Page 59 of Racing Hearts

I shake my head and step back, letting cool air between our bodies again. “I still can’t believe you already knew my mom before we met. Your turn.”

Adrian sets his ball. “And I still can’t believe Mimi Parker of Enchanted Asana fame is your mom. If I’d known, I would have asked for your autograph.”

“More impressive than ‘national team rower’?”

“Nearly.”

I clear my throat. “I should thank you, by the way, for pushing me to go to her studio. I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. But it was great to see how well she’s doing. I mean, I knew it’s been good for her. But I wasn’t expecting her students to be so doting or—if we’re being honest—the studio to be so well organized.”

Adrian shifts his weight and pulls back his club. The ball flies forward, slightly overshooting the target. “So, your love of spreadsheets doesn’t come from your mom?”

I laugh, thinking about the frozen-deer look Mom gets when confronted with a checkbook. “No. She’s always been more interested in having dance parties in our living room than signing permission slips. I’m blown away that she’s running a successful small business.”

I tip my chin toward the cobalt sky, thinking about that morning in the yoga studio and her surprisingly well-stocked fridge. I haven’t seen her cry once since I got home, either. It can’t be a coincidence that this stability and happiness has coincided with a noticeable absence of the “latest guy.”

“She’s finally found purpose and success again,” I say. “Probably because she’s finally abstaining from love.”

Adrian squints at me with more skepticism than I’d prefer. “Well, she might be abstaining from love, but she’s certainly giving it some glances, if you know what I mean.”

“Ew. No, I don’t.”

Adrian puts up a hand in mock surrender before striding after his ball. “I’ve seen the way she looks at Rob, that’s all I’m saying.”

Rob? An image flashes to my mind of the tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses that nearly melt into his thick eyebrows.

“Wait.” I hurry after him. “You mean her business partner?”

Adrian taps his ball into the hole and lifts a shoulder. “You can ignore it all you want. Doesn’t make it less real.”

I’m about to retort something very convincing about how Mom has finally gotten serious about her career and isn’t going to mess it up by getting involved with Rob, her business partner, when my watch buzzes again. Time for my late afternoon self-massage session.

I click it to silent, pluck my ball from its cup, and forge toward the next hole.

A few hours later, the sun begins to set, basking the hot pavement in an orangish glow. My stomach grumbles and I ask Adrian if we should get more corn dogs.

“I have something better,” he says.

“Funnel cake?” I ask.

“Better than that, too.”

“Really? My best friend says funnel cake is the root of all happiness. I sort of want to find out what the fuss is about.”

He laughs. “I’ll make you dinner.”

I meet his eyes with a seductive jolt of possibility. Although he’s offered this meal so casually, I know what it means. Saying yes here isn’t just about his approach to training and recovery. It’s about abandoning my plan to keep things professional. It’s about us.

“I’d like that,” I say.

. . .

Sipping on a fizzy water, I lean against Adrian’s wooden kitchen island while he cooks. He moves expertly between his stainless steel fridge and graphite countertops, a hand towel slung casually over one shoulder. To my surprise, he wields a paring knife with the precision of a professional.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be such a good cook,” I say as Adrian presses his thumb into the side of a fleshy scallop and pulls out some kind of muscle, like he’s peeling a petal from a rose.

He flicks it into a bowl. “There was a time I wanted to be a chef.”

“Really?” I slide to a seat on one of Adrian’s barstools. Chef seems like an odd detour along the path from rower to coach. “When?”