Chapter Eighteen #2
Sipping on a fizzy water, I lean against Adrian’s wooden kitchen island while he cooks. He moves expertly between his stainless steel fridge and graphite countertops, a hand towel slung casually over one shoulder. To my surprise, he wields a paring knife with the precision of a professional.
“I wasn’t expecting you to be such a good cook,” I say as Adrian presses his thumb into the side of a fleshy scallop and pulls out some kind of muscle, like he’s peeling a petal from a rose.
He flicks it into a bowl. “There was a time I wanted to be a chef.”
“Really?” I slide to a seat on one of Adrian’s barstools. Chef seems like an odd detour along the path from rower to coach. “When?”
“After I quit rowing, I took a year off before college. Everything in my life was up in the air, so I ran through a lot of options. I’ve always loved to cook. Chef was on the short list.”
“Oh. You quit rowing after high school? I’ve been assuming you were on some varsity crew.” Adrian’s splits on the erg were way too good for him to have topped out as a high school athlete.
He nods, but doesn’t look up from the rhythmic thuds of his knife against the chopping block.
“I had an athletic scholarship to Georgetown, but I ended up turning it down. Much to my dad’s dismay.
But, as it turned out, he hated the culinary school idea even more.
So much that he eventually offered to pay for part of my tuition if I still went and got a degree in exercise science. ”
I tilt my head, watching him. I know a lot of people whose parents got them into rowing. Most ended up resenting the sport. “Did you, er, like crew?” I ask. “As an athlete.”
Adrian’s knife sails across a stack of herbs and he considers the question for so long that I wonder if the answer is no. Then he says, “Yes. I loved being part of a team.”
“But?”
“But there was a lot of pressure.”
“From your dad?”
He looks up sharply. “Did I already say that?”
I lift up a foot onto my stool and rest my temple against my bent knee. “No, but you described his personality. Plus, I know a lot of athletes from ‘legacy’ families.”
“Right. I guess you’d know the type.” He blows out a long, controlled breath. “Yeah, you’re right. My dad…Well, you already have a picture. He always wanted me to be the best. Race up age categories. Medal at Youth Nationals. Get on the best varsity crew.”
He tosses a clove of garlic onto his chopping block and crushes it hard with the flat side of his knife.
“The better I got, the closer the races got. The harder I had to work. The more he expected perfection instead of merely excellence. My last couple of years of high school, he started coaching me himself. Not on the water, but cross-training sessions in the weight room and on the running track.”
“That’s never a good idea,” I say.
Adrian laughs hollowly. “It certainly was not. One time, I forgot my heart rate monitor after school, and Dad decided that he would also ‘forget’ how many intervals I was supposed to do. Every time I finished a lap, I’d ask him how many more and he’d say ‘I forget’ and make me do another.”
“Horrible,” I whisper. “What did you do?”
“I kept going. Dad never brokered any disagreement. But, eventually, I guess he decided I’d learned my lesson when I was barely dragging my toes across the ground. He took me home. And yet—”
He cuts himself off and turns to the stove, clicking it on.
“And yet?” I prod.
Blue flames spring to life, reflecting in his pupils and casting across the hollows of his cheekbones. The light illuminates an emotion lingering there. Sadness? Regret?
“And yet it still wasn’t enough. He never said good job or that he was proud of me for sticking it out. We got in the car and went home. Mom asked me how it went, and I told her it was great, just like I always did.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He lifts a shoulder as he gazes down at the pan, waiting for it to heat. Then he pours in a stream of oil and lays his scallops in the shimmering liquid. The pause lasts long enough that I assume his next words will be consequential, but all he says is: “It is what it is.”
“It’s not,” I insist, trying to catch his eye, but he’s too focused on the olive oil, the popping scallops. “What he did to you was unfair and cruel. You didn’t deserve that.”
“Maybe not. It was easier then, though.”
“How so?”
But Adrian’s shoulders have gone tight. It’s like he requires all his focus to spoon little puddles of liquid over the crisp, brown surface of the hunks of meat. His jaw is clenched so hard I wonder if he can breathe properly. Maybe I shouldn’t prod. Selfishly, though, I want him to keep talking.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “I know there isn’t anything I can actually do to help. But I promise I’ll listen. Whatever it is, I won’t judge.”
It’s something Sofi sometimes says. Like, Do you want opinionated Sofi or nonjudgmental Sofi? With the toughest stuff, nonjudgmental Sofi is the easiest to talk to.
Adrian flicks off the stove and frees his browned scallops from their hot liquid. I wait in silence as he sprinkles the meat with salt and uses a mitt to pull a tray of crispy-looking asparagus from the oven.
“We should eat now,” he says, motioning to the pair of plates with scoops of brown rice already laid out. “The scallops are best fresh off the heat.”
As a person who fights to show nothing but composure to the world, I know what it feels like—and what it looks like—to face down an avalanche of emotion and turn away. So, I push myself off from my seat and circle around to his side of the countertop. I stand between him and the scallops.
“It’s just you and me here,” I say.
“You,” he says quietly, “are never just you.”
“I am right now, though.”
He draws in a sharper breath and his eyes find mine. I nod encouragingly and he exhales as though steeling himself.
Finally, he says, “It was tough when he was alive. But it’s all harder now.”
I blink. He’s just revealed something, something important and possibly deeply hurtful. And yet I have no idea what it was.
“Why is it harder now?” I ask as gently as I can manage.
He rocks his lip between his teeth. “Because he’s gone. And now I’ll never have his approval.”
His words knife into my sternum. Without a moment of thought, without worrying about job evaluations or Pan Ams or all the other reasons I shouldn’t cross yet another line with him, I run a hand down his arm. The muscles of his forearm are clenched tight as I grab his fist.
His breath gusts out, but before I can pull away, his fingers twine with mine.
“Listen,” I say. “Obviously, I can’t tell you that your dad was proud of you. I can’t know that. But here’s what I do know.”
I press the tip of my thumb into his palm, like I’m anchoring myself to him. Like I want to impress on him the gravity of what I’m going to try to say.
“You have some unconventional strategies, but you are a hardworking and diligent coach. You’re willing to change to fit the needs of athletes, instead of demanding they adapt to you, which is so unique I’ve never even heard of it before.
But, much more importantly than all that, you are a good man.
You have great taste in pastries and a mean swing in a batting cage.
You’re strong and steady, but also energetic and honest and, unlike every athlete and coach I’ve ever met, you have no trace of ego. ”
I squeeze his hand tighter. “I have no idea how much of that your dad knew, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t matter, because it does. Of course, it matters. But, also, those things are true. Whether or not your dad saw them.”
His hand tightens around mine until I can feel the calluses on his palms and the heartbeat in his fingertips. “Kath.”
The way he says my name, like it’s full of hurt and want and need and hope. It unspools the last little bit of thread wrapped around my heart.
“Adrian,” I say, and my voice trembles.
“I would like to kiss you,” he whispers.
In answer, I lean forward and press my lips to his.