Page 53 of Oar Than Friends

‘Good. Keep talking.’ He bobbed his head again, as though having some kind of conversation with himself. ‘Go and get dry.’

With that he walked off, and I turned to find a couple of the girls walking through from the boathouse changing rooms.

‘Nice work, Asters. That was really something getting us through the Hammersmith cables.’

I grinned up at Anna Selway, the number three seat, after Coach had disappeared from sight, ‘Hey, you did the hard work.’

‘Didn’t seem quite so hard today.’ Imogen handed me my long puffa jacket, the same one we all wore to keep our bodies and muscles warm the second we stepped back onto dry land. ‘You really did an awesome job.’

‘Thank you.’ I grinned at her. ‘It would be so awesome if we’re rowing Blondie together for the race.’

‘I know.’ She put her arm around me, ‘I think we’re in for a decent chance. We’ve won our last three races. Stephens seems happy with the crew we have right now, he hasn’t swapped us out for a few weeks. Maybe next year we’ll be in Blue Boat.’

‘Yeah,’ I yawned, the tiredness from the early morning hitting me even though I’d been in bed by eleven thirty, but given we were here yesterday it really would have been more time efficient to have slept here too. Blue Boat seemed a long way off, especially as right now all I could imagine was my bed, but I had other things to do. ‘Hey, do you want to go over the anatomy coursework together later? We have to hand it in on Wednesday.’

‘Yes. Let’s get lunch and we can eat it in your room while we do it. And nap on the way back.’

Three and a half hours later I was sitting on the floor of my dorm room picking at the cooling fries from the cardboard container, and dipping them into the ketchup pot while simultaneously frowning at Imogen who was dipping hers in mustard, then mayo.

I mean, each to their own, but mustard was gross.

The fish finger sandwich, however, was pretty darn good for a town that wasn’t situated near an ocean. It didn’t have the ‘just caught’ vibes of the sandwiches my mom made from the fish my dad brought home every day, or the type I’d serve from my lobster roll restaurant in my dreams, but I’d managed to finish it in approximately seven bites.

The sound of Imogen rapidly tapping her pen against her human anatomy course book returned my attention to the job in hand and we continued with the quiz we were working through, hoping we could cram as much information into our brains as possible.

I was just deciding between asking her to list the mechanisms of a disease process backwards and asking her to name every bone in size order when the door burst open, and we looked up to find Hannah, her arms laden with textbooks.

‘Thought I could come and study with you.’ She dropped to the floor while miraculously managing to keep all the books in her arms.

‘Han, have you raided the library, or something?’ asked Imogen, reaching for her bottle of water and moving it out of the way.

‘I wish.’ She gave a heavy sigh, ‘This is for one assignment.’

I reached over and picked up the heaviest-looking textbook, and glanced at the cover – applied mathematics. ‘Jeez, you could curl this alone, and you’d have a decent set of biceps.’

‘Maybe that’s why people take maths,’ Imogen added with a snort, making Hannah groan.

‘I know. I should have just taken straight physics. Not sure why I thought physics and maths was a good idea.’

‘I can’t help you there,’ I laughed, grabbing the last handful of cold fries and throwing them in my mouth. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever understood the point of math outside of calculating the tip on a bill.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Imogen leaned back against my bed,‘and it’s only going to get harder for the next six years. Makes you realize why people opt for classics or English, even history. Or art. History of art. You know, one of those degrees where all you have to do is read, then write about it. How hard can that be really?’

I tried to hide my grin, because it was exactly what I’d said to Oz more than once.

‘What’s that look for?’ asked Hannah.

‘Nothing, I just agree with you,’ I laughed.

‘Yeah?’ She looked at me pointedly, then over to Imogen.

‘What?’

‘A.O.-C. is taking classics, isn’t he?’ They both turned to me, and my smile morphed from one of mild amusement to decidedly guilty.

I stood, picking up the empty sandwich cartons, and threw them in the trash. Then I cracked the window a little because the three of us in here, with food, and the heating, was getting ripe. Not to mention I was suddenly in need of fresh air because my cheeks were burning red hot.

‘Asters?’

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