Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Over the next couple of weeks, my progress becomes undeniable.
My erg tests get faster. My splits improve. I finally feel good. My boat slices instead of dragging. My oars are light in my hands. Even my mind feels unburdened. Like when I start an interval, I’m able to focus on the swing of my strokes instead of getting lost in a quagmire of thoughts.
Through it all, Adrian has been there to scream encouragements on the water and whisper affirmations off it.
Last Thursday in the erg room, after the kids went home, I was midway through an interval, quads pumping, breaths coming in hard and fast, and I panted out: “It feels so good I could scream.”
Adrian bent low and said, barely above a whisper, “Excellent. Because you look so good I could scream.”
I nearly abandoned the erg right then and there. I only kept tethered to the machine because I was on fucking fire.
After I set down the handle, I swiveled toward Adrian’s shining eyes and beaming smile and all I could think was: You are brilliant.
I nearly asked him, yet again, about the job.
But I stopped myself. I’ve resolved not to push about it anymore.
Just like he’s my temporary coach, I’m his temporary girlfriend—it’s none of my business what he decides to do with his life after we go our separate ways.
Besides, these kinds of mental boundaries are the reason I’m able to keep my role as his evaluator separate from our romantic relationship.
After practice, Mom announces that I have a visitor.
It’s been three workouts since I last showered and my arms are streaked with white—dried rivulets of salt from sweat and brackish water.
I kick off my shoes and pad toward her voice, half expecting to find Adrian sitting at her kitchen table.
Instead, it’s only Mom in here, sipping on some kind of herbal concoction out of a mug the size of a cereal bowl.
“Upstairs,” she supplies as I grab a handful of cheese sticks and a hard-boiled egg from the fridge. Somehow a pair of eyelash curlers have migrated into my pile of mozzarella. I can’t imagine why she needs those cooled, but I guess they aren’t hurting anyone there.
“In your room,” she adds.
I bite off half the egg and say, “Are you being weird and cagey on purpose?”
She mocks innocence, eyebrows high, as she blows a riot of waves across the surface of her tea-bowl. “No idea what you mean.”
“You’re not using complete sentences. You never miss an opportunity for an adjective, let alone a noun or a verb.”
Her mouth quirks. “Perhaps you should head upstairs and see.”
“Okay,” I say suspiciously as I pinch a cheese stick between my teeth and shove the rest into my back pocket.
When I swing open my bedroom door, I’m rammed by a head full of curls with an accompanying set of muscular arms.
“Sofi!” I scream, nearly choking on my cheese.
Despite our differences in height, Sofi’s hugs are vise grips of affection, like she’s trying to make me pop or squeal. I don’t care if it’s slightly painful, though. I’ve missed this woman way too much to do either.
When we spring apart, she catches my hands in hers and squeezes my fingers.
“Fuck your grip is strong,” I say as my hands collapse under hers. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t get too excited. I’m only staying until tomorrow morning. I had a meeting with one of my sponsors in San Francisco, kind of a last-minute thing.”
“You didn’t say anything,” I say. “Why didn’t you say anything? I could have had everything ready for you.”
“I like to catch you off guard.”
“To keep me guessing?”
She lets go of my hands so she can flip her curls off her shoulder. “To support Adrian’s campaign to loosen your pathological need for order and control.”
I give her a look before collapsing to a seat on my twin bed. “You two haven’t even met and you’re already conspiring against me. I’ll have you know that I went for a run today instead of getting on the erg just because Adrian said so. And I didn’t even think twice about it.”
Sofi lowers her chin and gives me one of her devious smiles. Then she dances to my closet and tugs open the door, motioning like she’s revealing a vowel.
“You still color-coordinate your spandex,” she says, waving up and down at the hangers. Before I can protest, she skips toward me, slaps away my legs from the edge of the bed, and lifts the edge of the comforter, revealing the crisply folded sheet. “Your bed has hospital corners.”
“I like how it feels on my feet!” I protest.
Sofi smiles and drops to a seat next to me. “I know. And I’m kidding, mostly. I know how well you’re doing. I’ve seen an unusual number of TikTok videos with you dancing.”
“Wait what?” I grope for my phone, and fire up the app in question. “What kind of dancing?”
“Relax. It was practically a shoulder shimmy and you were in the background—those kids are definitely the main event.”
“Why did you say unusual number, then?” I ask, still thumbing through Rohan’s feed.
“One is an unusual number. I’ve never seen you so much as snap your fingers to music when you’re sober. You are looking great in those videos, though, and I don’t just mean the dance moves.”
I relax minutely and let the phone fall back to the comforter.
Ever since the open water paddle, Rohan has caught a number of my successes on camera: The day I crushed my last pull-up record.
The day I raced one of the kids’ quads—and nearly beat them from a half boat length behind.
The day I tried again to stand up in my boat and managed to stay aloft, eyes fully closed, for nearly half a minute before falling back into the water with a laugh.
Adrian is in the background of nearly every one, alternating between screaming and beaming in some kind of stunned, doting silence.
“Thanks,” I say. “Apparently, and I’m quoting here, I make ‘great content,’ not only when I’m falling. Rohan says his page views have skyrocketed.”
Sofi lies back on the bed, facing my Olympic flag on the ceiling. “Nice spot for those rings. I believe it. Your videos have become a thing back at the training center. Mostly among the rowers, although the other day a volleyball player came up to me in the dining hall and asked if I knew you.”
“Wait.” I grab her knee as uneasiness slides through me. “Is everyone watching them?”
“You worried about Maxwell?”
“No,” I say, although possibly this explains the three missed calls I’ve deleted from him over the last few weeks.
I wish I could remember everything Adrian and I have done on camera.
It’s not like there have been any overt public displays of affection—we’re careful not to do any of that in front of the kids—but I don’t know what Rohan has caught when we thought no one was looking. “Does Carla watch?”
Sofi scoffs. “Carla doesn’t need TikTok to know what you’ve been up to. I keep her in the loop. Why does it matter?”
My chest relaxes slightly as I push myself up from my seat. “No reason. I mean, it doesn’t. I need to take a shower and tell Adrian I won’t be coming over tonight, but then we can go to dinner?”
“Sure,” she says, but she’s still eyeing me as I close the door.
I take Sofi to an Indian restaurant downtown that spices its chicken within an inch of its life.
She insists we sit on the same side of the booth so we can really “soak up each other’s company,” which doesn’t bother me at all because I didn’t even know how much my heart ached for her until just now.
So, we sit crammed together, elbows jostling as we dunk hunks of meat and puffy bread into green sauces and lick dribbles off our fingertips between bouts of laughter.
Around the time that I’m digging into my third portion of chicken and Sofi has lifted her plate to lick sauce off the edge, my phone pings.
It’s Adrian. He’s sent a picture of an azure sky with a dozen technicolored kites flying above a marina. Underneath he’s typed a couple of sentences.
Don’t want to interrupt your dinner too much, but saw this and thought of you. What do you think?
We’ve been looking for something new to do for my next day off.
Since I’m getting close to competition, it has to be low key enough that I avoid injury, even a minor one, but also unique enough that it’ll feel like a real break.
I can already imagine sitting in a folding chair and using a hand to shield my eyes against the sun as Adrian runs a kite across an expanse of grass.
I bite back a smile as I write, It’s perfect.
Sofi nudges me with an elbow. “I see that look.”
She’s smiling at me, but it’s not her sideways teasing smirk or her wide laughing grin. It’s an expression filled with contentment and tenderness.
“He’s really good for you,” she says, and her eyes haven’t left mine. “I know I said it before, but it’s deeper than I realized.”
I drop the phone face down on the table. “Sure. For now.”
“I don’t think that’ll stop any time soon.”
I drain the rest of my water without looking at her. “I just mean soon I’ll be back in the training center where I belong.”
“Right, of course.” She shifts. “Where you can row on our perfectly flat lake with Carla shouting at you from her launch.”
“Yep. And where I can remind you to hydrate, in person.”
Her smile fades, but she tries to hide it by taking an aggressive sip of her soda water. It’s exactly the same look she gave me when she realized I’d been messing with her grips.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I’ll back off. I’m not trying to be annoying.”
“Why would you be annoying?”
“Or overbearing or whatever it is I’m being.”
Sofi squeezes her eyebrows together for a moment before releasing a small sigh. “It’s not you that’s annoying. I’m annoyed with myself for being so dependent on you.”
“What are you talking about?”