Epilogue
On Tuesdays, Sofi and I get off the water before the men’s team.
We walk, arm in arm, up the long hill that slopes from the docks to the complex, air filled with the smell of sagebrush and the bursts of our laughter.
Unisuits still damp, we push our trays through the gleaming metal of the dining hall.
With full plates, we usually snag two seats by the massive bay windows that overlook the water shimmering in early afternoon light.
Sometimes, I prop up my phone against my water cup and we catch up on Rohan’s videos.
Peter got back on the water a few months ago and he’s been making tremendous gains already—his splits are nearly as good as they were before he broke his arm—and their new coach keeps making oblique comments about Junior Worlds.
But instead, today, Sofi and I talk as we sneak glances out of the windows. If we sit right in the corner of the room, I can usually catch a glimpse of Adrian’s launch streaming after the men’s shells.
I’d be lying if I said this new job has been all sunshine and rainbows.
It was a huge promotion, after all. One that was met with a fair amount of skepticism by the men’s team, most notably from the guy in stroke seat of the eight.
In the first weeks after we moved here—in the dark of Adrian’s living room, both of us huddled under a throw on the deep couch—he second-guessed nearly every one of his decisions on and off the water.
I reassured him as best I could. With time, I knew he’d overcome the challenges.
And he did. In the months since, Adrian has won nearly all of his athletes over with easy charm, obscene attention to detail, and a refusal to back down from even the most demanding rowers.
Now I can hear nothing but confidence in the thrust of his voice as it carries across the water or while he confers with his assistant coaches after practice.
When Sofi and I finish eating, we linger at the table, sipping on hot tea with lemon, letting it warm our limbs as the rising sun heats the bay windows. Sofi’s phone buzzes a few times, and she glances at it before setting it upside down.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She inhales, then lets it go. “Missy had another difficult practice, and it sounds like she’s still having a rough time of it. But I think I’ll let Carla handle this one.”
I watch her as she takes another sip of tea.
“You don’t want to rush over there and single-handedly talk her down?” I ask.
“Nah, I have a PT appointment that I’d rather not cancel. I’ll get the next one.”
I’m still smiling at her when Adrian strides into the dining hall, lanyard swinging from his neck and a plate balanced on his clipboard.
He leans over to press a kiss to my temple before taking a chair across from Sofi.
There’s a rightness to this moment, a feeling of peace so deep and absolute it almost steals the next breath from my lungs.
“I’m due at the med center in ten minutes,” she announces and swivels toward Adrian. “But I wanted to stick around long enough to say that Kath killed it in practice today. If you wait for her to tell you about it, she’ll hem and haw for an hour first.”
Adrian grins. “Killed it?”
“Yeah,” Sofi says. “Like, she didn’t just beat it up a little. Practice is lying face down in the lake with no pulse.”
“Vivid, Sof,” I say, as Adrian laughs.
We did an important one today—three by three thousand. The same benchmark workout I did the first day I ever practiced with Adrian. The one where he insisted I get on the water without my usual tech and then read out my times with that wide, infectious grin.
“How were the splits?” he asks.
I push up the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Back at the boathouse, as Carla read them out, I wrote my times on my forearm in blue ink pen.
Not because I was going to forget them or because I didn’t believe they were real, but so that I could spend the next twelve hours looking down at my arm and smiling.
“Holy shit, Parker,” Adrian says as he curls his long fingers around my wrist. He blinks up at me. “You’re extraordinary.”
Pleasure unfurls inside my chest like a flower opening for the sun.
“Yeah,” I breathe.
Sofi hides a smile. “I figured you’d want to swoon.” She stands and hoists her tray off the table. “Which means my work here is done.”
As she marches off toward the med center, Adrian’s eyes linger on mine.
“Seriously, Kath,” he breathes. His hand is still closed around my wrist, my forearm facing up so that my messy handwriting is smiling at us from the table. “These aren’t good times. These are Olympic qualifying times.”
“I know,” I whisper back.
For a moment, we sit like that, eyes locked. The force of Adrian’s love and approval radiates off him in soft waves.
“I have something for you,” he says and reaches under his plate for a white paper bag, which he sets on my tray.
I peek inside to find the yellow edges of a sugar-dusted pastry. “I didn’t see lemon bars in the dessert case today.”
“I got this in town.”
“Are we celebrating anything in particular?”
“Other than the fact that I’m looking at a future Olympian?”
I elbow him. “Don’t jinx it.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Superstitious?”
“Always,” I say. “At least a little.”
Adrian nudges the bar toward me and I take a bite. It’s flaky and lemony and it brushes the tip of my nose with a dusting of sugar.
“To answer your question, we’re celebrating the fact that it’s a Tuesday,” Adrian says.
“And I’m sitting at a table with the most powerful, inspiring woman I have ever met.
And I love her, and through some miracle, she loves me back.
And we’re looking out over the water where I get paid to do a job that I never dreamed I could have. Is that enough of a reason?”
I smile back at him, just as broadly. “I think that’s an extraordinary reason.”