"It wasn't the rowing."
"Then what? You cheat on her or something?"
The word hit me like a fist.
Cheat.
That's exactly what I'd done. Not with another girl, not in a way Tyler would picture. I thought of Alex naked underneath me and swore anyone could have seen the thought. I spat a lie out.
"No," I said. "We just grew apart."
Grew apart.The coward's answer. The lie that sounded mature enough to end the conversation.
Evan looked uncomfortable. Tyler looked unconvinced. But he let it go and started talking about the quad again, and I ate my pasta and didn't look at Emily's table for the rest of lunch.
But I felt her there. The way you feel a bruise even when you're not pressing on it.
***
The Riverside boathouse at 7 PM was a different animal than the morning version. No coaches. No full team. Just the hum of the overhead lights and the smell of old sweat and mildew and the low groan of the river current against the docks outside.
I was on the erg. Solo session. Steady state—2:05 split, rating twenty, the kind of mindless pulling that emptied your headif you let it. The flywheel rattled. The chain moved. My body worked while my brain tried to shut up.
Remy was on the floor between two ergs, laptop on his knees, earbuds hanging around his neck. Reviewing footage again—race prep for the quad, pacing data, the stuff that made Remy the best cox in the program.
An energy drink balanced on the arm of the nearest erg.
We'd been in the same room for twenty minutes without talking. Comfortable. The way it was with Remy—no performance required. He knew about me. Had known before I did, probably. And I knew he knew. And neither of us had ever had to make a thing out of it.
But tonight something was different. The Emily sighting was still sitting in my chest. Tyler's questions echoing.You cheat on her or something?
"Remy."
He looked up. Pulled one earbud fully off.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Depends." He tilted his head. The coxswain stare—reading me. "You going to actually ask this time?"
Mindreader. What the fuck?
"Yeah, I'm actually asking."
He closed his laptop. Set it aside.
I stopped pulling. Let the flywheel wind down. Glanced toward the door—closed. Glanced toward the stairs—empty. The windows along the far wall showed nothing but dark river and the distant glow of Kingswell's boathouse across the water.
Just us.
"What was it like? When you told the team," I asked.
"Told them what?"
"Come on, Remy."
"I need you to say it. Otherwise we're just having another vague conversation and those are useless."
He was right. That was annoying.
