Page 17 of Oar Than Friends

I wasn’t just good at rowing. I was excellent.

By my last birthday, when I turned twenty-one, I was already the proud owner of two World Championship gold medals, and one Olympic silver. Not to mention the several junior World Championship gold medals I’d also won, which were proudly hanging in my mother’s dressing room at her estate on my grandparents’ island.

My father hadn’t been good enough at rowing to even make his college team. This year would be my third boat race representing Oxford, and I took perverse pleasure in how much it pissed him off – that I was a member of anelite club my father could never be part of, because it was the one place you couldn’t buy yourself entry. Only talent guaranteed it.

‘Count down,’ Pete ordered, and the eight of us shouted out our numbers, declaring that we were all seated and ready to row at his command, right as the loud chug of Coach’s motorboat announced its arrival on the water.

Five boats of eight crew were lined up, waiting for Coach to give each coxswain the go ahead. Our boat would go first, as the senior team, followed by Isis – the second boat – and then whichever ones Coach deemed to be next. Then we would race.

As the eight of us listened for Pete’s command, I could almost feel the eagerness radiating off the rippling surface.

‘At the catch.’

Our oars dropped into the water.

‘Row.’

And off we went.

Two sweaty hours later we pulled back to the dock. Once again we took Pete’s command to get out and lift our shell from the water, carefully placing her back onto the pipes. We were all in peak physical fitness, but even I knew that we were going to ache tomorrow when we were back here to do it all over again.

‘Fuck, I’m starving,’ announced Joshi, pushing his feet into his sliders. ‘I think I’m going to need three breakfasts today. Or at least two lunches.’

‘Me too.’ Charlie slumped down on the bench next to him. ‘Need to power up this week, boys, there’s no way we’re letting Cambridge win the first race of the year, even if it is a friendly.’

My heart thudded. Somewhere during the last two hours I’d forgotten we would be back in Cambridge this weekend.

That I would be breathing the same air as Kate.

Fuck it. Fuck my stupid family.

There’s no way I could be at Cambridge on Saturday and not go in search of her. Before I could overthink it any longer, I pulled out my phone and shot off a message.

Arthur:

A question for a question … Kate Astley, when can we continue where we left off?

Now I just needed to pray I hadn’t already blown it.

4. Kate

(The hot ones always come with a catch)

I dropped my bag unceremoniously on the floor of my dorm room then flopped face first onto my bed.

Exhausted wouldn’t cover it.

It was only my first week, and term hadn’t even begun. The pleasure of that was happening on Monday; yet after a week of orientation, three separate tours of the medical school, the several detours I’d taken home via the classics building in the hopes of running into Oz, meetings with my professors and course mates where I’d received my class schedule and firmly concluded I would have absolutely zero life for the next twelve months, I felt like I’d been put through a fast spin wash and still come out soaking wet.

I’d give anything to bury myself under the covers I’d only left four hours ago and go to sleep, but I had approximately six minutes before I had to leave and head over to the Cambridge boathouse for the team huddle before today’s meet. Beside the medical facility, the boathouse would be where I’d spend the majority of my time for the next six years, and I was okay with that.

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