Page 34 of Open Water
He closed his eyes. Leaned into me.
"But everything's going to fall apart," he said. Quiet now. Almost to himself. "The photo's out. And I beat the shit out of Marcus in the library in front of witnesses." His breath hitched. "I could get kicked off the team. Expelled."
"Hey. Not tonight."
"But—"
"Not tonight."
I stood up. Grabbed a t-shirt off the floor — one of my old ones, gray, a stain on it that might have been hot sauce — and my water bottle from the desk. Poured water onto the shirt.
"Come here."
He tilted his face up. I pressed the wet shirt against his lip. He hissed.
"Sorry."
"It's fine."
"At least you beat the shit out of Marcus."
Alex smiled. "I did it for us."
"We gotta stop doing that. Punching Marcus is becoming a habit."
I wiped the blood off his chin. His jaw. The smear across his cheek. I worked carefully around the bruise which was already purple at the edges.
Alex looked down at the shirt.
"Is that hot sauce?"
"Probably."
"On the shirt you're using to clean an open wound."
"It's got vinegar in it. Vinegar's antibacterial."
A sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh. The ghost of one. His shoulders dropped a fraction.
"This is disgusting," he said.
"Welcome to Riverside."
I took his right hand and started cleaning the knuckles. He winced but didn't pull away. I worked the dried blood out of the creases between his fingers, careful around the splits.
While I cleaned his hands, my brain was doing the thing it does. Running scenarios, building the map of what's coming, and seeing what I needed to fight. Not for Alex. For me. The photo was of both of us. Tomorrow morning every rower at Kingswell would have seen it. By afternoon, Riverside too. The whispers in the dining hall.
The looks in the boathouse. The guys on the team who'd been fine with me yesterday deciding they weren't fine with me today.
I thought about the erg room. Pulling a piece next to guys who now knew. Guys who'd been in my boat. Guys who'd high-fived me after the Charles and slapped me on the back and saidgood race, Moore.Would they still say that tomorrow? Or would they look at me and see the photo first and the rower second?
And practice. We had practice tomorrow morning. Six AM. The boathouse. Both teams.
I hadn't even begun to process what this meant for me. I was too busy holding Alex together to fall apart myself. But the fearwas there — not the sharp, hot kind. The cold kind. The kind that settles into your stomach and stays.
"You might need to get this looked at," I said, keeping my voice even.
"Not tonight."
