"God, this is amazing," he'd said.
And I'd known. Right then. That this was different from anything Jerry had given me on the lake. This wasn't just the run. This was the run with someone. The boat carrying two bodies that moved as one—not because of technique, not because of practice, but because of something underneath that had no name.
It felt like flying.
My blade caught wrong and the handle kicked sideways. I corrected—adjusted the depth, steadied the hull. Blinked the memory away.
But the feeling stayed lodged in my chest. The ache of knowing exactly what the boat could be and watching it die because we couldn't figure out how to stop hurting each other.
I rowed harder. Not punishing—searching. Trying to find the feeling on my own. The run. The glide. The thing Jerry promised would always be there.
It was there. Fainter. Lonelier. But there.
I was on the precipice of everything I'd ever wanted. The Charles was days away. Scouts would be there—the same people who'd looked at Jace and written his name on a clipboard. The national team pipeline. The thing I'd whispered to Alex in a late-night text like it was too big to say out loud:I want to go to the Olympics.
It was all right there. Within reach. The kid from the south side of Brackett Lake, the one who learned to row in a borrowed boat before dawn—he was about to race on the biggest stage in college rowing. And the person who made him fastest, the person whose rhythm matched his like they'd been built for the same water—
I couldn't lose that.
Not over a fight. Not over fear. Not over the pattern of two people who loved each other and kept choosing the worst possible way to show it.
The sound of another hull cutting water. Faint at first—then closer. A single materializing out of the fog to my port side. Long, clean strokes. Unhurried.
Jace.
He didn't announce himself. Didn't wave or call out. Just fell into pace alongside me—two singles moving through the mist, matching rate, matching rhythm. The way rowers greeted each other when words would break the spell.
We rowed like that for a while. Side by side. The only sounds our blades and our breathing and the water running under our hulls.
"Ready for the Charles?" Jace said. Not looking over. Eyes ahead. Just two guys rowing.
"I think so."
"You good?"
The question was simple. The answer wasn't. But Jace didn't need the long version. He never did.
"Getting there."
"Good enough." Three more strokes. Four. The fog thinning. The east bank solidifying. "How's the boat feeling?"
"We're having a little rough patch."
Jace nodded. "Always happens the week before—race jitters."
We rowed in silence for another minute.
"This is my last race in a Riverside jersey, Moore." He turned his head. Looked at me across the water. "Don't waste yours."
He didn't say anything else. Didn't need to. We rowed until the mist burned off and the dock appeared and that was the whole conversation. But it sat in my chest for the rest of the morninglike something handed to me that I wasn't sure I was ready to hold.
We docked without another word. Jace gripped my shoulder as we hauled our singles up the ramp. One squeeze. Firm. Then he walked toward the boathouse and didn't look back.
I stood on the dock. The mist burning off. The river going from black to grey to the first hint of silver where the sunrise would come.
Don't waste yours.
My mom's voice moved in underneath it.Who's carrying you?
