Page 35 of The Last Five Yards

Maren holds her gaze. “I will let you know.”

A beat. Then another.

“Goodnight, Clarke,” Reese says.

“Goodnight,” Maren answers.

Reese steps into the hallway and walks toward the exit, the banner still over her arm. Maren stays in the doorway and watches her go until the blue streamers settle again. She turns back to the quiet gym, checks the podium once more, and straightens one last chair that no one will notice.

Not everything has to change.

14

Final Practice

Maren wakes up to her phone going off. Jules and Ava have started a group text asking how “important” today’s practice really is. Maren can’t help thinking that all practices are important, but she plays along.

“I guess it’s not that big of a practice. Why, what’s up?” She texts back.

Her phone sits on the nightstand for a good ten minutes before it buzzes again.

“Good. We’ll see you soon.”

Maren’s stomach drops. God, what do these two have up their sleeve? She hops out of bed and heads for the coffee maker. While the pot sputters, she tries to send a few follow-up messages, but no one replies.

These girls text me before six a.m. and now don’t want to talk? What have I gotten into? she thinks slowly, stirring cream into her coffee.

By the time she pulls into the parking lot, the sun is just lifting over the roof line. A few extra cars are parked near the entrance. Sliding into her usual spot beside Coach Hensley’s ancient Jeep, she frowns. Something about the morning feels off.

The moment she opens the door to the pool area, sound hits her like a wave — sharp and hard. A Bluetooth speaker near the diving well fights for its life, music echoing off the tile until it’s mostly static. The air is hot, heavy with chlorine. She crosses to Hensley’s office and flips on the ceiling fans, hoping to clear the haze.

Looking through the office window, she freezes. The lane lines are gone. The pool stretches wide and open, no boundaries, just a shimmer of blue. She taps Coach Hensley on the shoulder and points toward the water.

“What’s that about?” She asks.

“The seniors showed up early,” he says, half-smiling. “Said you texted them and told them to pull the lines. I just did what I was told.”

Maren lets out a full belly laugh.

“Hey Coach, you do know you’re still in charge, right? And we never trust the seniors, you taught me that.”

Still grinning, she grabs her laptop and notes, heading for the bleachers. If nothing else, maybe she can get a little work done before whatever this is kicks off.

Maren sets her coffee down on the bleacher beside her and flips open the laptop. The screen lights her face in a pale blue. She settles into the familiar rhythm of data and tabs. The smell of chlorine mixes with the faint scent of the vanilla coffee creamer still clinging to her hand.

For a few minutes, it is quiet. Just the low hum of the ceiling fans and the occasional echo of water shifting in the pool. Either the speaker down by the diving well had died, or someone had turned off the playlist. The calm is returning for Maren.

She opens the attendance sheet for the season. It is color-coded, cross-referenced, neat in the way she finds satisfying. A few cells are still highlighted from last night’s updates. She scrolls absently, checks notes, and clicks boxes.

Then she sees it.

One tab, still tucked between ‘Practice Schedules’ and ‘Rosters—2020.’ Reese Callahan.

She should have deleted it years ago. The file is ancient, built from her co-captain days when she still logged every diver stat by hand. Reese’s scores, her meet notes, even the one line where Maren had written ‘always smiles before a dive’ into the comment column. She even tracked most of Reese’s college career from afar.

Maren hesitates. The cursor hovers over the tab’s tiny ‘x.’ She could close it right now, clean and simple. Just be done.

But she doesn’t.