“I'm trying not to.” I headed for the pool before I could make this worse.
The pool was Olympic-sized and mostly empty at this hour. A few lap swimmers were working the far lanes but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. The water was clear and blue under the overhead lights, chemical-clean and colder than most people kept their pools.
Troy stood at the edge and stared down at it like it had wronged him in a previous life. “You seriously do this for fun.”
“I do it because it works. Keeps the joints loose and doesn't put impact on old injuries.” I dropped my towel on a chair and dove in before I could think about it too hard.
The cold hit hard, but my body adjusted fast. I surfaced, shook water from my eyes, and looked back at Troy still standing on the deck with his arms crossed.
“You coming in or are you going to stand there and supervise?”
“I'm deciding if this is worth my dignity.”
“Your dignity will survive.”
“Easy for you to say. You're already hypothermic and you don't care.” He looked at the water. Looked at me. Looked at the water again. “If I get sick, this is on you.”
“You're not going to get sick.”
“I'm from London. I've adapted to cold as a climate. This is a different category.”
“Troy.”
“Fine.” He sat down on the edge with a very specific kind of resignation, the kind that said he was doing this but he was going to make sure I knew the cost. He lowered himself in slowly, and when the water hit his chest he made a sound that was half gasp, half genuine grievance. “Declan. This is actual ice water.”
“It's seventy-eight degrees.”
“That is a lie and you know it.”
“Move around. You'll warm up faster.”
“Or I could get out and we could go somewhere that serves hot coffee and doesn't smell like a high school.”
“We're already here. Just swim.”
He gave me a look that promised he was keeping a running tab of all of this. Then he pushed off the wall and started swimming with strokes that were technically correct but stiff, like he was forcing his body through each movement against its better judgment. I watched him make it to the other end and back before he stopped and grabbed the wall again, breathing harder than the effort warranted.
“When's the last time you swam?” I asked.
“High school, maybe. I don't remember.”
“It shows.”
“Fuck you.” But there was less heat in it than there would have been an hour ago. The water was already doing its job, pulling the tension out of him whether he wanted to admit it or not.
We swam for a while in silence. I stuck to my usual routine, working through laps and let my body take over. Troy stayed closer to the shallow end at first, moving through the water like he was still deciding whether to trust it.
Then something changed in the way he moved.
He stopped fighting it. The stiffness left his stroke and he started remembering how to do this properly, his body takingover where his stubbornness had been getting in the way. He swam past me on one lap and shot me a look that was pure competitive edge.
I took it.
We raced the length of the pool and back without either of us announcing it, both of us pushing harder than we needed to. He was faster than I expected but I had more endurance and a better sense of how to pace myself through the turns. We hit the wall at the same time and he came up actually laughing, water streaming down his face and his guard down in a way I hadn't seen since he'd come back.
“You're slower than you look,” he said between breaths.
“You started early.”
