Page 13 of The Last Five Yards

Maren hesitates, her fingers tightening around her cup. “Um, I count things. Floor tiles, ceiling tiles, lockers. Numbers calm me. They make sense.”

“Counting really helps?” Reese asks.

“It makes the world predictable.”

“Less scary.”

Maren nods.

The silence that follows is thick. It is steady, full of something unnamed.

The sun breaks through the clouds for the first time that morning, a thin ribbon of light stretching across the water. It catches the edge of the waves, turning them silver for just a moment before fading again.

They finish their coffees in silence, neither in a rush to move. Reese leans forward, twisting her empty cup deeper into the sand. “Still no sharks,” she says, voice light and playful.

Maren shakes her head. “Doesn’t look that way today.”

Reese stands, brushing the sand from her legs. “Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Maren looks up at her. “That you will.”

Reese’s grin lingers, easy and warm, as she walks back to her car. The sound of her footsteps squeaks in the sand and then fades, leaving only the rush of the water.

Maren watches the ripples reach the shore and thinks, for the first time, that rhythm doesn’t always mean repetition. Sometimes it means return.

6

Currents

By Monday morning, Maren is ready to practice. Really practice. Being out of the water last week and then basically having a play day at the lake has left her feeling behind the curve. That is not where a co-captain should be, even if the word co still sounds the tiniest bit foreign.

Walking out onto the deck, she can hear the water lapping softly against the gutter. The tiles beneath her feet are cold but dry, the only time of day they ever are dry. She waves at Coach Hensley as she passes his office. Reaching the whiteboard, she goes to grab a marker to write out the morning warm-ups. Instinctively, she reaches for black, but the pink one catches her eye from the top ledge. Stretching up, she slides the black back into place and giggles to herself as the pink falls neatly into her hand.

Changes happen in small ripples, she thinks to herself.

The pool lies still, the surface is perfectly smooth except for the slow pulse of the filters beneath. The sound is a steady whisper, a heartbeat Maren knows better than her own. This is her favorite moment of the day, before the team arrives, when the world feels contained by tiles and echoes. She rolls her shoulders back, feeling the familiar tug through the muscles, the kind of ache that means her body still remembers how it is supposed to move.

She lets her fingers drift through the water, watching the tiny ripple spread and fade. The smell of chlorine clings to her skin and hair, sharp and clean, grounding her. Out there, things can shift without warning—teachers, friends, the weight of expectations. But here, everything obeys and patterns she understands. The whistle blows. The water catches the light and becomes home again.

And then, just as she’s about to slip into that quiet, the chaos hits.

A sudden clatter breaks through the stillness, something or someone ricocheting off every locker-room wall. The door bursts open, and there is Reese, with her hair half tamed, wearing her practice suit with boxer shorts rolled down twice at the waist, juggling a towel, a clipboard, and two cups of coffee.

Reese bounces toward her. “Brought you some mini-coach fuel,” she says, pushing the cup into Maren’s hand.

Their fingertips graze, just a flicker, but enough to send every neuron in Maren’s body firing at once, a spark like she has stuck a fork in a socket. She does her best to stay still, hoping Reese doesn’t notice.

“Morning practices are starting to look good on you, Reese. Thank you for the coffee. That is very sweet of you.”

Reese smiles big, reaching up and brushing her hair behind her ear. “What can I say? I’m sweet, just like your coffee.” Then she spins away towards the diving well, leaving the air around Maren faintly charged.

Maren shakes her head and turns back to the board. As she raises the marker, her eyes catch on the coffee cup sitting by her clipboard. Her name is written across the sleeve, and next to it, a small heart.

That heart. The same one that has been drawn beside Maren’s name on the board all week.

She tucks the sleeve behind the papers on her clipboard without thinking. Later, she’ll tell herself it was just trash she forgot to throw away, but for now, she likes knowing it is there.

By the end of the week, everything starts to settle into place. Laps and dives, calls and echoes, coffee cups and chlorine. Reese still shows up late sometimes, still drips water everywhere, still laughs too loud. But Maren doesn’t mind it as much. Not really. She is starting to learn the pattern of it all.