Page 155 of Final Drive

I know that posture.

Wilder puts her in a four with three enormous freshmen and hands her a cox box she doesn’t know how to turn on. I give Wilder about ten seconds to handle it before accepting that personal growth has limits and going down the dock myself.

I crouch beside the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Priya.”

“I’m Reese. Switch on the side. Push it up, not in.”

She finds it after two tries, then looks at me like she’s waiting for the next instruction.

“Now say something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. They need to hear your voice before you need them to do anything with it.”

Priya looks at the three freshmen in front of her, then back at me. “Um. Hello?”

Her voice explodes out of four speakers and she jumps. The guys laugh, and one of them says something about turning the volume down before she blows their eardrums. Priya’s shoulders come right back up.

I put my hand flat on the gunwale. “Hey. Not them. Me.”

Her eyes come back to mine.

“Every one of those guys is going to be faster than you. They’re going to be stronger than you, and at least two of them are probably going to be louder than you.” One of the freshmen opens his mouth. I look at him until he closes it again. “But not one of them can see where this boat is going. You can. They’re the engine. You’re driving.”

Something changes in her face. It isn’t confidence, not yet, but maybe it’s the idea that confidence might eventually be available.

She reaches down, tightens the strap on the cox box, and looks at the two guys nearest the bow. “Bow pair, hands on.”

They put their hands on.

I sit back on my heels and realize I haven’t thought about the competition bar since I got out of the truck.

A little way offshore, somebody coughs. I look up and find Bennett about forty meters past the end of the dock, sitting in the world’s smallest fishing boat with a thermos between his knees and no fishing rod anywhere in sight.

I raise my hand. He raises his back.

So much for retirement.

The house should have emptied in August. That was the part I’d prepared for. Four seniors graduating meant jobs, graduate programs, different cities, and the natural dismantling of a thing that had only ever been meant to last one season. I’d already worked out which bedroom I’d move into and how often I could reasonably drive. I’d looked up flights. I had a spreadsheet.

I did not tell Tyler about the spreadsheet because I have some dignity.

Then a rented truck backed into the driveway.

Gray took an analyst job with a firm in Charlotte and informed us he’d be commuting twice a week.

“You can’t commute to Charlotte from here,” I told him.

“I can.”

“That’s not what commute means.”

“It is literally what commute means.”

Three months later, he works from the dining room table the rest of the week and has become so territorial about his monitor setup that Bo has threatened to burn the table twice.