Page 9 of The Last Five Yards

Reese points her chin toward the far orange buoy, the one sitting a breath outside of the main ring. “Race you to that.”

Maren looks. The buoy bobs like it has a thought and it is trying to finish it. Beyond, the lake is a soft undulation of pewter and white. A gull rides the air and slants away. Maren’s heart ticks faster. She could reach it easily; she has done this 100 times before. She would count eight strokes, sight, eight strokes, and sight. She would run her breathing on a steady count of three. She would keep lateral control tight and feel the pressure of the water stack along her forearm. Her body wants the logic of it all.

“You do not have to race me,” Reese says. The sentence is casual. The eyes are not. They shimmer with something that is not laughter.

“I want to,” Maren says. She wants to, like she really wants to.

Reese cracks her neck left, then right. The movement is practiced, like she is trying to shake loose a memory. “All right, rules. First touch to the buoy wins. No dunking. No sabotage. Pride is the only prize.”

“I don’t want pride,” Maren says. “I want water.”

“Then take it.” Reese grins, bright for real now. “Ready?”

Maren nods. They both duck under the water for a moment. The cold shoots over her hair and scalp and then clasps the back of her neck in a way the pool never quite can. It is wilder here. The water keeps its own clock. She surfaces. Reese counts them down. “Three. Two. One. GO!!”

The world narrows. Maren slides forward, and the lake becomes a long, patient muscle beneath her. She catches the water, holds it, and moves through. Her mind clicks into the familiar sequence. Hand. Forearm. Pull. Breath. Kick. Sight. The buoy lifts, sinks, and lifts again. She does not hear much beyond her own inhale and the muted slap of her palm entering. The cold that had been a bite turns into a clean hum in her limbs.

For six strokes, Reese is next to her. Maren cannot see her, but she feels the energy, a heat that is not temperature. On the seventh stroke, Reese’s splash is a staggered rhythm to her right. On the tenth, it is a bit behind. Maren keeps her head low. She holds the line. She is not thinking about two days ago, or the ice or the bench. She has a one-track mind, and currently, its only intention is to cut through the water at a slight angle because of the wind drift she knows how to correct for it. She does not need to be first. She needs to finish.

The lake swells under her ribs and lifts her and then drops her into a soft hollow. The buoy is closer now, glossy and stupidly cheerful. She reaches, and the water feels heavier, which she appreciates because it gives her something to push against. Once. Twice. The rope line brushes her knuckles, and the buoy creaks against its ring.

She touches first.

She turns in the water, lungs burning in a good way that means her body did a thing it knows how to do. Reese is not there. The space where Reese should be is a set of fading ripples and a soft, lazy circle of foam.

Maren treads water, confusion pushing against her. She looks back towards the shore. There is movement halfway between the beach and the buoy. An arm lifts high and drops in a wide dramatic arc. Reese. She is swimming, but her stroke is a little messy, and she is going in the wrong direction. She is heading back to the shore.

Maren starts toward her, steady but not frantic. Reese looks up, coughs water and then plants her feet where the lake bed rises. When Maren reaches her, Reese straightens, coughs again, and throws both hands in the air like a showman.

“Shark,” she announces to anyone who will listen. Which turns out to be everyone. The kids at the shoreline stop mid-shriek. Coach Hensley shields his eyes with a hand to look out at them. “Huge! Terrifying. I was brave and turned around,” Reese exclaims.

The lake does not laugh, but the team does. It comes in a wave from shore to water, bubbling, ridiculous, and affectionate. Someone hoots. Someone else splashes like a toddler. Reese gives an exaggerated shiver and wades toward the safe half depth, face tipped toward the sky like she is letting the sun dry her embarrassment.

Maren moves beside her. Close enough to see how Reese’s mouth fights not to twitch. Close enough to see the pulse in Reese’s neck bump a little too fast. The joke covers a thing, but the cover is thin. If Maren had not been looking, she would have missed it. The quick flinch in Reese’s eyes when the lake went from friendly to big. The fraction of a second where her breath hitch had nothing to do with cold.

“Brave is a word,” Maren says softly. “So is honest.” She says even softer.

“I am always honest,” Reese says, and there is pride in it, the kind that keeps a person upright. Then her smile slips. “Except when I am not.”

They stand, water at their hips, and let the lake lift and set them like loose corks. The orange buoy tilts in the corner of Maren’s vision and then rights itself again. That small resilience feels like information.

“What did you see?” Maren asks.

Reese bites her bottom lip. “A log,” she says. “Probably. The slick kind that shoots up out of nowhere and pretends to be a dorsal fin if you squint and want to be dramatic.” She tries to laugh and manages half of one. “The lake is not a pool. The bottom is not a line painted in friendly blue.”

Maren looks at the surface. It is so simple for her. The motions are instinct for her at this point. But not for Reese, beneath that is more. Cold that changes in pockets. Drafts that move sideways. A joke that hides a scare that is not funny at all. She thinks of the way Reese launches off the diving board, fearless, flicking the air with her toes like she owns the height. She thinks of the ways water is not air.

“We could go in together,” Maren says. “Slow. Not all the way to the buoy.”

Reese looks at her, startled and grateful, and too stubborn to say yes. “You already won,” she says. “You don’t have to shepherd me like a newborn duck.”

“I like ducks,” Maren says. “They are very efficient.”

Reese snorts. “Of course you like efficient birds.”

They do not go back out right away. They walk small pieces of the shoreline instead. Reese walks the slick rocks and pretends to be a detective looking for clues. Maren points out where wave patterns split around larger stones. They talk about nothing in particular. The sky opens and closes over them with thin clouds. A motorboat purrs out far beyond the buoys. The wind shuffles the water into a set of tiny marching rows of waves.

Coach blows a shorter whistle and calls for partner drills inside the buoy line. “Float and breathe. Thirty count on your back, eyes on the sky. If you tense, you sink.” Reese glances at Maren like the words are for her. They lie back, side-by-side. The water cups their ears, and the world turns soft and far away. Maren names shapes in the clouds because it steadies her brain. Reese listens, chest rising smoother with each count. At twenty-nine, she laughs, quiet and surprised, that this might be a thing she can learn.