I’m not afraid to love him. That part…it’s easy. But I’m terrified that I won’t be strong enough, and that I will let him down. I just don’t think the man about to fight through the waters trying to drown him can handle one more disappointment.
My father stands, his hand resting on my shoulder, but his eyes still on his swimmer—the one he was always meant to push the hardest. My heart is overjoyed to see him stand behind Will again. I cover my dad’s hand with my own, and we make a silent deal to pick up the rest of the conversation about Evan later. For now, we give everything we’ve got to the other Hollister brother—the one nobody saw coming.
“Time to explode, Will. You have to explode out of this—that’s your edge,” my father yells. His hands form fists at his sides while his swimmer steps up to the blocks.
“Eighteen!” my father begins to shout, and I stand up next to him and begin to yell along with him.
This is the number we chase—the one Will chases. The US record in the fifty is barely a breath above eighteen seconds, and if you can even dance with the decimals that come after that number, you buy yourself respect.
My father has been daily drilling this number into Will’s head. He’s inscribed it on his cap, and we all repeat it in our minds here now. I glance back to where my mom is standing with her arm linked through Duncan’s, and Tanya stands behind Dylan’s chair with her hands clasped together and her neck straining with her held breath. So many people want this for him, but Will has to want it for himself.
Things begin to happen in slow motion as the bodies lined up along the pool all still, minus the occasional finger twitch in anticipation of the starting sound. The beeps begin, and my eyes sweep closed with the first two as I breathe in hard and fast, filling my chest as I know Will is. When my eyes open, they’re all in the air. Will’s start was mediocre. My father swears, leaping down from our team section to the deck below, cupping his mouth, following along the distance of the pool while he shouts. His words are meaningless to any ears but the ones he’s speaking to—claw, smooth, dig, push…sixty…sixty-five…seventy. My father is counting the strokes. He knows exactly how many it should take. Meanwhile, his eyes are scanning in those last few seconds for places where they can fit one more, take one away, find the edge.
Nineteen.
The clock stops on Will’s lane just as his hand touches the wall. He swam the fifty in nineteen seconds flat. He came in second in his heat, and he’ll swim again today, but that number—nineteen—is going to become one more anchor that he needs to shed.
“Goddamnit!” My father’s face is red, his eyes bunched as he covers his mouth with his hand and relives the last twenty seconds over again in his head, searching for what went wrong.
“It was the start,” I say, and my dad nods.
His eyes meet mine, holding my stare until his palm falls away from his face. It wasn’t a loss, but to us, it feels like one. To Will—it is one. I look over to the pool’s edge where he’s climbed out, but remains kneeling, his eyes set on the lane he just left. His elbows are on his knees, and his chin is balanced on his fists, his jaw set tight and his eyes like sights for a sniper.
Those demons of his—they slow him down.
Chapter Twenty-One
Will
Second twice.
There’s a wall I can’t seem to get over. I didn’t even lose to the same guy each time, which means that on any given day, I’m slower than any other man I face in the pool.
I don’t feel much like celebrating, but Susan insisted on having everyone to their house. I took Duncan, Tanya, and Dylan home, yet nothing about that small house they live in felt like one. It made me sick to leave them there, though I know that they’ll be moving soon—to another place…that won’t feel like home.
I’ve been sitting on the porch stoop outside the Woodsens’ house for ten minutes, and I just can’t seem to get myself to go inside to join the laughter. I feel the door shift open behind me, and I turn enough to see Susan’s profile slip through the screen door.
“There are better hiding places than this, you know,” she jokes.
A breath of a laugh escapes my nose, and I glance up as she sits down next to me.
“I was planning to come in soon,” I say, not sure if I really was.
It’s been years since I’ve sat alone with Maddy’s mom. She was always the one to comfort me when I lost meets when I was a teenager, so I guess it’s fitting that she’s the one sitting here now. She lifts my elbow and slides her arm through mine, matronly, patting the top of my forearm with her other hand.
“We’ve come a long way from a popsicle making this all better, haven’t we,” she says.
I chuckle and nod, then turn to her with my nose scrunched.
“I hate to break it to you, but the popsicles never really worked either,” I admit.
“That’s because you take it all too seriously,” she says.