Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Away from Adrian, time and space warp like I’m watching the world through a fun house mirror.
My chest aches as I do squats in the airplane’s cramped bathroom.
Tears well in my eyes as I get back on the water in Toronto and start my first of three days of acclimatization.
Eggs turn to ash on my tongue in the morning before my heat.
Every moment that passes, I tell myself I’m forgetting his face a little more. The ripple of heat from his touch. The way electricity charged through my bones when he looked at me.
It’s just that every night, when I’m lying in bed willing myself to sleep, I can feel the flutter of his breath against my shoulder and the pressure of his arm against my chest.
Then the tears come storming back.
. . .
“You haven’t sent me that recommendation yet,” Carla says.
I’m midway out of her tent when her words bring my dragging feet to a stop.
We’ve just finished going over my race plan for the final.
When the week began, I was petrified that the heartache would kill my performance.
I was convinced the relationship—and the end of it—would make me lose.
Yet, evidence is mounting to the contrary.
On Thursday, I placed second in my heat, but only because the Canadian was racing in the lane next to me.
Today, I won my repechage by more than a boat length, placing me squarely in final territory.
On Saturday, I’ll race in the final and, today, Carla and I talked strategy.
Throughout our conversation, I went through the motions.
Stroke rates, race plans, analyzing the tape from the Brazilian’s heat.
It matters to me because I still desperately, unequivocally, want to go home.
Yet in the wake of my loss, everything else has lost its sheen—the buzz of nerves and anticipation that normally fills my mind in the days leading up to a big race isn’t there.
Instead, I’m empty and aching.
I spin and face Carla full on. “I know. There’s a question I’m not sure how to answer.”
It’s the truth, but it’s also a lie. It’s true I don’t know how to describe Adrian’s interest in the job, now more than ever. But that’s not the reason the recommendation is still sitting in my email drafts. Every time I think about sending it, I hear Sofi’s voice in my mind.
How could you possibly be unbiased, Kath?
And yet. I can’t come clean. If I tell Carla about my relationship with Adrian, I’m almost certain I’ll lose her deal. That would mean I’d need to race tomorrow on my own merit. I’d have to beat both the Canadian and the Brazilian. I’d have to win.
“Which question?” Carla asks.
She’s staring at me intently, more intrigue in her expression than I’d have expected. Does that mean she already knows?
I wipe my sweaty palms against my spandex shorts, hoping she doesn’t see the truth in my eyes. I can barely say Adrian’s name without getting pummeled by sadness. “The one about his interest in the job.”
“And what’s the issue?”
I pause, heart thudding, considering how much to say. I don’t want to undermine Adrian’s chances, but I don’t think he’d want me to lie, either. I also don’t know how much he shared with me as his evaluator versus his confidant. I don’t know where the line is anymore.
“I’m not sure how much he wants it,” I say, trying to keep my explanation simple. “I asked and—his answer was complicated. I never got a straight response.”
Head tilted, Carla crosses her arms and taps an index finger against her elbow. “I think you should leave it blank, then.”
“Oh,” I say, stunned by the simplicity of that solution.
“You’ve filled out the rest?”
“Yes. It’s unequivocally positive. On every metric, Adrian is the most impressive coach I’ve ever worked with.”
It hurts to say. That doesn’t make it untrue.
“Present company excluded?” Carla asks.
Even as my mouth goes dry, I lift my chin, thrust my chest forward. Carla never shies away from telling us the truth and I know she’d expect no less from me. “Coach, I think he’s even better than you.”
She stares at me as my heart thuds against my rib cage so hard it’s almost painful. For a long moment we’re accompanied only by far-off sounds of the finish line announcer and the occasional roar of the crowd.
Then Carla’s lips crack in the slightest smile. “That’s just what I hoped you’d say.”
. . .
The final is tomorrow.
I still have an hour until my bedtime routine, which means I’m in the hotel’s restaurant, trying to shovel down a salad with chicken breast and sweet potatoes. Sofi is having her tried-and-true pre-race dinner of steak and potatoes. My lemon bar sits between our plates.
Since I arrived in Toronto, Sofi has been my only constant.
When I got off the plane, she let me dissolve into tears in the crowded terminal, rubbing circles on my back as I sobbed.
Despite our disagreement back in Berkeley, she steadfastly refused to let me spend the last dregs of my savings on my own hotel room and made me share her double.
When I won my repechage with my cheeks streaked in tears, she pretended it was a perfectly valid emotional response to a victory.
She also, blessedly, hasn’t questioned me further on that recommendation. Despite my conversation with Carla, I still haven’t sent it. There’s only one reason for that now.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Sofi.
Like me, her final is tomorrow. Her eight is the three-time defending Pan American champion, which puts a whole different kind of pressure on her crew. Victory is expected. Anything less will be falling short.
She swallows a bite of potatoes, and sets down her fork, expression carefully neutral. “Good.”
“Sofi,” I say firmly. She’s been avoiding talking about herself all week, and I haven’t pushed her on it because I know she doesn’t like that. But at the same time, I don’t want her to hold back if she’s worried about affecting me. “You can lean on me, too. I can take it.”
Sofi turns her water glass in its ring and then takes a drink without looking at me. “Not now. Not when your problems are bigger than mine.”
“Yes, even now.” I reach across the table and grab hold of her forearm. “Maybe there will come a day that I will be so broken I can’t find a way to lift you up, but that’s not today. I’m here for you. And that’s my decision. Not yours.”
“Even if what I have to say could make everything even harder?”
“Even then.”
Sofi’s gaze traces a long arc across the table between us before she raises her eyes to mine.
“Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left Berkeley.
And I decided it’s true that I’m capable of living without you.
If I needed to, I could figure it out on my own.
The boat is stressful as hell right now, and Missy keeps falling apart, and I seem to be the only one who can talk her down, and, yes, I could handle it all without you.
“But, you know what, I don’t want to. I want you back in the training center.
I want you to hand me prefilled water bottles and spray my stinky shoes so they smell like fresh linen.
I want to lean on you and let you lean on me right back.
Not figuratively or over FaceTime. In real life.
But I also didn’t want to admit any of that to you because I don’t think you need any more reasons to be nervous on that line tomorrow. ”
“That doesn’t make it harder,” I say softly.
“It just makes the pressure even bigger.”
I shake my head, and look at my friend—my powerful, nearly indestructible best friend. “All you’ve done is tell me I’m not alone.”
Sofi’s smile stutters and she squeezes my hands together so tightly, I lose sensation in my fingertips. “I love you.”
I use a shoulder to wipe my eye. “I love you, too.”
My phone pings. I release Sofi so I can fish it out of my pocket, assuming it’ll be Mom.
Our conversations were still strained when I left, but I know she’s been watching my races on YouTube because she’s been texting me encouragements all week.
It’s felt a little performative—tinged by our fight—but I appreciate that she’s still trying to be supportive.
But the message isn’t from her.
I drop the phone.
Sofi glances up, fork paused. “What? What’s happening?”
“Adrian.” My voice sounds distant in my own ears. “I don’t think I can look.”
“You want me to read it to you?”
Nauseous pain rises up in my gut, spinning and whirling like I’m on one of those horrible carnival rides. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“It might help.”
I bury my face in my palms, digging my fingertips against my hairline.
So far this week, my heartbreak hasn’t derailed my performance.
Somehow, I’ve been racing well, despite all the pain.
Whatever is on that phone could change that, though.
Because no matter what this message says, it will reopen the painful wound that hasn’t begun to heal.
The chair next to me scrapes back. Sofi’s arm curls around my waist.
“Maybe it will hurt,” she whispers. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see what he has to say. He’s earned that much.”
Another ping.
My gaze travels from the lines of her muscled forearms to my black phone case. Then I take a breath, unlock the screen, and nudge it toward my friend. “Read it for me?”
Her lips remain pursed as her eyes scan the message. She sets the illuminated device face up in front of me. “You should read it for yourself.”
With shaking fingers, I pick it up.
Good luck tomorrow, Parker. You’ll be extraordinary. But just in case you don’t believe it right now, you should know that I believe it enough for the both of us.
Just remember: Out of your head. Into your body. You’ve got this.
The words slice through me from scalp to toes. My skin starts buzzing all over, and the sensation is so intense I can barely feel Sofi’s fingers as she squeezes my shoulder. I can barely feel the tears that track down my cheeks and drip off the end of my chin.
The world is folding in on itself. I’m upside down and all my blood is rushing to my head. Like I’m underwater, fighting to find the surface.
“I’m in love with him,” I whisper.
“I know,” Sofi tells me.
“I love rowing, too.”
“I’m sorry, Kath,” Sofi says, squeezing me still closer. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s no keeping it separate.”
“What?”
I’m still staring at that screen as the dull blade of realization slowly sinks in.
Adrian the person and Adrian the coach are irrecoverably tangled in my heart.
Some of his best qualities as a coach—loyalty, passion, dedication—are also his best qualities as a man.
At least some of the reason I fell for him was that I was impressed with his coaching.
Writing about any of that inevitably involves my heart.
“He’s a great coach,” I say. “And he’s a good person. I don’t know where the line between these things is anymore. Maybe I never did.”
“Yeah. I know all that, too,” Sofi says gently.
Somehow, it doesn’t sound like I told you so. It sounds like I love you.
My fingers shake as I scrub my tearstained cheek. “Will you hate me if I make tomorrow even harder on myself? On both of us?”
She leans her temple against mine. “It’s barely possible, but it will only make me prouder.”
My chin quivers with a nod and I pull my phone toward me, clicking open the draft email to Carla. I type more at the end, words flowing easily, not like the painful starting and restarting that overcame me as I tried to draft the rest of it over the last few weeks. The message whooshes away.
Even though she didn’t ask, I set the phone in front of Sofi.
The email is as I read it to Adrian, except that I added a new ending:
While I stand by this recommendation, the problem is that this assessment is biased. I am in love with Adrian Crawford. I realize coming clean about this means I’ll need to win tomorrow to regain my spot outright. Still, I owe everyone the truth.
Then I get up from the table, lemon bar discarded, ready to face my race.