“I smell that bad?” Brad said.
“No, you stink. I smell… you,” Drew said.
“I’m going, I’m going!” Brad said. He picked up his duffel bag and headed to the back of the house and Drew’s guest bathroom.
Drew saved the search on his computer. More clients, more comps, followed by home inspections, pest inspections, and arguments about staging. His job, he reflected, would be so much simpler if his clients simply stopped living in their houses.
“Ah, it’s nice to relax after a long day,” Brad said ten minutes later when he sat down next to Drew on the sofa in the family room. “Cool, that show’s on.”
Drew rarely ate in front of the television, but somehow kicking back with Brad felt right, even if he knew many of his other friends would never believe that Drew St. Charles ever ate in front of the television. “It’s very nice to relax with you. But—and don’t take this the wrong way, because I’ll take every moment with you I can get—doesn’t your family object to you being gone all the time? Do they even notice?”
“Yeah, right,” Brad said. “Actually, my brother Philip asked me where I was. I just told him at a friend’s house.”
“What’d he say?” Drew asked. He’d wondered himself if Brad’s family cared at all. Brad was at his place nearly every night. They pretended it was to go over the day’s work on the reno and upcoming small jobs that Drew could now contemplate taking on while they waited to hear back on the bid for the Bayard project, but he was pretty sure they both had the same ulterior motive.
Brad shrugged. “He didn’t say anything. It’s not like he’s there much, either. He hides at his girlfriend’s house when he can.”
“Why don’t you guys move out?” Drew asked.
“I can’t afford to yet, or believe me, I’d be out of there so fast I’d get whiplash,” Brad laughed without humor. “Philip? I don’t know. He certainly earns enough. But he’s always been Randall’s favorite, and that means he’s on a real short leash. I used to resent it, but lately….”
Drew waited to see if Brad had more to say, but as usual, the subject of his family shut him down. “You’re realizing you’re a grown-up, perhaps in a way that Philip isn’t, maybe in a way your dad doesn’t want you to be. I don’t understand it, but whatever.”
“Whatever is right. As soon as I’ve saved enough for first and last month’s rent, I’m gone. I’ve got a small trust fund from my mom, but it’s supposed to be used ‘to help me get ahead in life and not for daily expenses’,” Brad said. “That’s a quote from her will, by the way. How’s that for a kick in the pants? I’ve actually got money, I just can’t touch it.”
“At least she cared enough to set you up and cared enough to make sure you did something with yourself,” Drew said.
Brad smiled. “Yeah, she did. You’d have liked her.”
“If you’re what she turned out, I’m sure I would’ve,” Drew said.
Brad smiled at him. Time to lighten the mood, or at least get off the serious stuff, Drew thought. “So how’s the reno? How was your day?”
“Funny you should mention that,” Brad said. “Guess who came by after work today?”
“The building inspector?” Drew said.
“I’d have sent you a text message. No, Nick Bedford.”
“Good ol’ Nick,” Drew said. “Now that he’s back in school and back to coaching, I don’t hear from him as much. This sounds bad, and don’t take this the wrong way because I’m nothing but happy for those two, but it was kind of nice when he and Morgan were trying to get their act together. It meant I heard from Nick a lot.”
Drew felt Brad look at him. “You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since we were freshman. That’s eleven years now,” Drew replied.
Brad put his hand behind Drew’s neck and rubbed it. “I can’t wait until I’ve known you that long.”
Drew leaned over and rewarded Brad with a kiss. “Me too. So what’d Nick have to say?”
“I think I told you how the oversight committee authorized money for an assistant coach for the varsity?” When Drew nodded, Brad continued, “Nick wants me to be his assistant coach, if you can believe that.”
“Assistant coach,” Drew said.
“Yep,” Brad replied before taking another bite food.
“So now darling Nicky’s poaching,” Drew said.
Brad stopped chewing and swallowed. The gulp was audible even to Drew. “You think he’s after me?”
Drew stared. “Oh, God, I’m sorry! No, not that way! Jeez. This spring, back when Nick was first going out with Morgan, I—” He stopped, the color rising up his neck when he remembered where this story ended. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Since you’re as red as a tomato? Oh, yeah,” Brad said. “You’re adorable when you blush, by the way.”
That just made it worse. Drew felt like his face was burning. “I was pretty into you by this point—”
“Really? That early? You hid it well,” Brad said, grinning at Drew’s discomfiture.
“You were just clueless,” Drew said, his face afire. “Do you want to hear this or not?” Brad mimed zipping his mouth closed. “Anyway, you’d definitely caught my eye, and I joked that since Nick got to have a hot rower boyfriend, why couldn’t I? There. Are you happy?”
“Oh, yeah,” Brad said cheerfully, snuggling down into the cushions. “So what do you think? About me assistant coaching, I mean.”
“Honestly? I can’t say it thrills me,” Drew said. When Brad opened his mouth to protest, he held up one hand. “Let me finish. It doesn’t thrill me because I’m already worried about how busy you are. You work part-time out at that awful subdivision six days a week, then you work more than half days a week on the reno. We’re talking about taking on more jobs since you’re here to lead, and even though those’ll be small jobs, it’s still a demand on your time and mine, and they bring with them more responsibilities. And then there’s your contractor’s license.”
“Yeah,” Brad said, “I know, but still….”
And that was it, that still. Drew looked at Brad, who was now staring glumly at the television. He knew Brad had felt rudderless since graduation. Working on renos seemed to help, but he also knew Brad missed rowing. Maybe this would help. “All of that said, I can’t really point fingers, because I’m just as busy trying to sell lots of houses now, just in case that needs to carry us, assuming we get the bid on the Bayard project. If this is something you want to do, we’ll find the time.”
Brad looked back at him. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to go talk to him. I mean, it’s crew. And Nick.” Then he smirked. “And Morgan. I’d be coaching Morgan.”
Drew laughed. “Just don’t start any fights with Nick, I beg you.”
“All right, I promise,” Brad said. “So you don’t mind if I take this on?”
Drew nodded. “I said I don’t.”
“I just want to check to be sure it’s okay with my boyfriend,” Brad said, smiling shyly.
Drew replied with a smile of his own. “Boyfriend. I sure like the sound of that, you big lug.”
“Just so long as I’m your big lug.”
“Oh yeah, you are,” Drew said, happier than he remembered being in a long time. “You are.”
Friday morning found Brad up dark and early and down at the CalPac boathouse. His dress clothes for the sales office were in the back of the car, along with the carpenter’s pants and old T-shirt he wore when he worked on the reno. Despite the fact that the September day would warm up nicely, it was still cold down on the water, and he had his parka on and a lightweight fleece cap.
Brad paused in the open doorway of the boathouse. Nothing had changed, but somehow things appeared different. All the familiar sights were there, the boats, the ergs, the locker rooms…. He flushed when he thought of the time he’d seen Nick and Morgan rushing into them. Now he had a better idea what might’ve gone on. Now he wanted that himself with Drew.
It was still the CalPac crew, and people still took oars down to the dock or stretched or, like Morgan, warmed up on the rowing machines. Brad knew what they were doing because he’d done it so many times himself, even if he didn’t know most of the faces anymore, even if there were now so many more bodies than when he’d rowed just a few months before. He wondered if any other members of the oversight committee had set foot in the boathouse recently. The numbers, at least for the two men’s teams, had skyrocketed, and Brad was proud to be part of the reason why, proud to have achieved so much under Nick Bedford’s coaching.
Brad nodded in satisfaction. None of that mattered. Even though the boathouse was now filled to bursting with bodies and even a new eight in slings in the middle of the bay, it was still the boathouse. It still felt like home. What had changed, Brad realized, was him. He’d changed. He no longer studied, if that had ever been the word for his five years in college, at California Pacific. He was an alum, and he was back in the boathouse to coach. It felt right, he thought, nodding slowly.
Then Nick himself came out of his office.
And grinned. “Brad! You made it!” Nick pulled him into the coaches’ office.
“Yeah, here I am, Coach, just like old times,” Brad said.
Nick looked at him closely. “But it’s not, is it?”
“No, I guess not,” Brad agreed, “but it’s still good to be back.”
“I’m really glad you are, and I hope you seriously consider coaching with me. As you can see,” Nick said, gesturing at all the people outside the office door, “we’ve got a lot of bodies out there. Even just from a safety standpoint, we need more launches on the water.”
Nick was right. Brad knew that. “The oversight committee’s just going to have to come up with more money. Even if I bounce back and forth between varsity and junior varsity—”
“You won’t really be able to help with either one,” Nick said. “But Brad? I hope you know that’s not even remotely why I asked you to help.”
“Couldn’t get anyone else?” Brad joked.
Nick rolled his eyes. “Granted, people in the area with the time and knowledge to coach are few and far between, but no.”
“Seriously, Coach, I don’t know why else you’d ask,” Brad admitted.
“Someone’s really done a number on you,” Nick muttered. “I asked because you know a lot about rowing. You bring something that I can’t, and that’s recent experience in a boat. The rest of it, like the periodization of training and what drills work for what issues, I can teach you. But you just went through them as an oarsman a few months ago. Don’t sell that—or yourself—short.”
Hearing those words from Nick warmed him, and Brad smiled. “Got it, Coach.”
“And stop calling me ‘Coach’,” Nick groused. “You knew my name this summer. Besides, you’re a coach, too, now. So for this morning, just follow me around. Tomorrow, I’ll give you a practice plan and throw you in a launch.”
“Got it,” Brad said.
A knock on the door halted further discussion. “Coach? You in here?”
Brad looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Hey, Cockring, how’s it hanging?”
He laughed as Stuart Cochrane gritted his teeth so hard he could practically hear the much shorter man’s fillings crack. “Don’t ever call me that again,” Stuart snapped, smacking the back of Brad’s head.
“Hey!” Brad yelped.
“Who or what is that?” someone behind Stuart said like Brad wasn’t even there.
Brad looked around the still-seething coxswain and saw a much taller man with café au lait skin and a bushy thatch of hair the improbable color of milk chocolate that made his moss-green eyes all the more vivid. Brad thought he detected a slight British accent. Whoever he was, he hovered protectively over Stuart.
“That’s Brad Sundstrom, an asshole from last year’s varsity crew who’s apparently back to plague and vex me,” Stuart said.
Brad stood up, smirking. He stuck his hand out. “Coach Sundstrom. Nice to meet you.”
The other man shook his hand warily. “Jonathan Poisonwood. Pleased to meet you, as well. I’ve heard about you.”
“No doubt,” Brad said, still smirking.
“No,” Stuart breathed. “Just… no.”
“Coach Sundstrom’s doing me the favor of checking you all out to see if you’re worth his time,” Nick said.
“I knew him leaving for good was too much to hope for,” Stuart sighed. “Anyway, the crews are out running to warm up, and then they’ll do their dynamic movement drills to stretch. The coxswains are ready to go over today’s practice plan.”
Nick nodded. “We’ll be right out.”
As Stuart and Jonathan left, Brad looked at Nick. “Who or what was that?” he asked, mimicking the new rower.
“You know Stuart,” Nick said with a laugh, “and that was his shadow, Jonathan Poisonwood, my star acquisition. I recruited him from Orange Coast College down in the OC.”
“What’s going on between those two?” Brad said.
Nick shrugged. “Who knows at this point, but you saw it, too, huh?”
“Blind people can see it,” Brad snorted.
“Everyone but them, according to Morgan,” Nick said, laughing again. “Come on, let’s go herd some cats. Just stand behind me and look confident while I tell the coxswains what’s what today.”
“Any of ’em besides Stuart any good?” Brad asked.
“I nabbed one of the JV coxswains who wanted to follow her boys up to the varsity, Evangeline Chin.”
“You stole Evie from the JV? Way to go,” Brad said. “Anyone else?”
Nick shrugged. “We’ll see. Let’s go meet them.”
Brad listened closely while Nick went over the plan for the day. It was early in the season, still in the “getting the rust out” phase after summer vacation when some of the guys hadn't touched an oar or erg, so for that morning’s practice, Nick planned some basic drills to get the oars in the water at the same time, followed by rowing first by a rotation of six of the eight rowers, then all eight. Pretty standard stuff, when Brad thought about it.
“Let’s get out of the way,” Nick said, steering Brad toward the launch once he’d gone over the day’s practice with the coxswains. “Normally I’d have the leftover rowers in here, but I put them on the ergs this morning. Today I just want it to be us so we can talk freely. Once you’re up and running as a coach, we can put the leftovers in smaller boats, the singles and pairs I bought this summer.”
Brad pulled on his cap while they puttered out into the river, careful not to kick up a wake that might push the expensive and somewhat fragile rowing shells into the dock. “Today I want you to observe. The perspective’s different out here,” Nick continued over the farty sputter of the motor. “I think you’ll find that you’ll learn things about rowing just from watching. I know I did. I’ll point things out to you, and if anything jumps out at you, speak up.”
“Will do,” Brad said. He pulled his gloves on. “Is it always this cold in the morning?”
Nick nodded. “You might want to put long johns on under your jeans. That helps.”
So Brad kept quiet and watched as practice got under way. It didn’t take him long to realize that Nick was right. He saw everything from the launch, every late catch, every squirm of the rowers’ bodies out of place, all the little things that could upset a boat, and the more he watched, the clearer those mistakes became. Nick looked over and nodded, like he’d heard Brad’s thoughts.
“How come we didn’t do this launch lizard bit?” Brad asked, almost accusingly.
“Numbers. We had e
ight rowers and one coxswain. We could’ve borrowed a four from the women, I guess, but you’d have spent more time fighting the set in a smaller boat than rowing, so it didn’t seem worth the hassle to me. We made do with what we had, and we did all right,” Nick said.
Then Brad connected some dots. “That’s why you filmed us.”
“Yep, and I’ll do it for these guys, too, even though we now have enough for some real competition for seats in the A boat,” Nick said. “One of the things having an assistant does is free me up to concentrate on one group or another and still have someone to run a safe practice for the rest.”
Tipping the Balance Page 19