Chapter 2 - Wet Hair and Hurt Eyes
I didn't look at Tamsin right away. I couldn't. The air in the natatorium felt too thin to breathe, all chlorine and cold, and the blue water kept moving behind them in slow lanes like nothing had stopped.
Ivy's hand was still in mine. That was the only thing I was sure of. Her fingers were cold from the night air outside and damp from her towel, and when she stopped walking, I stopped too.
We'd come back in through the side door because she'd left her goggles on the bench. That was it. She'd said it in the truck, half turned in her seatbelt, hair dripping onto her parka. I told her we'd make it quick. Practice was over. The lot was almost empty. The lights over the pool deck should have been off.
They weren't.
From the doorway, I saw them first as shapes. Rourke and Tamsin at the edge of lane four, too close for talk. His arm around her back. Her head near his shoulder. Both of them turned when the door clicked, startled in the same second.
I heard Ivy breathe in beside me.
"Coach Rucker?" she said.
Her voice went up at the end, small and unsure. The echo took it and threw it back off the bleachers and the scoreboard. Nobody answered her.
I looked down then. I had to. She was still in her parka zipped over her suit, her legs bare and wet, her brown hair pulled back and dark with pool water. A drop ran from her temple down her cheek. The blue NICEACK goggles hung around her neck, the strap twisted, the lenses catching the teal light. She'd remembered them, then forgotten them, then remembered again in the truck. Now here they were.
Her eyes moved from Tamsin to Rourke and back again. Not fast. She wasn't panicked. She was working it out, the way she worked out flip turns, watching once, then again. Her eyes were watery. I told myself it was the chlorine. It had always left her eyes red after practice.
Tamsin's mouth opened. No sound came out. I saw it from the corner of my eye, the way her face changed and then tried not to change. Her eyebrows lifted. Her lips parted. Color left her cheeks under the overheads. One hand lifted off Rourke's arm like she'd only just realized where it was, then stopped mid-air because there was nowhere good to put it.
I tried to breathe slow through my nose. In. Out. Controlled. My jacket felt too heavy, zipped to my throat. I could hear my own breath in my ears over the hum of the filters.
Rourke stepped back. Just half a step, his sneakers squeaking on the wet deck. He put both hands up, palms out, at waist height. Not high. Not surrender. Just that coach's gesture, like calling a pause. Water beaded on his dark polo where Tamsin's sweater had pressed against him. The whistle on the lanyard swung once and settled against his chest.
Nobody moved to go to Ivy.
That was what stayed with me. In a normal minute, Tamsin would have crossed the deck already. She would have said your hair, honey, and wrapped the towel tighter. She would have laughed too loud and fixed it. Instead she stayed locked by the lane line, knees close together, her cream sweater pulled crooked off one shoulder where his hand had been.
Ivy stared forward. Not at me. Past me, at them. Her grip loosened in my hand, then tightened again, like she was checking I was still there.
"You only come when I swim."
She didn't say it loud. She said it flat, tired in a way an eight-year-old shouldn't sound tired. It wasn't an accusation the way an adult would make it. It was just something she'd noticed and kept.
The words hung in the echo a second longer than they should have. I felt them land in my chest before my head caught up. You only come when I swim. All those empty bleachers through the season. All those practices I'd sat through alone with a thermos while Tamsin texted that she was running late, stuck at the store, headache coming on. And now here she was, after hours, hair still neat, sweater dry, at a dark pool.
May you like
Tamsin's eyes flicked to Ivy, then to me, then back to Ivy. Shock broke through whatever she'd been about to arrange on her face. Her lower lip moved, but she didn't speak. A small shake started in her fingers where they clutched at her own sleeve.
I kept breathing. In. Out. The scoreboard buzzed faintly above the empty bleachers. Lane water lapped at the gutters. Ivy waited beside me, goggles heavy on her throat, watching her mother and waiting to be told what she'd just seen wasn't what she thought she'd seen.
