It didn't get better. Every stroke felt like dragging the hull through wet sand. Liam tried to compensate, adjusting his timing to match my broken rhythm, but that just made it worse. Two rowers fighting for control of a boat that needed them to surrender it.
My blade caught a crab.
The oar jerked violently—the handle slamming into my ribs like a baseball bat. Pain whited out everything. The boat lurched sideways, dead in the water, and I doubled over the oar shaft gasping.
"Fuck—"
"Alex, are you—"
"I'm fine." I grabbed the oar handle, brought it back under control. My ribs screamed. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine, you just took a handle to the—"
"I said I'm fine."
The coaches' launch was already pulling alongside. Engine puttering, wake rocking our stalled shell. Eldridge stood at the bow, clipboard in hand. Hale beside him with his coffee, squinting at us.
"What happened?" Eldridge asked. Calm. But the disappointment sat right underneath it, barely hidden.
"Caught a crab. My fault."
Hale looked between us. That calculating expression—not assessing our rowing anymore. Assessing us. "You two need to figure out what's going on. This isn't the chemistry we saw Monday."
"We'll get it together," Liam said from behind me. Automatic. The good soldier voice.
"Twenty minutes left," Eldridge said. "Make them count."
The launch pulled away. Its wake rocked us for a few seconds, the shell tipping gently side to side.
"Ready?" Liam asked.
"Yeah."
We didn't make them count. The remaining twenty minutes were the same. My ribs throbbed with each stroke. Liam stopped trying to talk and I stopped trying to pretend I could hear him over the noise in my own head. We rowed like two people in adjacent boats, not the same one.
***
By the time we docked, my whole body ached. Not the good ache of a hard morning on the water. The ache of thirty minutes spent fighting the person I was supposed to be moving with.
We carried the shell back to the bay without speaking. Set it on the slings. Started wiping it down.
The boathouse emptied around us. Voices and footsteps fading toward the locker rooms. Coaches still out on the waterwith the last boats. The sounds of the morning winding down — oars being racked, dock lines being cleated, the distant idle of a launch engine.
Until it was just us. Alone in the bay. Morning light slanting through the tall windows, catching the dust motes and making the racked shells glow amber and white.
I wiped down the hull. Checked for damage where the crab had torqued the rigger. Cleaned the slide tracks. Anything to keep my hands busy and my eyes away from him.
But I could feel him. Five feet away. Working his side of the boat in the same methodical silence. The awareness constant and exhausting.
I couldn't take it anymore.
"When were you going to tell me?" Harder than I intended.
Liam froze. His hand stilling on the rag.
"About Emily." My voice was shaking—I couldn't stop it and didn't try. "When were you going to tell me you were dating her again?"
He set down the rag. Turned to face me. His expression wasn't defensive—it was pained. The defiance I'd braced for wasn't there.
