Page 70 of You Float My Boat

‘Thank fuck,’ he puffed, slumping against the wall, ‘I’m not late.’

We could all feel his sigh of relief. Late was not something you ever wanted to be.

Late meant you had to complete an extra five minutes of flat-out sprints, and after an already intense and fully loaded training session, you didn’t want to do anything you didn’t have to. Late came with zero excuses – no matter whether lectures ran over or you were hit by a bus – you did those sprints.

‘No, mate,’ Oz slapped him on the shoulder as Brooks fell onto the bench next to him, ‘I don’t even think you’re the last here. I’ve not seen Fellows yet.’

I looked around; a couple of the guys were already in the gym, everyone else was just finishing up gettingdressed, or undressed. Drake was fiddling with the heart monitor he’d strapped around his chest, Bitters was chugging a protein shake and Frank was searching through Spotify to find the playlist he’d made for all of us – he swore it was the perfect mix of tracks to get us through an hour of hard work.

I grabbed my own heart monitor, along with my headphones, and shoved the rest of my stuff into my bag before throwing it into the locker.

‘Let’s go, boys.’

We all headed in, Oz holding the door open for as long as he could be bothered.

Rows and rows of rowing machines lined the middle of the room. We’d had new ones installed at the beginning of this year, ergonomically designed which made them better for our bodies and promised to feel like the closest thing to rowing on water.

I had to admit, they were pretty good.

Out of habit the first thing anyone did on entering the gym was to check the board for theWorkout of the Day.I couldn’t see it through the wall of crewmates, but several groans told me that it wasn’t good.

‘Round Robin,’ someone grumbled, though not loud enough for our coach to hear from the back of the room where he was in a huddle with the other coaches.

My own groan dragged through my chest. If there was anything I wanted to do less it was a session of Round Robin sprinting – a relentless pursuit chasing your teammates on an imaginary river, which we could all see projected onto the wall at the front. Every thirty seconds five of us were picked at random and had todouble our speed to overtake the rest of the crew, while also trying to take the overall lead.

‘No one puke this time,’ added someone else, who sounded a lot like Bitters. ‘Frank, that includes you.’

‘I didn’t puke,’ Frank muttered, ‘I nearly died though.’

Oz clapped his hands together, summoning attention, though not enough for everyone to stop grumbling about the torture we were being subjected to. ‘Okay boys, let’s go in ascending order of birthdays for who goes first. We started with December last time, we’ll go with June today.’

There was silence for a couple of seconds before one of the juniors shouted, ‘June 30th.’

‘June 10th,’ added Fellows, as he walked in and slunk to the side trying to hide the fact he was late.

Brooks turned to Fellows, ‘Your birthday’s June 10th?’

‘Yeah, why?’

He shrugged. ‘No reason, just didn’t know that’s all. It’s the same day as my sister’s.’

My head shot up just as Bitters asked, ‘You have a sister?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why have we never seen her?’

Brooks shrugged again as he clipped into his rower. ‘She’s just started in first year.’

‘Has she got a boyfriend?’

From the look on Brooks’ face, it was obvious he wished he’d never brought up the subject of Violet. I was kind of wishing the same thing. Especially when he looked at me and replied, ‘Not a real one.’

Fuck.

And then it came out of nowhere. The thought of Violet with someone else pulsed under my skin as unwelcome as sewage, powered by a churning in my stomach.

‘She hasn’t got a boyfriend,’ I snapped, before I could stop myself and ten sets of eyes shot to me. Some filled with amusement, some confused, and one set outright annoyed.

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