8. The Ride Home
The Ride Home
Climbing back onto the bus, Maren feels every muscle in her legs protest. They ache and twitch from overuse, a dull and wonderful reminder of the night.
The air smells of wet towels, and the sharp salt and grease from the bags of McDonald’s they had just stopped for.
She makes her way back, sliding into her usual seat, a small paper bag of fries still warm in her hands.
French fries have always been her post-meet ritual, the treat her mom would buy for her on the way home when she was little.
Maren’s nerves never let her eat before a meet, so afterward, she is always starving.
She is grateful that Coach Hensley always lets them stop.
She pulls the hood from her warm-up parka over her head and slides in her headphones.
Violent Femmes hum through the quiet as she opens her backpack, pulling out her notebook where she had jotted down the night’s times and scores.
She skims the numbers, adding small notes in the margins.
Her start could be stronger, her turns tighter, her push-offs harder.
Her focus fades with the hum of the road.
The words start to blur, and she shuts the notebook, tucking it back into her backpack.
Outside, the highway lights streak by. The quiet that fills the space between her music and the night feels almost too loud. She pulls her headphones out, letting the sound of the tires fill her ears instead.
When she glances up, Reese is walking down the aisle toward her, one hand steadying herself on each seat she passes. Most of the team is asleep, their heads bobbing against the windows.
“Is this seat taken?” Reese asks softly.
Maren shakes her head and slides her backpack onto the floor. Reese sits beside her, smelling faintly of watermelon and cucumber, always one of the few who showers before the ride home and never carries the lingering edge of chlorine.
Reese exhales and leans her head back against the seat. For a long moment, neither of them says anything. The bus hums beneath them, a steady vibration that fills the space.
“You know,” Reese finally breaks the silence, “I thought your mom was going to climb right over the railing tonight. She might be the most energetic fan I have ever seen.”
Maren laughs, quiet but real. “Yeah, she has been that way since my first meet. She has never missed one, even when she had pneumonia once. You know she sat out in the parking lot until my event, came in just long enough to see my race, and then went back out to nap until the next event.”
Reese smiles so bright, Maren can see it in the dim lights of the bus. “Wow, talk about dedication.”
“I guess you could say she is my biggest fan.”
“No doubt.”
The bus hits a bump, and their shoulders brush. Neither of them moves. The touch lingers, light but deliberate, and they both just lean slightly into it.
The bus settles again, the hum is steady. Outside, the highway glows in streaks of white and gold that fade as quickly as they appear. Maren watches their reflections blur together in the glass, hers fading into Reese’s until it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Reese’s hand moves just slightly, tracing the seam of her sleeve. The air between them feels suspended, like the bus itself has stopped moving. For a long time, there is only the sound of tires on the pavement.
Then, quietly, almost like she is afraid to disturb the stillness, Reese asks, “So, what happens next for you?”
The weight of the question settles inside her. It is one she has been asked before, one she has asked herself more times than she can count.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “Maybe coaching. Maybe take a few classes at Great Lakes… Probably both.” She shrugs the uncertainty moving through her like a current she hasn’t been able to swim against. “What about you?”
Reese shifts in the seat, turning slightly toward Maren.
“I want to teach. Like, really teach.” There is a lightness to her voice that Maren has never heard before, soft but certain.
“I have always wanted to work with kids. After helping with the age group team these last few years, I know I can do something meaningful with them.”
Maren can feel that excitement spill over, pulling her in. She sits up a little straighter. “I can see that. The kids are always happy on ‘Reese Days’. Imagine if every day could be a ‘Reese Day’?”
Reese laughs, “For what it’s worth, I think you would be an incredible coach.”
“Do you want to know a secret?” Maren asks, half joking, half serious.
Reese leans in even closer; their shoulders brush again. “Are secrets going to be our thing?” She teases and smiles. “Yes, I want to know your secret.”
Maren breaths in again. One, two, three, four.
The air tightens in her chest. “I’m scared of the ‘what’s next’ part,” she admits.
“I don’t really know what I want to do or how to do it.
I’m scared of what happens when I don’t have everything laid out.
You know, the same routine, the same order. The same as yesterday.”
Reese is quiet for a long time. The noise of the bus fills the space between them. Maren starts to wonder if maybe she has said too much, if she should have just kept that part tucked away. Then Reese’s voice comes soft and steady.
“I think that is fair,” she says. “It’s hard when everything changes at once.
People make it sound exciting, but it’s terrifying too.
” She glances toward the window, her reflection layered over Maren’s.
“You spend years learning how to do one thing really well, and then it’s just over.
Everyone expects you to already know what comes next. ”
Maren nods. “Exactly.”
Reese looks back at her, eyes catching the faint light from the emergency exit door. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be one big answer. Maybe it’s just small things at first. Like showing up, or helping someone, or figuring out what makes the day feel a little more like yours.”
Maren lets the words sit there for a moment. She wants to believe them. “You make it sound simple.”
They fall quiet again. The bus leans through a curve, headlights flashing across their faces. Reese’s hands rest on her legs, close enough that Maren can feel the warmth radiating from her skin.
“I used to think that if I just kept busy enough, I wouldn’t have to think about the future,” Maren says finally. “But lately it feels like it’s all anyone talks about.”
Reese’s voice is barely above a whisper. “Then maybe tonight, we don’t talk about the future. Maybe we just let this be enough.”
Maren lets her body relax as the tension starts to ease. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe we do.”
Maren leans her head against the window, the cool glass grounding her.
The bus feels softer now, wrapped in the peace that they have built between them.
Outside, the world passes in streaks of yellow and white.
And for the first time, she does not try to count the lights or time the turns.
She just watches. The space between towns feels endless, but not in a bad way.
It feels like breathing room, like the kind of silence that asks you to listen instead of filling it.
The bus slows as they turn off the highway, the familiar pattern of the drive breaking into smaller jolts of streetlights and stop signs.
Maren blinks against the change in the light as they roll through town.
The stores are dark, the sidewalks wet from the rain.
The smell of it drifts through the vents, clean and heavy with earth.
By the time they pull into the school parking lot, most of the team is stirring. Bags rustle. Someone yawns loud enough to make the seat in front of them laugh. Reese stands up in the seat and stretches. “Guess this is our stop.”
Maren nods, her voice caught inside of her again. The night outside looks darker than it did when they left Marquette, the lights of the bus cutting through the mist.
They move with the others, stepping down onto the slick pavement.
The cold hits instantly, sharp and clean after the warmth from the bus.
Maren dares her parka tighter around her shoulders and looks across the lot.
Headlights flash as parents pull in and out, tired voices of her teammates calling goodnight to each other.
Reese waits beside her car, keys turning over in her hands. “You heading home?” she asks.
“Yeah. You?”
Reese nods, her breath visible in the light from the lamp above them. “Probably stopping gas on the way. Otherwise, straight home. Mom’s rules.”
The mist turns into rain, the drops falling heavily on them. The parking lot is almost empty with only their cars and Coach Hensley’s left in the lot.
Maren breaks the silence, “Thanks for sitting with me.”
“Anytime, Mini-Coach.” Reese smiles, that small, real kind of smile that starts in her eyes.
There is something like a hesitation between them, a pause that stretches longer than it should.
Reese steps forward, close enough that Maren can once again feel her warmth, even in the night’s chill.
Reese’s fingers brush lightly against Maren’s sleeve, then slip lower, finding Maren’s hand for just a moment. Her skin is warm and damp in the mist.
“You really did great tonight,” she says, voice soft but sure.
Maren looks down at their joined hands, then back up. “You, too.”
Reese lets go, her hand falling away. “See you Monday?”
“Yeah. Monday.”
Reese gives a small nod, then steps back and climbs into her car. The headlights flare as she pulls away, the sound of tires cutting through the shallow puddles as she fades into the dark.
Maren stands there a little longer, watching the empty spot where Reese’s car had been. Her fingers still tingle from the touch. The scene replays in flashes that feel too sharp, too close.
She climbs into her car, shutting the door against the rain.
For a second, she just sits there, staring at her own reflection in the windshield.
The heater kicks on, slow to warm, and her pulse feels too fast. It hits her all at once, the quiet, the closeness, the touch.
The small, impossible truth was that she liked it.
Maren presses her palms against the steering wheel, steadying herself.
Outside, the rain begins again, tapping against the glass in an uneven percussion that sounds almost like her heartbeat.
She tries to slow her brain down, counting the way she does before a race.
It does not help this time. The image still lingers behind her eyes: Reese’s smile, the way her hand felt warm and certain in hers, the way she had taken a second too long to let go.
A flush rises up her neck. She blinks hard, like she can just shake it loose. It is nothing, she tells herself. Just a long day. Just exhaustion and adrenaline and the strange quiet that follows big moments.
But the thought does not hold, it never does.
She leans back in her seat, watching the water gather and slide down the windshield in thin crooked lines. The parking lot is empty now, the bus lights are gone, and the world washed in silver from the lamps. She can still hear the sound of Reese’s car on wet pavement, even though she is long gone.
Her fingers twitch once against the steering wheel before she forces them still. Her chest feels too tight, her skin is too warm.
For the first time all season, she wishes the drive home was longer.
She wishes the rain would keep falling so she could stay here a little while, caught between what she understands and what she suddenly does not.
Finally, she shifts the car into gear, headlights cutting on and reflecting back off of the building.
She slowly eases her car out of the parking lot, and the tires hiss against the water. The wipers are moving in a slow beat.
She tells herself she is fine. She tells herself she will forget by morning.
But as the road straightens and the rain blurs the world into streaks of light, she knows she will not.