Teagan
Voicemail. Great.
Where the hell are you, Josh? He was late for practice.
His recorded voice started telling her she could leave him a message.
She didn’t want to leave him a message. She wanted him to be sitting on an erg like the rest of the guys. That. And to untangle the confusion bomb that had splattered her brain all over the place ever since he’d told her he wanted to be more than friends.
“… please leave your message after the beep.”
How to approach the deeply awkward situation he’d put her in?
To say Britney hadn’t taken well the news that Teagan had decided to turn down the Gravenhurst offer and stay on the Easton rowing team would be putting it mildly.
She’d stared daggers at her, then told Teagan that she would regret her decision.
Going to school was a daily act of bravery.
Doubly so if she knew Josh had reneged on the friend-zone deal they’d struck.
Beeeeeeeep.
“Hey, Josh. Teagan here. So yeah. You said you didn’t want to be just friends. That’s going to need an explanation.”
This was a mistake. Bringing it up. Maybe he was playing hooky because, like her, it’d be easy to pretend it never happened. Too late now!
“I don’t even know why I’m calling you. Talk later. Bye.”
Right! Back to being a drill sergeant.
The guys had come into practice pumped. Insisted they weren’t going to rest on their laurels after winning the Head of the Laurence Trophy. If Ryder was right, that college scouts had been lurking around the regatta, the only thing for it was to up their game.
She pocketed her phone and went back to her position in front of the seven of them who had bothered to show up. They were halfway through the session and pure focus. All eyes trained on her, waiting for the next call.
“Teagan saaaaaays… pull!”
Seven ergs flew into action.
This was fun. Playing her own version of Simon Says on the ergs.
Hard for them, and rewarding for her. To see them training so hard.
She’d made the right call, sticking with the team.
Coxing might not have been the future she’d imagined, but hadn’t her dad always told her that no amount of planning stopped life from throwing in a few curveballs?
He’d nailed that one. Still not so much as a postcard from him.
At least her mom wasn’t totally abandoned here.
She and Coach went way back. And also, apparently, Senator Garner.
Just this morning, Mom had casually mentioned that she knew Brit and Baloo’s mom from the pageant circuit, back in the day.
She was going to ask her for help getting permission to make much-needed improvements to their house’s plumbing system. Yeah, good luck with that, Mom…
“Teagan saaaaays… freeze!”
Seven ergs fell motionless. Their riders poised for action, waiting for the next call.
“Where’s Josh?” demanded Ryder.
“Dunno.” She didn’t want to talk about it. “Haven’t heard from him.”
“So, what?” Ryder pressed, clearly as annoyed with Josh’s absence as she was. “Practice is optional now?”
“Row!”
Quaid set his erg in motion. Everyone else stayed frozen.
“She didn’t say ‘Teagan Says,’ Quaid.”
“Crap!” He gave himself a slap on the forehead.
“Teagan saaays… pull!”
They did. Sweet. Nothing like having her team respect her authority. She waited a few seconds.
“Teagan saaaays… give me a ‘yes, ma’am’!”
“Yes, ma’am!” they shouted as one, then all fell about laughing.
Cam was the last one up to the leaderboard to chalk up his score. He shot Teagan a quick look before writing his time.
Ryder scowled.
“Better watch out,” Cam teased Ryder, who was watching everyone else record their scores. “I’m coming for stroke, Ryder.”
Ryder, who lacked a sense of humor, didn’t appreciate the playful taunt. “Give your best shot, man. You might be fastest but it’ll never happen. No one’s going to follow a FAID over a Regis.”
Teagan shook her head. Someone had a bit of a Napoleon complex. Without the short part.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” retorted Cam.
“No chance.” Ryder strutted off to the shower room.
“Hey,” she said, once she and Cam were alone. “I have been promised tacos and I’ve come to collect.” She grinned up at him and realized he wasn’t quite as immune to Ryder’s taunts as she’d thought. “You okay?”
He shook it off, shot her a smile. “All good. More importantly, I hope you’re ready for tacos that will change your life.”
“I’m from SoCal,” she deadpanned. “I highly doubt that.”
While Cam was in the shower, a box was delivered to the boathouse. Baloo read the card. “Hey, Ryder! Someone left a box for you.”
The guys gathered around as Ryder lifted the lid of the elaborately decorated gift box and pulled out a big heart-shaped ornament covered in fake gemstones.
Teagan reminded herself where she was and who she was with. They were probably real.
There was a note attached to the heart “written” in cut-out magazine letters.
“You have stolen my heart. Will you go to the Fall Formal with me? From Amber,” said Ryder, reading the note aloud.
Quaid and Crabcatcher oooh’ed and aaah’ed.
Noah looked confused. “So she’s giving him a heart but telling him he stole it—which is it? And why does it look like a ransom note? Does she want money for it?”
“Love’s confusing, bro,” Quaid told Noah.
“It’s not about perfect grammar, Noah,” Baloo jumped in. “Don’t ruin the magic of this prom-posal by trying to find subjunctive clauses or whatever.”
Quaid looked perplexed. “Is it really a prom-posal when it’s the Fall Formal? Is it more like a ‘form-posal’?”
“That’s not any better,” Noah said.
Teagan saw the shower room door open and waved Cam over. This was better than reality TV.
Teagan had never really been a school dance kind of girl. “Isn’t this all a little over the top?”
Baloo shot her a woeful look. “Why do you hate joy?”
Ryder clearly didn’t care because he stood up, popped the heart back into the box with a satisfied grin. “Happy days, boys. That’s my date to the Formal sorted. I’ll organize a table. Who wants to join Amber and me?”
Everyone put their hands up apart from Teagan and Cam.
This wasn’t awkward at all. Tacos! They were going to enjoy tacos. Much better than a Formal.
“Baloo?” Ryder asked. “Two seats? I presume you want to bring your boyfriend.” Baloo gave him a weird look. “The guy you met on socials?”
Baloo shook his head, dropped his gaze. “Didn’t work out. One seat’ll be fine.”
Teagan could totally be wrong, of course, but she wasn’t so sure Baloo was nursing a broken heart.
The Baloo she knew would’ve let big fat tears fall down his cheeks, waiting for someone to hunt down some ice cream to help drown his sorrows.
But whether he’d been dumped or was having a secret romance with the Prince of Norway, he clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
She got that. Big time. There were two boy-shaped problems in her life and—
One of them had just marched into the boathouse.
Josh returned his teammates’ confused expressions with one of his imperious smiles and dropped his duffel bag next to an erg. “Aww, sweet. You guys didn’t have to roll out the red carpet.”
Ryder shoved the lid on the box and put his coat on it, hackles up. “Rolling up at the end of practice. That’s a choice.”
“Dentist appointment,” Josh shot back in the same combative tone. “I cleared it with Coach.”
“I call bullshit. Which scout were you with? Princeton? Harvard?”
Josh’s eyebrows went up but his voice stayed even. “Dartmouth.” He put out his hand when Ryder took a step forward. “Take a chill pill, cuz. Like I said, I was at the dentist.”
Ryder clearly didn’t believe him, but thankfully decided against pounding the truth out of Josh. He stormed out, the guys following behind him.
“I’ll catch up with you outside,” Teagan said to Cam, flicking a thumb at Josh, who was strapping his feet into an erg.
She walked over to him, arms crossed, waiting for her explanation.
“Okay,” he said when it was clear she wasn’t going to move. “Let’s talk.”
“Yeah.” She nodded as if they were about to have an earnest discussion about calculating wind factor into scull speed. “You want to explain your sudden pivot from being friends?”
Josh’s smile flickered. “I thought that part was pretty clear.”
“And I thought we were going to let this go.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“What if you just made yourself do it anyway, Josh?”
“If I didn’t have a girlfriend, would that change things for you?”
“What? No! Why?”
Another crack appeared in the perfect veneer that was Josh Regis’s life. “… I don’t know if I’m supposed to be with Britney.”
Now, that was absurd. “C’mon. You’re perfect for each other.” She popped on a cheeky grin. “You’re both the worst people I know.”
She got an eye roll. Fair. A slump of his straight-as-an-arrow shoulder line followed. Was he… serious?
“I don’t even know what’s real in my life anymore.”
His blue eyes were a wash of confusion. This was not the Josh Regis she knew and loved to hate. “Hey.” She squatted down so she didn’t feel like she was lording it over him anymore. “What’s going on with you?”
“I…” He shook his head, decided against whatever it was he was about to say. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
She pushed herself back up. Why did she even bother? “Whatever’s happening in your life? Don’t use me as an excuse to run away from it. I’m not an option.” She made sure he got that. “If you want to break up with Britney? Don’t do it because of me. Do it for yourself. It’s your life, Josh.”
He huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah. Right.”
“Hey!” This really wasn’t like him. “You have so much going for you, Josh. Before you throw it all away? Take a look at what you’re really willing to lose.”
She turned and left. She really needed a taco.