Page 156 of Final Drive

Jackson got hired by the boathouse. Actually hired, with a title and benefits, because somebody in facilities finally noticed he’d been maintaining forty boats for free for three years. He rigs for the men’s team, the women’s team, and the novices now. He’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him, although with Jackson that means he occasionally eats lunch before three.

Eli started a master’s in the same building where he did his undergraduate work and acts like this was always the plan. Tyler deferred an offer with more zeroes than any twenty-two-year-old should be allowed to turn down and took a research position that pays approximately twelve dollars and unlimited printer access.

When I asked him why, he said, “The offer will be there,” and changed the subject.

I let him.

Nobody ever said they were staying for me. There was just a truck in the driveway and six hours of arguing about desks. Partway through it, I sat down on the porch steps because my chest had gone tight and I didn’t want eight people noticing at once.

Cameron noticed.

Of course he did.

He sat on the step below mine without asking what was wrong. In the driveway, Beckett and Zane were trying to carry a desk sideways through a door that absolutely required them to turn it, and neither seemed willing to admit geometry applied to him.

“They rearranged their lives,” I said.

“They rearranged their addresses.”

“Cameron.”

He looked back at the driveway. “You’d have gone.”

I looked at him.

“If it had been one of us. If one of us couldn’t race and everybody scattered, you’d have gone wherever he was. You’d have found a job. You’d have made it work.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Beckett yelled something from inside the house. Zane yelled something worse back, and Cameron didn’t even turn around.

“That’s not a favor, Reese. That’s the arrangement.”

I put my chin on my knees. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “That’s the entire correct response.”

Wilder gets the novices off the dock at twenty-five past five. Four boats push into the fog, one of them being steered by a girl who had never touched a cox box twenty minutes ago, and I stand at the end of the dock watching until they disappear.

Footsteps come down the ramp behind me. Several sets, because apparently subtlety is also not surviving personal growth.

“You’re all early.”

“We’re supportive,” Beckett says.

“You’re nosy.”

“Both things can be true. You taught me that.”

A coffee appears beside my shoulder and I take it without looking. Eight men spread out along the dock behind me in various states of consciousness. The varsity doesn’t launch until six. None of them has any reason to be here for another half hour, but apparently we’re done pretending anybody in this pack makes decisions based on convenience.

Gray comes up beside me. “How was she?”

I know who he means. “Terrified.”

“And?”