Page 131 of Final Drive

For forty strokes there’s nothing to fix.

We go through Hampton Hills at eighteen hundred. Reese doesn’t tell us, because she knows somebody would look.

At nineteen hundred, something happens to the bond.

I feel it the way you feel a stair that should be there and isn’t. It’s been behind my sternum from the night she let me put my mouth against the side of her neck, steady enough that I stopped noticing it weeks ago.

Then it scatters. For two strokes it isn’t one bond. It’s eight separate things hitting me out of order, none of them fitting where they should, and underneath all of it is Reese, stretched thin in a way I’ve never felt from her before.

The rudder slips at almost the same time. Not by much. Our point walks maybe six inches to starboard before she brings it back, and at this rate the whole thing lasts under four seconds.

Then the bond settles, and her voice comes through the speaker as if nothing happened.

“Ten strokes. Ten. Nine. Eight.”

Gray takes the rate up without being asked.

“Three. Two. One. Through.”

The horn goes above us.

We win by three-quarters of a length. The announcer reads a time I don’t hear, because Zane is howling something directly into the back of Tyler’s head.

“Way enough. Let it run. Breathe.”

Eight men fold over their oars.

I come upright before most of them and look down the boat at her. She has one hand on the rudder line and her chin level, and she looks fine.

Maybe she is.

Nobody else reacts. They weren’t counting seconds or watching the point of the shell with four hundred meters left, and if anything registered, they’ve already put it down to the sprint.

I say nothing. There’s a semifinal tomorrow, and Jackson has spent the day holding himself together with half his face turning purple.

I decide I’ll ask her about it in the morning, and once the decision is made I can leave it alone.

Bennett meets us at the dock. He doesn’t mention anything that happened this morning. He says, “Semifinal’s tomorrow at eleven-forty, and that was the best steered race I’ve seen in thirty years,” and then he walks toward the officials’ tent before anybody can answer, which I’ve come to understand is how Bennett handles saying something he means too much.

Jackson climbs out and stands on the dock with his hands on his knees for almost a minute. When he straightens, the left side of his face is purple and one eye is wet.

He’s grinning.

I’ve been in love with that man in some fashion for three years. We agreed the terms of it before either of us could ask too many questions, and we’ve never once revisited them.

I have never seen him look like that.

At nine that night I stand outside Reese’s hotel room without my laptop.

I noticed in the elevator. I carry the thing the way other people carry a wallet, and tonight it’s closed on the desk in the room I’m sharing with Tyler. Both of my hands are empty and I keep almost reaching for something that isn’t there.

Reese opens the door and looks at my hands before she looks at me.

“You don’t have a plan.”

“No.”

“You always have a plan.”