Page 77 of Open Water
Then he looked at me.
Just me. Straight down the table, past Tyler, Evan, Remy, and the empty bread baskets, and the look landed on me like a weight set down on my chest, and I knew what was coming before he said it.
"Moore. You're the guy now." A beat. "Don't screw it up."
That was it. That was the whole handoff. Four years of a program, the thing he'd built out of nothing because nobody wanted either of us, passed down a table in a few words and a look.
"Inspirational," Tyler said into the silence.
"Shut up, Tyler," Alex said.
The table cracked up, and the moment broke the way Jace wanted it to break, back into noise and chaos. But it stayed in me. It sat there the rest of the meal, underneath the laughing, heavy and warm at the same time.
Because here's the thing nobody would ever understand about Jace. He was me. He showed up here with nothing, a scholarship kid nobody wanted, and instead of keeping his head down he led — quiet, no speeches, just showing up before everyone and leaving after, until a whole program would go silent when he tapped a fork. I'd been watching him do it for years and telling myself I was just watching. I wasn't. I was learning it. And now he was handing it to me and walking out the door, and the boathouse was going to be mine, and I didn't feel ready. I felt like a kid who'd been handed something he was going to drop.
You'll drop it,the old voice said.
Maybe. But Jace didn't think so. And Jace didn't say things he didn't mean.
***
We peeled off from the pack at the corner — the rest of them heading for the dorms, Tyler still going on about the banner — and it was just me and Alex, walking the long way down toward the river. Neither of us said where we were going. We were going to my room. We both knew it. Neither of us said that either.
"So," I said. "How was that?"
"That was…" He hunted for it. "I don't actually have a word."
"Tyler's a lot."
"Tyler wants to put my face on a banner. For assault."
"He'll forget by Monday."
He huffed a laugh, fogging the air, and we walked a while before I said the thing I was actually thinking.
"It was kind of crazy, though. Right?" Quieter. "We just sat there. At a team dinner. As boyfriends. In a room full of people who all knew, and nobody…" I shook my head. "Nobody cared."
"I keep waiting for the part where it goes wrong," Alex said.
"Yeah. Me too." I glanced at him. "It didn't, though."
"No." He sounded almost suspicious of it. "It didn't."
We came up to where the path breaks toward the boathouse. And I let myself feel a thing I didn't usually let myself feel, which is that maybe this pans out. Not all of it. His dad was still out there. Christmas was coming, the whole machine. But this part — us — maybe this part was actually going to be okay. I didn't say it. I just let it sit in me for a second, warm against the cold.
"You know Evan was serious," I said. "About rowing for us."
"Evan's a freshman."
"But he might not be wrong." I bumped his shoulder. "I'm just saying. Riverside could use a bow seat who sits the boat down. Remy said so himself."
"That quad was a good boat."
"It's because of us you know," I said. "We're a good pair."
Alex looked up at me, his blue eyes shimmering from the light across the river. "Yeah we are Liam."
I grinned that stupid grin. "I can picture it now. Golden boy in a duct-taped single. Your whole family tree would wither in the first week."
