Page 65 of Racing Hearts

His gaze drops to our feet before finding the ceiling again. “I did poorly in a race.”

“I see.” I bump his toes with mine. “I know the feeling.”

His smile tightens, but there’s still no levity to it. “You didn’t quit, though.”

“Only because I have no other choice.”

“How so?”

I twiddle with the frayed end of my braid, considering how to respond. Adrian always seems impressed that, in the wake of what happened in Italy, I never considered quitting rowing. While that’s factually true, it’s not because there’s something special about my spirit or backbone. The truth is less glamorous.

“Here’s the thing.” I push myself to a seat and swivel so I’m facing him, cross-legged, my bare knees jutting out from under his shirt. “I know how unusual this is, but I didn’t graduate from college because I dropped out when I got a spot on the national team. I never took any more classes or tried to transfer to a university near the center because I knew it would interfere with training, even though pretty much everyone else does just that. Maybe they take extra years to graduate, but they do it. I didn’t.

“I’ve barely had a real job. Part-time work as a front desk attendant at a gym hardly counts. I have no other passion or skills. No other abilities or pursuits. I have no choice but to hold on to this sport.”

Adrian shakes his head. “You’re not being fair to yourself. You have tons of skills that would work in other areas of life. Organization, communication. Discipline and dedication, especially to the degree you have it, are extremely rare. Any employer would be lucky to have you.”

My mind flashes to a handful of Olympic medalists who now work for bosses a decade their junior. “Maybe. But I don’t know if I’d be able to be as disciplined or dedicated to something else. I’m disciplined because I love rowing. Rowing is the perfect manifestation of who I am—it’s everything I am. It’s order and control. It’s calm in the chaos.”

“That’s not true.”

“What?”

Adrian’s eyes flick to mine. “There is so much more to you than ‘order and control.’ ”

My chest fizzes with his words, like I’m a bottle of soda water that’s been shaken and slightly cracked.

“Well,” I say, “the point is I’ve had plenty of races that went bad enough that I probably should have quit after them. That race in Italy tops the list. But I can’t. I haven’t seriously considered it since I got injured as a junior. At this point, I don’t have any other choices. And the fact that you did, well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Adrian is quiet for so long that I worry I’ve said something to hurt him. His mouth is turned down, in contemplation, as he runs his fingers against the edges of his sheets.

“I caught a crab,” he says finally.

His tone is so serious that I repress the urge to question his non sequitur. Catching a crab means a stroke has gone seriously wrong. It can happen easily enough, especially to less seasoned rowers. The oar buries a hair too deep or clips against the surface on the recovery, and suddenly the whole thing sticks. With really young rowers, it can cause embarrassing disasters, like forcing the entire crew to stop and wait while the rower pries out their blade. In the worst-case scenario, it’ll tip an entire boat.

When Adrian doesn’t elaborate, I ask as gently as I can, “In a race?”

“In the race,” he says, still not looking at me.

Now I get it. He’s explaining why he quit rowing. I don’t know what changed, but I’m grateful it did. I curl my legs into my chest, press my temple to one of my knees, and wait.

“It was my last year of high school,” he says. “I was supposed to go to Youth Nationals, but my dad pulled a favor to get me to fill in for a higher-level boat, one in a U-23 race. They’d just lost one of their guys to an injury and were scrambling at the last minute. The others were all a lot older—or at least, as much as early twenties feels when you’re a teen.”

He massages the back of his neck like he’s trying to physically expel the memory. “I should have said no. I should have gone to Youth Nationals with my crew. But I didn’t. So, I ended up in this big, high-pressure race. Near the end, we were holding third place. I was weaker than the others and struggling to keep pace. I caught the crab. The boat veered out of the lane and we were disqualified. The other guys didn’t say anything after, but they didn’t have to. We all knew whose fault it was. My dad was—well, you can imagine. I didn’t just blow it for myself. I embarrassed him, after he put his neck out to get me in that boat.”

He rubs at a callus on his palm like he’s trying to push it off. “After that, I don’t know. I couldn’t force myself back onto a seat again. The only thing that was worse than never rowing again was…rowing. I gave up the scholarship. I deferred college for a year. I quit training. The truth is, I wasn’t strong enough to do anything else.”

I cover his agitating hands with mine and then braid my fingers through his, wishing I could erase his pain with touch alone. I know it’s not enough, though. So, I search my brain for something helpful to say. He’s certainly not the only one who’s ever choked in a high-pressure situation. I know so many athletes who have been in his position. I can name about a million times that Sofi has blamed herself for her crew’s failures.

Yet, I also know that none of those words would help. You don’t dislodge guilt like that by pointing to someone else’s flaws.

So, all I have to offer him is this: “I say this with absolute love and affection, but sometimes rowing is actually the worst.”

Adrian closes his eyes and laughs through his nose. “It really is.”

“Also, you were able to get back into a boat eventually,” I remind him, thinking about his steady confidence as he crushed the standing challenge. “Maybe you quit racing, but you didn’t quit rowing.”

He nods, but it’s laced with a frown. “Eventually. But only a single. And only once I figured out how to turn off the part of my brain that approached rowing as a competition and sculling as nothing but practice for a race. I’ve never gotten back in a team boat. But, yeah, I missed the sport way too much to be away from it forever.”