Page 88 of Racing Hearts

After practice, Mom announces that I have a visitor.

It’s been three workouts since I last showered and my arms are streaked with white—dried rivulets of salt from sweat and brackish water. I kick off my shoes and pad toward her voice, half expecting to find Adrian sitting at her kitchen table. Instead, it’s only Mom in here, sipping on some kind of herbal concoction out of a mug the size of a cereal bowl.

“Upstairs,” she supplies as I grab a handful of cheese sticks and a hard-boiled egg from the fridge. Somehow a pair of eyelash curlers have migrated into my pile of mozzarella. I can’t imagine why she needs those cooled, but I guess they aren’t hurting anyone there.

“In your room,” she adds.

I bite off half the egg and say, “Are you being weird and cagey on purpose?”

She mocks innocence, eyebrows high, as she blows a riot of waves across the surface of her tea-bowl. “No idea what you mean.”

“You’re not using complete sentences. You never miss an opportunity for an adjective, let alone a noun or a verb.”

Her mouth quirks. “Perhaps you should head upstairs and see.”

“Okay,” I say suspiciously as I pinch a cheese stick between my teeth and shove the rest into my back pocket.

When I swing open my bedroom door, I’m rammed by a head full of curls with an accompanying set of muscular arms.

“Sofi!” I scream, nearly choking on my cheese.

Despite our differences in height, Sofi’s hugs are vise grips of affection, like she’s trying to make me pop or squeal. I don’t care if it’s slightly painful, though. I’ve missed this woman way too much to do either.

When we spring apart, she catches my hands in hers and squeezes my fingers.

“Fuck your grip is strong,” I say as my hands collapse under hers. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t get too excited. I’m only staying until tomorrow morning. I had a meeting with one of my sponsors in San Francisco, kind of a last-minute thing.”

“You didn’t say anything,” I say. “Why didn’t you say anything? I could have had everything ready for you.”

“I like to catch you off guard.”

“To keep me guessing?”

She lets go of my hands so she can flip her curls off her shoulder. “To support Adrian’s campaign to loosen your pathological need for order and control.”

I give her a look before collapsing to a seat on my twin bed. “You two haven’t even met and you’re already conspiring against me. I’ll have you know that I went for a run today instead of getting on the erg just because Adrian said so. And I didn’t even think twice about it.”

Sofi lowers her chin and gives me one of her devious smiles. Then she dances to my closet and tugs open the door, motioning like she’s revealing a vowel.

“You still color-coordinate your spandex,” she says, waving up and down at the hangers. Before I can protest, she skips toward me, slaps away my legs from the edge of the bed, and lifts the edge of the comforter, revealing the crisply folded sheet. “Your bed has hospital corners.”

“I like how it feels on my feet!” I protest.

Sofi smiles and drops to a seat next to me. “I know. And I’m kidding, mostly. I know how well you’re doing. I’ve seen an unusual number of TikTok videos with you dancing.”

“Wait what?” I grope for my phone, and fire up the app in question. “What kind of dancing?”

“Relax. It was practically a shoulder shimmy and you were in the background—those kids are definitely the main event.”

“Why did you say unusual number, then?” I ask, still thumbing through Rohan’s feed.

“One is an unusual number. I’ve never seen you so much as snap your fingers to music when you’re sober. You are looking great in those videos, though, and I don’t just mean the dance moves.”

I relax minutely and let the phone fall back to the comforter. Ever since the open water paddle, Rohan has caught a number of my successes on camera: The day I crushed my last pull-up record. The day I raced one of the kids’ quads—and nearly beat them from a half boat length behind. The day I tried again to stand up in my boat and managed to stay aloft, eyes fully closed, for nearly half a minute before falling back into the water with a laugh. Adrian is in the background of nearly every one, alternating between screaming and beaming in some kind of stunned, doting silence.

“Thanks,” I say. “Apparently, and I’m quoting here, I make ‘great content,’ not only when I’m falling. Rohan says his page views have skyrocketed.”