Page 76 of Open Water
"He had it coming," I said.
"And then thelibrary," Tyler was building now. "Harrington broke his nose. In a library. Over a guy." He pressed a hand to his chest. "It's the most romantic thing I've ever heard."
"He called you a slur, Remy," Alex said. Quiet. Not joking.
The table dipped a half-beat. Remy held his eyes across the table.
"Yeah," Remy said. "He did." A pause, then dry as ever: "Which is exactly why you're both going on the banner. Took two schools and two separate occasions, but somebody finally—"
"No banner," Jace said from the head of the table, not looking up from his plate.
"There's gonna be a banner," Tyler said.
"And he drove here in the BMW," Tyler went on, undeterred. "Everyone see the beamer? It's got a little hood ornament that looks down on us."
"It's a lease," Alex said.
"Oh, alease." Tyler clutched his chest like he'd been shot. "He's one of us after all."
That got the table, and Alex took it — gave it back, even, something dry I half-caught about Tyler's relationship with carbs — and I watched him do the thing I'd never seen him do in a room with other rowers. He relaxed. He wasn't like this with the Kingswell guys, not from what I had ever seen, the Harrington mask was still on. But here, now, he was just himself — Alex.
Then Remy set his fork down, and his voice shifted. "Real question, though. What happens with the quad?"
The table half-quieted. It was the thing nobody had said out loud all night. The boat that had clicked. Me at stroke, Tyler, Braden, Alex in bow, Remy calling it.
"I'm out through the end of the semester," Alex said. "Can't touch a boat till January."
"And then?" Remy said.
"And then I'm back. But I don't know about the joint program."
Evan looked up from his plate. He'd been quiet, eating, taking it all in the way freshmen do.
"You should just row for us," he said. Simple. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Who needs Kingswell? And we actually like you." He shrugged and went back to his pasta. "Just saying."
Nobody turned it into a joke, which was the strange part. Remy and I caught eyes down the table. Even Tyler opened his mouth and, for once, shut it again.
Because the kid had just said something that made no sense. Alex Harrington, legacy, Kingswell down to the bone, in a Riverside boat for real and that, for one second, sounded like the most obvious idea anyone had had all year.
Alex didn't answer. But he didn't laugh it off either. He just looked at his plate a second, something working behind his eyes.
Jace let the noise roll on a while after that. The stories, Tyler doing an impression of Evan's catch that was cruel and accurate, somebody relitigating a call from the Charles. He sat at the head with his arms crossed and a small smile he was trying to hide, watching four years of his life make noise around him one last time.
Then he tapped his glass with a fork and everyone settled down. He stood up.
"I'm not doing a speech," he said.
"You're standing up," Tyler said. "That's a speech."
"Shut up, Tyler."
Jace looked around the table.
"I came here because nobody else wanted me," he said. "Four years ago. No offers, no money, a coach at a directional school who told me to take up wrestling. Hale was the only one who called." He let that sit. "And four years later I'm leaving because everybody wants me. So." A shrug. "Funny how that works."
Nobody laughed. It wasn't a joke.
"This program isn't supposed to win. We don't have the money. We don't have the boathouse or the donors or even the trophy that's supposed to be in that case down there. Kingswell thinks they know what we are." His jaw set. "Don't ever let them be right about that. We've been better than them the whole time, on no budget, in boats held together with tape. Remember that when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
