But different now. Because now we were talking.
"Wind's picking up port side," Alex said. "Compensating."
"Got it. I feel it."
"Your catches are clean. Stay there."
"How's the split?"
"Fast. Don't think about it."
That would have been silence before. Before the fight. Before the bridge. What we had now was harder and better—two people choosing, stroke by stroke, to stay open.
The first bridge passed overhead—the BU Bridge. The crowd noise crashed down like a wall of sound. Individual voices lost in the mass. Screaming. Clapping. The physical weight of being watched by thousands of people.
I kept my eyes in the boat.
"Rate's holding," I said. "Twenty-eight."
"Good. Keep it."
The problem happened at eighteen hundred meters.
A Columbia double that had launched two intervals ahead of us had a mechanical issue—something with their rigger, their stroke seat wrestling with an oarlock that had come loose. They'd drifted wide into the center of the course, nearly stopped, right in the racing line through the narrow channel before the Eliot Bridge turn.
I saw them too late.
"Obstruction," Alex called. "Two hundred meters. Dead ahead."
"I see it."
"We have to go starboard. Around them."
"That puts us in the rough water."
"I know."
The outside line through the Eliot Bridge turn. The wide route. The water churning with reflected wake off the bridge abutments—the chop that the course guide warned about, the chop that every experienced crew avoided. The route that added thirtymeters to the distance and ran through water that could capsize a poorly balanced boat.
We had maybe ten seconds to decide.
"We go through the rough water or we slow down behind Columbia and lose twenty seconds," Alex said. Rapid. The risk calculation happening in real time.
"Through."
"It's going to get ugly."
"Then we make it ugly. Call it."
"Heavy port. Light starboard. Rating up to thirty. On two—one—two—NOW."
We swung wide. The hull angled toward the outside line and the water changed immediately—the smooth, dark surface breaking into short, sharp chop that slapped against the hull like hands. The boat lurched. My blade caught a wave crest and skipped instead of catching clean. The check threw off our timing.
"Shit—"
"Stay with me," Alex said. His voice tight but controlled. The composure cracking at the edges but holding. "Shorten the stroke. Keep the rate up. Don't reach for the catch—let it come to you."
I adjusted. Shortened my reach by two inches. Let the blade find the water instead of stabbing at it. The next stroke caught. The one after was better. By the third stroke, we'd found a rhythm—not the clean, singing rhythm from the straight water, but something rougher. Something that handled the chop by adapting to it instead of fighting it.
