Page 20 of Racing Hearts

I topple. My hip lands on the grass with a whack of pain.

Still too surprised to be angry, I untangle my limbs and search for the source of my sudden engagement with the ground. Above me, a kid with a constellation of acne is still midway through a backward dance move, phone held high in selfie mode.

“You ran into me?” I splutter.

Only then does the breakdancer look down.

“Sorry,” he mutters. As though to prove the point, he tosses up a hand in an utterly unconvincing apologetic wave. Without another word, he resumes his dancing.

Involuntarily, my teeth gnash. I bet that vein in my temple is pulsing. The one Sofi calls my “anxiety-indicator light.”

I press myself to my feet and dust off my unisuit, searching again for my new—very temporary—coach, who, as far as I can tell, hasn’t lifted a finger to impose order on this dance party at dawn. Over a mass of heads and shoulders and oars, I finally spot a tall person with messy brown hair and a clipboard clasped behind his back. I beeline toward him, ducking out of the way of a quad precariously lofted on scrawny shoulders and a set of oars wielded like accidental spears.

I land behind the coach’s wide shoulders, which are shaking with a chuckle. For reasons I can’t quite place, his posture is vaguely familiar.

“Hello, Adrian?” Do I sound shrill? I probably sound shrill. I’m annoyed enough that I don’t care.

The man turns.

And my gaze hiccups on a pair of familiar green eyes, crinkled in a laugh. The sound cuts off as my stomach plummets through my toes.

What the hell. This isn’t happening. This is a dream.

My coach—my actual coach—is a man I once arm wrestled for a lemon bar? Danced with while I was drunk? Tried and, very importantly, failed to kiss?

Did I say dream? I meant nightmare. This is a nightmare.

“Kath, hey,” Adrian says with too much ease. “I told you to wait a few days before coming down here.”

“You—” I blink as I scrutinize his expression. He doesn’t look sufficiently surprised. “You already know who I am?”

Adrian’s eyes flick to his athletes, still parading around to their cacophonic beats. “Carla mentioned the World Cup and the finishes, the disqualification from residency.”

I can’t tell whether or not I should feel relieved or even more embarrassed. My mind retreads the emails we sent each other, even as my stomach clenches, decision made without me. More embarrassed. Definitely even more embarrassed.

“When, exactly, did you find out?” I ask. “Did you know when we…”

Adrian shakes his head. “No. Not until Carla messaged me a couple of days ago. And I was really hoping we could—”

“Who’re you?” A gangly kid with gapped teeth pops up behind Adrian, regarding me with unconcealed curiosity.

I stare back mutely, still dizzy from the dawning reality that I got drunk and rejected by the man who is supposed to be coaching me for the next two months. How can I look at Adrian without remembering the way I lost control that night? How can I listen to his coaching cues without thinking about the way his hands felt on my waist?

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” the kid prompts. “You kind of look confused or, I don’t know, maybe like English isn’t your first language?”

When my mouth continues to work soundlessly, Adrian shoots me a sympathetic look.

“This”—he waves a hand like he’s introducing a famous singer—“is Kath Parker, a national team athlete who just raced in the World Cups. And lucky for us, she’ll be training with the performance team for the next two months.”

More heads spring up. A few of them must have lowered the volume on their music, because the ambient ruckus dampens, and the group seems to be growing exponentially.

“Oh, shit.”

“Really, World Cups?”

“How’d you do?”

Saving me from answering that last, rather loaded, question, Adrian interjects again. “She raced in the B final in Varese. In singles. That means you’re looking at one of the twelve fastest women on the planet.”