There are no do-overs. A hundred good starts now won’t erase the one that I flubbed.
But I keep going, taking comfort in the rhythm of it, in the feeling of doing something well, until I happen to glance at the clock. It’s been an hour, which is as long as I can reasonably expect Beth to give me. I toss my goggles onto the deck and hoist myself out of the pool.
“It’s probably none of my business, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your start.”
The sound of another person’s voice takes me by surprise. My foot slips on the slick metal gutter and I almost topple into the water. I grab the block to catch myself.
Harry Something is standing near the entrance to the men’s locker room, staring at me with those big, super-chromatic eyes, carelessly leaning against the wall like he’s holding it up instead of the other way around.
A pang of jealousy hits me square in the chest. An athlete’s job is to understand his or her body and what it can do. It gives you a special kind of confidence, which Harry seems to have. I used to have it, too, but now my body is so foreign to me I’d need the Rosetta Stone to puzzle it out.
“I know there’s nothing wrong my start,” I tell him. I wrench my swim cap off with a wince. It seems to take half my curls along with it. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry about that.” He strolls toward me, shoulders thrown back, hands in the pockets of his jeans, all arrogance and ease. As he gets closer I realize he’s chomping on a Red Vine.
“I thought I was the only one here,” I tell him. “Except Beth.”
“That’s her in there?” He mimes wiping sweat from his brow. “I was afraid it was Dave.”
I wrap a towel around my waist, feeling exposed and a little embarrassed, as if Harry’s caught me giving myself a pep talk in the mirror. Why is he suddenly always around at times like these?
“How long have you been watching me?” I ask.
He crams the last of the Red Vine into his mouth and swallows hard. “Don’t say it like that! I wasn’t watching you, like in a creepy way. I saw you through the glass on the way to my car.”
I glance over my shoulder at the windows that look into East Commons. It’s empty, all the tables and chairs put away for the night. I wonder if we’re the only people on campus.
“Why are you still here?” I ask Harry.
“I forgot a couple books in my locker and I need them tonight. Don’t teachers know they’re not supposed to give this much homework the first week? That was the unspoken rule at my old school.”
“Not here.” I feel so awkward. I don’t know what to say, or what to do with my hands. Why couldn’t he have walked on by and left me alone?
Harry sits down on a nearby bench and pats the spot next to him. I hesitate, then collapse beside him, feeling the full weight of my exhaustion. I sigh.
“Yeah, same,” Harry says. “Dave wasn’t kidding. That practice was grueling.”
“I feel like I’ve been fed through a meat grinder,” I tell him. He nods in sympathy.
“Which reminds me—why are you still here?” he asks.
I lift an eyebrow. “I know you saw that false start at the invitational.”
He scrubs his fingers against his scalp. The bright fluorescent overhead lights pick up the gold in his hair. We’re sitting so close to each other that I’m practically dripping on him.
“I saw,” he admits. “Dave completely overreacted. I almost decided not to join GAC because of it. I’m not about working my ass off for someone like that.”
“So why did you join?”
Harry looks around the natatorium. “This place, for a start. The pool I swam in with the Bruins looks like a backwoods watering hole next to this one.”
I laugh. “It is nice.”
“Plus, we moved to Gilcrest over the summer and I transferred schools. Seemed stupid to drive all the way to Beaumont for practice every day when there’s a perfectly good club here,” Harry explains.
He pauses, then says, “Dave was wrong to treat you like that. This sport demands a lot, and it’s not like you false-started to spite him. I’m sure you felt bad enough as it was.”
My throat tightens. “I deserved it,” I say. “I screwed up.”
“So? It happens. Shouldn’t mean you get a beat-down.”
“Yeah, well, I let him down. I let my teammates down.” I swallow hard. “I let myself down.”
I’m not getting into my history with this guy—I mean, I hardly know him—but he’s looking at me in a way that makes me think he might understand. Like there have been times he felt the same way.
My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s going to punch its way right out of my chest. I can’t even remember the last time I was alone like this with a guy. Maybe never.
I twist my towel in my hands and stare at Harry’s knee, which is bouncing up and down like he’s got so much energy he can’t contain it. We might be sitting too close. I can smell him over the omnipresent fug of chlorine in the air: Irish Spring soap and clean cotton, with a hint of red licorice.
Harry radiates warmth, with his hundred-watt smile and inability to keep still. Every time he looks at me, it’s like I’m sitting in a spotlight.
“I get it,” Harry says. He points to the water. “But that’s not going to help.”
“What, practicing?”
“Come on. You know how to dive off the block. That’s like Competitive Swimming 101, you’ve done it a million times. So—were you practicing, or were you punishing yourself?”
“Punishing myself?”
“Throwing yourself at the water like that. Reminding yourself how awful it felt to screw up, so you never do it again.”
I gaze at the cap and goggles in my hand. “What else can I do?”
“I read up on GAC before I chose to swim here,” Harry says. “I know Dave’s whole schtick is using data and analysis and massive yardage to bludgeon people into perfect swimmers, but a) half of that is junk science, and b) we’re not machines.”
“But we can be. That’s the whole point.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we want stuff. Desire is one of the defining characteristics of our species. Machines don’t want things. They just obey their programming.”
“I guess.” I can’t deny that I want things. I want to win, and maybe more than that, I want not to lose.