Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Despite all the things we won’t be doing in the bedroom, Adrian convinces me to spend the night.
He also convinces me to change into one of his oversize T-shirts and eat dinner on his comforter.
The scallops are objectively delicious—browned and crispy on the outside, soft on the inside—although Adrian keeps complaining that they would have tasted better fresh out of the pan.
Even though it’s nearly an hour past my usual lights-out time, I’m energized.
Instead of sleeping, I find myself lying awake on my side, mesmerized by the photographs on Adrian’s bedside table.
There’s one of him in his launch, a quad in the foreground.
A group shot where he’s standing behind a long line of young athletes.
A candid shot from Youth Nationals last year where he looks particularly gorgeous glowering at a clipboard.
“You don’t have any pictures of yourself in a boat,” I observe, thinking about all the ways Adrian was tortured by our sport, but also his limitless capacity to still love it.
He cups his face in his long fingers. “Not everyone finds rowing shells so appealing, Kath.”
I roll toward him and smile, but I’m still watching his eyes. “Why’d you quit?”
I’ve been wondering since we talked about his dad. He alluded to a sudden and possibly dramatic breakup with the sport. I don’t want to push him on it, but I’m too curious not to ask.
His gaze drops to our feet before finding the ceiling again. “I did poorly in a race.”
“I see.” I bump his toes with mine. “I know the feeling.”
His smile tightens, but there’s still no levity to it. “You didn’t quit, though.”
“Only because I have no other choice.”
“How so?”
I twiddle with the frayed end of my braid, considering how to respond.
Adrian always seems impressed that, in the wake of what happened in Italy, I never considered quitting rowing.
While that’s factually true, it’s not because there’s something special about my spirit or backbone. The truth is less glamorous.
“Here’s the thing.” I push myself to a seat and swivel so I’m facing him, cross-legged, my bare knees jutting out from under his shirt.
“I know how unusual this is, but I didn’t graduate from college because I dropped out when I got a spot on the national team.
I never took any more classes or tried to transfer to a university near the center because I knew it would interfere with training, even though pretty much everyone else does just that.
Maybe they take extra years to graduate, but they do it. I didn’t.
“I’ve barely had a real job. Part-time work as a front desk attendant at a gym hardly counts. I have no other passion or skills. No other abilities or pursuits. I have no choice but to hold on to this sport.”
Adrian shakes his head. “You’re not being fair to yourself. You have tons of skills that would work in other areas of life. Organization, communication. Discipline and dedication, especially to the degree you have it, are extremely rare. Any employer would be lucky to have you.”
My mind flashes to a handful of Olympic medalists who now work for bosses a decade their junior.
“Maybe. But I don’t know if I’d be able to be as disciplined or dedicated to something else.
I’m disciplined because I love rowing. Rowing is the perfect manifestation of who I am—it’s everything I am.
It’s order and control. It’s calm in the chaos. ”
“That’s not true.”
“What?”
Adrian’s eyes flick to mine. “There is so much more to you than ‘order and control.’ ”
My chest fizzes with his words, like I’m a bottle of soda water that’s been shaken and slightly cracked.
“Well,” I say, “the point is I’ve had plenty of races that went bad enough that I probably should have quit after them.
That race in Italy tops the list. But I can’t.
I haven’t seriously considered it since I got injured as a junior.
At this point, I don’t have any other choices.
And the fact that you did, well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. ”
Adrian is quiet for so long that I worry I’ve said something to hurt him. His mouth is turned down, in contemplation, as he runs his fingers against the edges of his sheets.
“I caught a crab,” he says finally.
His tone is so serious that I repress the urge to question his non sequitur.
Catching a crab means a stroke has gone seriously wrong.
It can happen easily enough, especially to less seasoned rowers.
The oar buries a hair too deep or clips against the surface on the recovery, and suddenly the whole thing sticks.
With really young rowers, it can cause embarrassing disasters, like forcing the entire crew to stop and wait while the rower pries out their blade.
In the worst-case scenario, it’ll tip an entire boat.
When Adrian doesn’t elaborate, I ask as gently as I can, “In a race?”
“In the race,” he says, still not looking at me.
Now I get it. He’s explaining why he quit rowing. I don’t know what changed, but I’m grateful it did. I curl my legs into my chest, press my temple to one of my knees, and wait.
“It was my last year of high school,” he says.
“I was supposed to go to Youth Nationals, but my dad pulled a favor to get me to fill in for a higher-level boat, one in a U-23 race. They’d just lost one of their guys to an injury and were scrambling at the last minute.
The others were all a lot older—or at least, as much as early twenties feels when you’re a teen. ”
He massages the back of his neck like he’s trying to physically expel the memory.
“I should have said no. I should have gone to Youth Nationals with my crew. But I didn’t.
So, I ended up in this big, high-pressure race.
Near the end, we were holding third place.
I was weaker than the others and struggling to keep pace.
I caught the crab. The boat veered out of the lane and we were disqualified.
The other guys didn’t say anything after, but they didn’t have to.
We all knew whose fault it was. My dad was—well, you can imagine.
I didn’t just blow it for myself. I embarrassed him, after he put his neck out to get me in that boat. ”
He rubs at a callus on his palm like he’s trying to push it off.
“After that, I don’t know. I couldn’t force myself back onto a seat again.
The only thing that was worse than never rowing again was…
rowing. I gave up the scholarship. I deferred college for a year.
I quit training. The truth is, I wasn’t strong enough to do anything else. ”
I cover his agitating hands with mine and then braid my fingers through his, wishing I could erase his pain with touch alone.
I know it’s not enough, though. So, I search my brain for something helpful to say.
He’s certainly not the only one who’s ever choked in a high-pressure situation.
I know so many athletes who have been in his position.
I can name about a million times that Sofi has blamed herself for her crew’s failures.
Yet, I also know that none of those words would help. You don’t dislodge guilt like that by pointing to someone else’s flaws.
So, all I have to offer him is this: “I say this with absolute love and affection, but sometimes rowing is actually the worst.”
Adrian closes his eyes and laughs through his nose. “It really is.”
“Also, you were able to get back into a boat eventually,” I remind him, thinking about his steady confidence as he crushed the standing challenge. “Maybe you quit racing, but you didn’t quit rowing.”
He nods, but it’s laced with a frown. “Eventually. But only a single. And only once I figured out how to turn off the part of my brain that approached rowing as a competition and sculling as nothing but practice for a race. I’ve never gotten back in a team boat.
But, yeah, I missed the sport way too much to be away from it forever. ”
I shake my head, still impressed. Given that horrific history, he should have ended up resenting shells and oars for the rest of his life. Instead, he’s been enthusiastic and joyful about a sport that has caused him so much pain. “And you’re a coach now. A job that you love.”
He nods, even though I didn’t pose it as a question. “I do.”
“That’s impressive, too,” I say. “To get back to it like that.”
His eyes glide away from mine and unspoken words glimmer under the surface of his neutral expression.
I nudge his knee with my toe. “What?”
His mouth ticks. “How do you know I have something to say?”
“You always have something to say.”
Adrian laughs at that, then runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “Yes, I love my job. I love my teams. It’s rewarding to get to be the coach I never had myself. But sometimes…I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like I can’t always be everything to everyone.”
I consider that for a long moment, thinking about all I know about Adrian’s coaching.
The ways he changes himself to fit the kids.
The ways he takes on a wide variety of roles—head coach, trainer, assistant coach—that at higher levels are separate jobs.
He’s got all of those kids, but hardly any adults.
He’s surrounded by people without having a team of his own.
“You mean it’s lonely.”
He glances up sharply. “Why did you say that?”
I lift a shoulder. “Probably because I know how you feel. At the training center, I’m surrounded by all these teams—pairs and quads and eights.
They all have their crews. They’re all in the thing together.
But singles? You have your coach and your training partners, but no one is with you.
It’s all on you. Success. Failure. In some ways, it makes it worse, being surrounded by people but still feeling alone. ”
“Sure,” Adrian says. “But coaching is different from racing.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Coaching could be worse. When things go right, the athletes get the credit. When things go wrong, you bear the blame. You’re in charge, but you’re not in control. I bet that’s as isolating as it gets.”
A long pause stretches between us. Finally, Adrian swallows, raises his eyes to mine. “I don’t think anyone has ever said it like that before.”
His expression feels like a key setting into its tumblers.
I swallow. “Do you ever talk to people about this stuff? Your mom maybe?”
He shakes his head softly. “My mom is a good person. Kind and gentle and loving and wonderfully supportive in so many ways. But, when it came to rowing…I don’t know.
Whenever I’ve brought it up with her, especially when I was having a hard time, she’d always brush it off and say she didn’t want to get involved, or she’d tell me ‘That’s your dad’s domain.
’ I think, ultimately, she always had a slightly warped picture of him, sugarcoated maybe.
And she loved the idea of rowing as something he and I did together—a way for us to bond.
She couldn’t really see it as anything else. ”
“What about other rowers?” I ask. “You didn’t stay in touch with any of your teammates after you quit?”
“Over the years, yeah. But I haven’t seen any of them in a while. Not since I moved to California for this job.”
“I see. And…” I hesitate because I want to ask him about his previous relationships. With some benefit of hindsight, I know Maxwell’s support wasn’t really support, but at the same time, I did appreciate having someone to talk to about everything. Big and small. “You’ve never dated a rower?”
Adrian raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking for my dating history?”
I playfully backhand his shoulder, but he catches my hand and twines his fingers through mine. He watches our joined hands for a moment, then answers.
“It always felt like it would be too much to get involved with someone in the sport. Dating is already hard enough. I just didn’t need to add that kind of pressure to it, you know?”
“You made an exception for me,” I observe.
“Because…” He runs his thumb across my knuckles. “Because you push yourself and only yourself. Your dedication is already unique enough, Kath. But it’s even more unique, and even more beautiful, that you have it but don’t force it on anyone else.”
He’s looking at me. And, oh god, I think I could lose myself in his irises. The feeling is so much more than magnetism, or his sharp jade of beauty. It’s about what I see reflected back. The weight of his approval and respect. The connection between us.
And me.
A new version of myself that I have only ever seen reflected in Adrian’s eyes.