"Yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He kissed my forehead. Gentle. Then rolled off me.
We got dressed slowly—me pulling on last night's jeans, digging around for my shirt which had somehow ended up under his desk. Alex moved around the room with that precise, organized energy that was so fundamentallyhim—hanging up yesterday's clothes, straightening the desk, putting things back where they belonged.
"You're making the bed?" I said. "We literally just got out of it."
"Habits."
"You have a problem."
"I have standards."
"Your mother has standards. You have a compulsion."
He threw a pillow at me.
I caught it. Threw it back. He caught it mid-air without looking—those reflexes again—and placed it perfectly on the bed.
I sat on the edge of his desk chair and watched him. Watched the way he moved. The muscle in his back shifting under his t-shirt. The concentration on his face while he smoothed the comforter.
He glanced up and caught me staring.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"You're looking at me."
"I'm allowed to look at you."
Something softened in his expression. "Yeah," he said. "You are."
The room went quiet. Comfortable. Like the silence between strokes when the boat was running perfectly and nothing needed to be said.
"So," he said. "The joint program's over."
My stomach tightened. "Yeah. After yesterday."
"Which means no more mandatory joint practices."
"Right."
"Which means us not in a boat together."
I looked at the floor. "Right."
"So." He leaned forward. "What do we do?"
The question sat between us. Heavy. Real.
No more coaches putting us together. No more plausible deniability—we were just training partners, we had to be around each other, it wasn't a choice.
Whatever came next would have to be a choice.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
