Liam exhaled. The corner of his mouth moved. "Columbia had a mechanical. Oarlock issue. They were basically stopped in the middle of the course right before the turn."
"We had about ten seconds to decide," I said. "Stay behind them and lose twenty seconds, or take the outside route through the rough water."
"Who made the call?"
A beat. Camera running. The recorder between us.
Liam turned his head and looked at me—not the careful, public look, not the performance of indifference. Liam smirked, the one he only gave me in private.
"He did," Liam said.
The reporter looked at me. "And?"
"And it worked," I said. Which came out quieter than I intended. Still looking at Liam. "Because he trusted me."
The camera guy shifted. Getting both of us in frame. The reporter glanced between us with the instinct of someone whose job it was to notice things, but she moved on.
"What does this result mean for the joint program going forward?"
We both started talking at the same time. Stopped. Liam gestured—go ahead. I did. Behind us, from somewhere in the team, Tyler made a noise that was probably a comment but was drowned out by Derek telling him to shut up.
Ethan appeared filming the moment for the doc, he was all smiles and nodding.
I looked back at the camera and finished my answer.
The post-race staging area stretched along the bank near the boathouses—crews milling, hot drinks, snacks, and bananas on folding tables, coaches reviewing results on their phones. The adrenaline was draining. The exhaustion hadn't fully landed yet. That specific in-between buzz of a race just finished and the body not sure what to do with itself.
I was standing near the boat trailer with a paper cup of coffee gone cold when I heard Hale's voice coming from around the edge of the trailer. Another coach—I couldn't see who. I stopped. Retied a shoe that didn't need retying.
"—if Moore and Harrington can do that in a double, imagine what they'd do with two more bodies." Hale. Animated. More excited than I'd ever heard him. "A quad with the right combination. With Ortega calling."
The other coach: "That's a big jump. A quad is harder to balance than a double—more moving parts, more personalities."
"I know that. But the engine is there. Moore and Harrington are the engine. You find two more bodies that can match their output and a coxswain who can read the race—"
"You'd need the right athletes."
"I've got ideas." Hale's voice dropped. Confident. Already planning.
I stood up. Walked away.
A quad. Four rowers plus Remy.
Just coaching talk after a good result—the adrenaline making everything feel possible. I filed it in the back of my mind and went to find the rest of my team.
***
The team reception was in a function room at the hotel. Eldridge had arranged it—of course he had. Canapés on silver trays. A cash bar that the underage rowers pretended not to resent. Both programs together. Some alumni. Some donors. The kind of event where everyone held drinks they didn't want and had conversations that were 80% performance.
I was good at these. Had been attending them since I was old enough to wear a blazer without the sleeves covering my hands. The circuit—shake hands, say thank you, accept compliments with humility, deflect questions about the future. The Harrington social autopilot.
Liam was across the room. Standing with Tyler and Mason near the window. Tyler was doing an impression of the Princeton stroke seat's face when they'd been passed—exaggerated panic, mouth open, eyes wide. Liam was laughing. The sound carrying across the function room and landing in my chest.
Our eyes met. The public distance restored—the invisible boundary we maintained in rooms full of people. But the look carried everything from the boat. Everything from last night. A whole language compressed into half a second of eye contact.
"Alexander."
The voice behind me. The aftershave reaching me before I turned—sandalwood and something else, something expensive that I'd been smelling since childhood.
