagan to follow her to the door.
“I think you should come train with us again next week. We have a slot in our program. You might be a good fit.”
She managed to resist punching the air. She’d nailed it! “That would be amazing. Umm, if I transferred to Gravenhurst, would I still be able to cox for Easton?”
“No. Gravenhurst rowers are required to stay focused in their streams. It’s one or the other. Is that a problem?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” The coach gave her clipboard a couple of raps with her knuckles. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Teagan jogged up to the regatta course to meet Crabcatcher, who was stretching his quads.
“Hey,” she said, panting. “Sorry I’m late for our run.”
“You look like you’ve already worked out.”
Busted. But the trickles of sweat running down her neck? That was from her guilty conscience. “Nah. Just the jog up. C’mon. You ready?”
As they ran, Teagan wittered like a zealous tour guide to stop herself from overthinking her own situation. Crabcatcher was too busy trying to memorize the course to notice.
When they got back to the starting point, he looked winded but not spent.
“Teagan!”
Oh no. No, no. Anytime, any other place, but not here.
Gravenhurst’s coach jogged over to them. “After your performance in the erg room this morning, I spoke to the head of the school. Gravenhurst would like to offer you a place. I know it’s mid-semester, but we can transfer you now. Get you training with us right away.”
She’d done it. She’d won a place in the top rowing program on the East Coast.
“Thank you.”
“You’re transferring to Gravenhurst Academy?” said Crabcatcher. The hurt in his voice lanced straight through her.
The guilt she’d been keeping dammed up flooded into her system. “Crabby… I can explain.”
Two minutes ago, she would’ve thought jumping boats to cox for Westvale would’ve been the ultimate betrayal, but somehow this felt worse.
Choosing herself over the team. An oddball group of guys who had put her through her paces, but had finally, at long last, woven her into the fabric of their team.
“Were you even going to tell us?” Crabcatcher took a step back from her, like she’d turned into kryptonite.
“Crabby,” she appealed. “You know me. I’m a rower first. I never planned to be a coxie—”
“You fought Liam for it. Made us believe we’d be better off with you. Made me believe it. I was on your team, remember?” His voice crackled with hurt. “Why do that if you didn’t want to cox?”
“Because it was the only thing I could do at Easton.” Didn’t he see that?
He wasn’t buying it. “You never gave a crap about us. Never cared about the team. The only person you care about is you.”
“That’s not true, Crabby.” It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. But all the things she wanted to say to him to fix this—about how becoming part of the team had been one of the hardest, most frustrating, and, ultimately, very best things that had ever happened to her—stayed lodged in her throat.
He looked over at the sound of new arrivals. It was the team.
She gave him a pleading look. If they heard about this before the race…
“I won’t tell them, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t want to screw with their emotions before the race. Unlike you, I care about them.”
“Crabby, I care about you. All of you.” She desperately needed him to see this. “Rowing for Gravenhurst isn’t personal.”
“Then why work so hard to bring us together only to abandon ship?”
It was a good question.
“You guys have Liam,” she said. It was a lame response. They both knew it.
“It doesn’t work like that, Teagan. We might be an eight, but we’re a team of nine.”
She knew in her heart he was right. And yet being a cox had never been her dream.
“We’ve changed because of you, Teagan.” His anger was seeping away now, turning into sadness. Like her going to Gravenhurst was a done deal. “Everyone’s rowing better. Even you. Remember? You got your personal best rowing with us.”
She had. A PB she hadn’t been able to replicate today when she’d been rowing for herself.
“I know,” she said. “And I’m grateful for it.” For a thousand other things, too. She’d been made to stretch new muscles. Physical and emotional. Learn new skills. Like playing well with others. Having someone’s back because you knew they’d have yours.
She didn’t have to put herself in Crabby’s shoes to see what he did. They’d believed she would fight for them just as they would fight for her.
“You used us to get what you wanted,” Crabby said.
“I wanted to row for Easton,” she reminded him. “But they don’t have a girls’ team.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough interest. Said they’d only consider it if the boys started winning.”
Crabcatcher’s eyes shot to hers. “We’re at a regatta, aren’t we?”
“Yeah…”
They grinned at each other. She understood what he was saying.
“Maybe we should see what happens if we win the race.”
“Yeah,” she said. The choice she thought she’d already made was no longer clear-cut. “Maybe we should.”