Chapter Two
Two
As I approach him, the stranger with my lemon bar is crossing out long lines of his own notes like they’ve done him a personal injustice.
I brace my hands against the high-back chair across from his table, taking in the littering of espresso cups, insides coated with a brown film, and snapped pencils—casualties, no doubt, of his assault on these notebooks.
I clear my throat. “Mi scusi.”
His eyes rise to meet mine. They’re an unexpected shade of effervescent green, like slices of polished jade. The words I had planned to stammer out in Italian flee my mind. I fumble to regain them, like I’m grasping for droplets of water skittering across sand.
“Do you want that chair?” he asks after another beat passes and I still haven’t spoken.
“No, sorry, I—Oh. You’re not Italian,” I say as I place his accent. He’s almost certainly American, maybe from the West Coast or some Northeastern city.
“Fortunately not,” he says. “If I had daily access to this espresso, I’d spend my life in a half-delirious caffeine high.”
I re-scan his empty cups, mentally tallying the milligrams of caffeine he’s consumed in this sitting. “Do you need to stay awake for something?”
“Nah,” he says. “I just think this stuff tastes like they’ve found a way to liquefy a rainbow and pour it into an espresso cup.”
I smile, even as I speculate about the nutritional value of liquid rainbows. “You sure that would taste good?”
He tilts his head. “Why not?”
“Sounds a bit saccharine.”
“You’re not a sweets person, then?”
“Sweets are usually useless to me, but—Well, actually.” My eyes fall on his untouched lemon bar lingering at the edge of the table. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
He lets his pencil drop between the pages of his book. “You have my attention.”
“Right, well, the thing is…is that…” I fumble through my cross-body bag for my wallet. “I’d like to buy your lemon bar. Please.”
“Even more interesting.”
“I’ll pay you whatever you want.” I shove a handful of coins toward him. “That is, as long as you’ll take euros. Otherwise, I’ll have to use an app or something.”
He leans back in his chair. “Honestly, now I just need to know why someone who is not a sweets person so desperately wants a lemon bar.”
I drop the coins and they tinkle to the ceramic table with a soft clatter. “Okay. I assume you’ve seen the signs around town? The last regatta of the World Rowing Cup is here in Varese.”
For a fleeting moment, the stranger looks genuinely surprised, and not just in an amused kind of way. He quickly hides the expression, though, wringing it out with an exaggerated frown.
“Rowing…” he says. “Is that the one where you huck yourself off a waterfall?”
I snort. “That’s kayaking.”
“Oh,” he says, but there’s mirth tugging at the corners of his lips. “Then you mean the one where you face the wrong direction and a short person yells at you from the back of the boat.”
This draws a smile out of me. “I race singles so the only person yelling at me is my coach, and she’s nearly six feet tall.” I flatten my lips. “I guess you don’t know much about rowing, then?”
He exhales a laugh and flips his book closed. It’s not a textbook at all, but Dunbar’s Training for Elite Rowers.
“Clearly, not as much as I should,” he says, motioning to his mangled notes.
Now it’s my turn to be surprised. I survey his torso with new appreciation.
He’s wearing a loose windbreaker, so I can’t gather much about his build, but he has a rower’s stereotypically broad shoulders.
He also has telltale signs of someone who spends their summers on the water—in his case, a mess of brown hair that’s lightened at the ends and white skin tanned to a light taupe.
“You’re a rower?” I guess.
This time his smile is more forced than genuine. “Let’s just say I’m a passionate fan.”
That seems purposefully evasive, and I pause, waiting to see if he’ll say more. The door chimes in a cascade of bells, and a laugh rings out over the clatter of plates and cutlery. The stranger watches me, his expectant gaze unbroken by these distractions.
I guess it’s time to explain.
“Here’s the thing. I’m in the B final tomorrow, and it’s important that I do well. I mean, it’s the World Cup, so of course it’s important. But it’s bigger than that for personal reasons.”
“How does a lemon bar help?” he asks.
“It’s one of my rituals.”
“One of them?”
“You want an inventory?”
His lips tick. “No, but I’m curious about this particular one.”
Even though the bar is on the line, I hesitate.
It’s not like I believe eating this pastry will guarantee victory.
It works because it gives me a feeling of calm and confidence—a knowing that I’ve done everything I can to prepare, which puts me in the right mindset for victory.
Still, I know how this sounds. I get judgmental reactions to my detailed sleep plans and food logs from pretty much everyone except Maxwell.
“I’ve been eating a lemon bar before every race since my first Youth Nationals,” I explain, bracing myself as I walk through my logic.
“I ate one the night before a final and, very unexpectedly, I won gold. The next race, I didn’t eat one, and I got fifth.
I’ve been doing it ever since. Every race. No matter what.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Lots of athletes have superstitions,” I bite out. “It might sound strange but—”
“I don’t think it’s strange.”
“Oh. What’s with the”—I circle a finger in the direction of his eyebrow—“skepticism?”
His lips tick. “That’s not skepticism you see.”
“What is it then?”
“Let’s call it intrigue.”
A tingle traces between my shoulder blades. “Oh.”
He taps a finger against his notes, fixing me in place with those jade eyes.
I avert my own gaze toward the counter. In the last few minutes Sofi has procured some kind of chocolate-stuffed pastry.
She’s now fervently tearing it into tiny pieces and casting glances at us from behind a curtain of curls. At least someone is enjoying this.
“Here’s the thing,” the stranger says, drawing me back to our pocket of the room. “I want the lemon bar, too. Not for the same reason, but still. A good one.”
I frown at his dessert. “You haven’t had a bite yet.”
“I’m saving it.”
“For what? An art installation?”
He smiles softly. “You eat lemon bars to win competitions. I eat lemon bars to cheer myself up.”
I squint at his lingering smile. “You don’t look like you need cheering up.”
“Not yet, but I will after tomorrow morning.”
“What’s happening tomorrow morning?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t usually share deeply personal shortcomings and coping strategies with strangers in Italian bakeries—”
“Neither do I.”
“To be fair,” he says, “you still haven’t.”
“Haven’t what?”
“Told me why this race is so important.”
“Oh,” I say.
He seriously wants more? I guess he’s right that I haven’t shared anything truly personal. Nor was I planning to. But it seems this man is just stubborn enough that he isn’t going to give up his dessert without the messy details.
“Can I sit?” I ask.
“Please.”
The chair lets out a high-pitched whine as I pull it across the tile.
I lower myself onto the creaky leather and brace my elbows against the cool table.
“Here’s the deal. I’ve been competing in the World Cup regattas and my last few races—the ones in Germany and France—were bad.
Really bad. I barely made it to the C final in Germany and I didn’t make it out of the repechage in France. ”
My memory of that day is as vivid now as it was when it happened. The finish line in sight. The buzzing in my ears, drowning out the roar from the sidelines. The burning filling every muscle. The exhaustion that felt both all-consuming and also wholly inadequate.
I take another breath, keep my gaze fixed on my fiddling fingers. “Two of my four sponsors dropped me after that. This Italy event is the last one—and the last-chance qualifier for Worlds. If I do worse than third, I doubt I’ll make the team, and that will mean losing my last two sponsors.”
I sneak a glance upward, ready to find pity or dismissal in the stranger’s gaze. His lips are flat in a way that’s almost purposefully neutral. But the lock of his eyes on mine sends a prickle across my bare arms.
“What happens if you lose the last two sponsors?” he asks.
“My friend and I”—I tip my chin toward Sofi—“we live in the training center in Southern California. That covers our living expenses and coaching. But we have to pay for everything else ourselves, like travel and equipment.”
“Hence, sponsors.”
“Right.”
The stranger traces a finger across the edge of his notebook, considering. “So you’re saying that winning this race isn’t just about the thrill of victory?”
I swallow, considering how openly to answer.
Unlike Sofi, who competes with a team, I race alone.
While Sofi always internalizes far more of the boat’s mistakes than she should, she’s still training and racing with eight other women.
In my case, it’s just me and the boat and the pain.
I have no one to blame but me. I have no one to answer to but me.
I suck in a long breath through my nose, trying to let the ambient scent of espresso and sugar calm my nerves.
“I don’t race to win,” I say. “I mean, winning is good. It feels good. But, for me, a race is always more than a race. Because a loss is always more than a failure.”
The stranger sits back, some other emotion unspooling onto his face.
“That’s more compelling than I expected,” he says.
“Are you going to tell me your reason, then?” I ask. “Since I shared.”
He drums his fingers against his book, perhaps weighing his response. Like me, deciding how much to reveal to a stranger in an unfamiliar place.
“My dad always expected a lot from me,” he says finally. “And he was never much of a coddler. So, I didn’t always get much…”
He pushes a hand through his hair.