Page 85 of Racing Hearts

Adrian laughs and elbows me. “Thanks, Kath. You’re a fantastic athlete.”

“No, I mean it.” I grab his hand, forcing him to make eye contact. I should have told him this a while ago and I don’t want what I’m saying to be lost in jokes or passion. “I’ve never had meaningful progress this quickly before. You’re probably one of the best coaches I’ve ever worked with. Certainly, the best possible person for the junior national team.”

Something unreadable passes over his face. “There’s no way that’s true.”

“That you’re not the best person for the job?”

“That—” he begins, but cuts himself off. “That I’m one of the best coaches you’ve ever had.”

He’s staring at the horizon now.

“You don’t believe me?” I know we had a rocky start. I ignored his advice and, possibly worse, actively questioned his knowledge and abilities. “I’m sorry that I haven’t said this before. I’ve known it for a while. Sometimes it takes me some time to admit when I’m wrong.”

Adrian shakes his head, eyebrows pulling together as he finally looks at me again. “I appreciate you saying that, but no, that’s not it. It’s okay that you took some time to warm up to me. Besides, I made some mistakes early on, too. It was trial and error and some of that didn’t land exactly as I’d hoped.”

“What is it, then?” I ask.

Adrian goes back to trailing his fingers across my skin, working a thumb into the muscles at the front of my shoulder—the ones that are always tender to the touch.

“Nothing,” he says. “Everything is fine.”

But it’s not. I can tell by the flex of his jaw and the way he’s been avoiding my eye contact. I look up at his chin, mentally rehashing our conversation and trying to remember the moment where he tensed.

“You don’t believe you’re a great coach?” I ask. It seems impossible that he wouldn’t see this for himself. He’s always treated me with so much confidence—too much sometimes. Even when I questioned everything about him and his strategies, he looked me dead in the eyes and told me to trust him. Surely, he knows that he’s good. Great, even. He wouldn’t have applied for the junior national team otherwise.

“I do well for myself,” he says. “Certainly, with my team. With you, too, apparently.”

“And you’ll do remarkable things with the juniors. We’ve got some serious contenders to medal at Junior Worlds next year. I know you’ll be the right person to help them get there. They’ll be lucky to have you—if you decide you want it.”

Adrian’s expression flickers again. He pats my shoulder. “We should head back before your muscles get too cold.”

Then, without waiting for me to move, he slides my head off his lap and stands, brushing sand off his legs as he forges toward the waterline.

“What is happening?” I ask as Adrian pushes his scull into the water, waves gently lapping against his shins. “Are you mad?”

“No. I can’t get mad about a job I’m not going to get.”

Before I can respond, he’s squatting into his seat and paddling away. I hurry after him, wet-launching my own boat and trailing after his strokes. I’m not letting this go. Not only because of my own curiosity, but more importantly because I need an answer to the evaluation question about Adrian’s interest in the job. Shouting at him about this across the water is probably not my best move, though. So, I wait until we’ve traversed back across the bay and our oars are resting on the docks.

Then I say, “I’m sure you’re going to get the job, Adrian. I mean, I probably shouldn’t tell you what I’ve written in your evaluation so far, but it’s very positive. One could say it’s glowing.”

“Thank you.” He yanks his boat out of the water and hoists it onto a shoulder, effortlessly carrying it uphill toward the boathouse.

I can’t carry my boat quite as fast, so I have to wait until we’ve both released our sculls into their berths before I can add, “I think you’d enjoy it, too. You’d love the challenge. You’d get to work with athletes who are more serious and committed. Best of all, you’d be working alongside a team. You’d have people to bounce ideas off of, people to make decisions with you.”

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Adrian could have handled Peter’s injury and Rohan nearly quitting without me. Still, I could tell he enjoyed having someone on his team. I’d like him to have support like that permanently. Even after we part ways.

He frowns down at the hull of his boat, then smooths a thumb across the surface. “I must have dinged this on the beach,” he says.

It’s the tiniest scratch—one that would sit above the waterline. Still, Adrian doesn’t say anything else, just trudges off toward the locker where he keeps the boat repair materials and returns with a tub of epoxy, sandpaper, and patches.

He’s avoiding me. Obviously. Maybe I should stop pushing because it’s not my place. We’re not really together. We don’t have a future. It’s not like him taking the job would give us one, either. My training center is about two thousand miles away from the junior development center. If anything, Adrian taking this job would solidify what I already know—we have no real future.

Rather, I want to push because I think this job would make him happy. And because I believe in him.

“What do you think, though?” I ask. “About having a team?”

Tongue clenched between his teeth, Adrian finishes using his sandpaper to buff out a small area around the scratch. “I don’t see the point in thinking about it if I’m not going to get it.”