Page 142 of Final Drive

I put my hand against the side of his face.

For a few seconds, I let myself look around. At Gray first, then the rest of them. At the grandstand and the finish tower and the lane markers stretching back over two thousand meters of water.

Forty-one races.

I don’t know how many thousands of strokes.

I know exactly how many I have left.

I pick up the cox box in both hands and press the button one last time.

“Let it run,” I tell them. “Take a look around. You’ll want this one.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Reese

They throw me in the water.

Zane counts to three. Beckett counts differently on purpose, so I go in sideways with my mouth open.

It’s the second time this has happened to me. The first time, I came up out of a lake doing arithmetic about how many hours of suppressant I had left and whether anybody had smelled anything. Today I come up laughing so hard I take in another mouthful.

The lake is filthy and about nine degrees colder than it looks.

Bo puts a hand down and hauls me out one-armed, and Jackson gets a towel around me before I’m upright. Somebody’s mother is crying near the boat racks, and it isn’t mine.

The medals are cheap. They’re always cheap. Mine goes over my head, and Gray’s hand comes down flat on the top of my skull for one second. It’s the least romantic gesture available to a man and it makes my whole chest hurt.

For about forty minutes, it’s the best day of my life. Whatever comes after, that part was real and it came first. I’m keeping it.

The press area is a folding table under a tent. Bennett does most of the talking. Gray does the part about the crew, and he does it well, and he doesn’t mention his father once.

A man in a US Rowing polo waits until they’re done and then comes over to me.

“Callahan? Russell Webb. We met at your boathouse in April.”

“I remember.”

“Best-coxed final I’ve watched in six years.” He hands me a card. “Development camp runs three weeks in July. It’s invitation only, and I’d like you there. There’s a pathway through it to the under-23 squad, and coxswains who go through it tend to stay in the sport.”

Behind him, Okonkwo is talking to Gray and Bo with his hands moving. I look down at the card and think about the exact wording of a bylaw.

The bar runs one full season, and it’s a competition bar. Development camp isn’t competition. July isn’t the season. There’s a version of this where I say yes and find out in five weeks whether the conference agrees with my reading.

“Can I call you next week?”

“Please do.”

Webb rejoins Okonkwo over by the boat racks. I put the card in my pocket, and it stays there for the rest of the afternoon like a stone.

Tyler finds out at twelve minutes to four.

We’re at the trailer. Half the boat is still in racing kit, Zane has produced a bag of gummy worms from somewhere, and Beckett is telling a story about the last five hundred that already isn’t true when Tyler’s phone makes a sound.

He’s had conference bulletins pushed to that phone since February. He set it up himself and has told me more than once that he’d rather find out about our lives from a database than from a person, since databases don’t manage him.

I watch him open it and read.