The Line Below

by Ali Dean

  “This conversation is way too much for me before coffee and food. Let’s eat. Then we’ll decide what we’re doing tonight, okay?” Now it’s my turn to be bossy and make assumptions. I’m telling him I get what he’s saying by telling him it’s a given we’ll hang out again as soon as possible. No waiting around to see who’s calling first.

  I know he gets it when his lips turn up in a half smile. Jett pulls me into his arms and places a chaste kiss on my forehead.

  “So, your sister cooks you breakfast every morning or am I special?”

  “She cooks breakfast whenever we don’t have early morning practice. Usually only on the weekends.”

  We head downstairs and he asks me about our practice schedule. “Doubles in the pool three or four times a week. Weights and dry land training three times a week. Weekends we either have a three-hour Saturday pool session with Sunday off or we have a meet. Meets are sometimes one day, sometimes two. Championship meets are three or four days.”

  He lets out a low whistle. “Damn, I always knew swimmers were nuts but that confirms it.”

  I shoot him a glare and he laughs, throwing an arm around me as we enter the kitchen. Kick, as expected, has a spatula in hand and she raises it, letting batter drip all over the floor as she grins crazily at us. Beatrice sits on the counter behind her wearing a similar wonky smile.

  “Why are you guys looking at us like that? Stop it. You’ll freak out the company.”

  They grin wider. So I do only what I can do, open my arms wide and formally introduce them. “Jett, this is my sister Kick, and our roommate, Beatrice. I’d tell them who you are but, clearly, they already know.”

  “Coffee?” Bea asks, offering up a cup, the smile still in place.

  “You know it,” I say, taking it.

  “I’m good,” Jett says.

  Three sets of eyes swing to stare at him. “You’re good?”

  He shrugs. “Yeah. I don’t drink coffee.”

  “What do you drink?” Kick asks, not hiding her shock. In this condo, we live on coffee, going through several pots a day.

  He shrugs again. “Water, juice, iced tea. That’s about it.”

  I decide to tattle. “And he doesn’t drink alcohol either.”

  “I’m not sure we can trust him,” Beatrice declares. “He’s a college senior. That’s not normal.”

  “He’s also an Olympian,” I remind them.

  “Well yeah, but he’s not a robot,” Kick argues. “You do eat pancakes, don’t you?”

  “Definitely,” he says with a cheeky grin.

  “He ate two Belgian waffles with whipped cream and syrup at Margie’s Diner last night,” I vouch for him this time.

  “That helps,” Beatrice says contemplatively. “And he got Julian to leave and called you baby, so, he’s still on my good side.”

  I glance at Jett to see how he’s taking this. His lips twitch like he’s trying not to laugh.

  “And he got Shay to show her wild side,” Kick adds.

  “Okay, people, that’s enough,” I warn. “When will the pancakes be ready?”

  “If you out-eat Shay on pancakes, I’ll give you a pass on the no-coffee thing,” Kick tells him.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” He pulls me closer and wraps his arms around my front as we all lean against the counter, watching Kick cook.

  I like that my two best friends seem to like Jett, seem to get that he means something to me, or he will if he doesn’t already. We jabber about the show last night, what’s going on around campus tonight, what we think Coach Mandy will throw at us in the pool today, and Jett’s almost-but-not-quite-as-grueling workout schedule. Olympians or not, swimmers take the cake for grueling. Hands down.

  Jett wins with six pancakes, earning a stamp of approval from Kick and Bea, not that he didn’t already have it.

  After an hour of sitting around, it’s time for us to get going to the pool, and Jett to head to the track. He kisses me sweetly at the door, tells me he’ll see me tonight, and I melt. Sinking against the door behind him, I find Bea and Kick smiling like proud parents, and I can’t help grinning back. He’s a keeper. Definitely.

  Here’s the thing about college swimming most people don’t think about – we spend nearly twenty hours a week staring at the bottom of a pool. If you want to be a swimmer, a really good one, you have to be cool with this. I find the steady, solid line on the bottom of the pool calming and centering. Sometimes boring, if I’m doing a long freestyle set, but usually it’s just peaceful. Minimal sound with my ears under the water and no one talking. There’s little room for my mind to think too deeply since I have to count laps, keep my body moving, and flip at each wall. The repetition of one arm in front of the other is soothing, peaceful. I just go. It’s simple. I like simple. I like having a clear goal and a clear way to achieve it. I like knowing my performance at meets is a direct result of how hard I work in the pool. Sometimes, I wish the rest of life was this simple.

  Mom put Kick and me in a million different sports and activities, everything from soccer to piano lessons, gymnastics, and arts and performance summer camps. Swimming stuck, for me at least, because I could count on it in in a way I couldn’t count on anything else. I could count on my times on the clock reflecting my effort in the pool. My ability to succeed in the pool has always been within my control, and mine alone. It’s not subjective, based on the whims of a coach, teammates, or an audience. Nope, it’s all me.

  And today, it’s no different. I might have had something major, something potentially life-altering, happen with Jett Decker in the last twelve hours, but it’s just me, the water, and the line below for the next three hours.

  I’m steady and strong as I push through one lap after the next. My goals this season are big ones. Ambitious. Possibly unreachable. But worth putting in everything in the pool to see if I’ve got it in me. I already have the school records for each of my main events – the 100- and 200-yard butterfly, as well as some other events – the 200-yard free, the 400-yard I.M. and almost every relay. This year, I’m going for the conference record in the 100-yard fly, and an individual national championship. I haven’t actually told anyone I want to win the 100 fly at Nationals but it’s secretly what I’m aiming toward. I’d take the 200 fly too, but that’s even more of a long shot.

  It’s time for cool-down, but Coach Mandy has something else in store. She wants us to finish up with five flat-out sprints, which isn’t too popular with the rest of the team because come on… we’re meant to be cooling down and we’ve just finished up a grueling session adding up to 4,000 yards. I don’t like it, but I dig in and plan to go all out because it’s what I need to do. To get better, to get stronger, to get faster, to meet my goals… I’ll do it.

  Tori, who often leads stroke sets since her backstroke tends to be a little faster than my butterfly, asks if I want to lead. She’s toast. But I’m willing to push it, even if my arms and legs feel like rubber and my chest is about to explode.

  At the top of the clock, I lean into the water and push off, letting my torso move into the familiar dolphin kick rhythm. Butterfly kick is all about the core, not the legs. I mean, yeah, the legs work it too, but the core and hips are in charge. With little strength left in my arms, I focus on holding my streamline and dolphin kick for as long as possible before breaking the surface to start stroking. I’m able to maintain power for the first few laps, but it’s a struggle to get through the set. My arms are screaming at me and I focus on using my torso and the rest of my body to maintain a steady flow that will get me through it. And I don’t stop pushing. Everyone else in my lane, the whole team, as far as I can tell, is over it. If the distance for each interval was any longer than three laps, I’d be lapping everyone else in my lane. Kick will give me shit for making the rest of them look bad, but I don’t care. I’m tackling a national championship, and there’s no slacking allowed in that plan.

  When I hit the wall after the last lap, total exhaustion seeping through each ounce
of my body, I’m already looking forward to our first meet. The best part is watching the hard work pay off. Seeing my time on the scoreboard and knowing I earned it.

  As soon as we’re out of the pool, it’s like a switch is flipped in my head and I allow room for Jett Decker to infiltrate. Normally after a workout like that, I’d be planning sweatpants, maybe a nap, and then homework. Definitely not partying. Especially after going out last night and staying up way later than usual. It looks like I might have different plans tonight, based on the conversation at breakfast. Bea and Kick were talking about parties, and Jett said he’d probably be there with his friends. I’m willing to ditch the date with my pajamas and Netflix to hang out with Jett. He doesn’t drink, so maybe partying with him will be different than it is with the rest of my teammates. If he’s not at Mirage, what does an Olympian do on a Saturday night? The track team definitely parties, I know that much. Their crowd actually overlaps a bit with the swimmer crowd. This means people are going to find out about Jett and me quickly. Which might mean I don’t have to explain anything to Julian. He’s already seen it for himself, and if he sees it again tonight, he’ll get the picture. I haven’t figured out what his deal was with bringing breakfast over, but the guys are still in the pool so I haven’t had to see him yet.

  “Coco!” Kick’s shout from across the pool deck brings me out of my head.

  I glance up and find her waving as she makes her way to the stands. My eyes travel up the bleachers and land on Aunt Coco, wearing a hot pink sundress and smiling down at us. Coco Sterling is my mother’s younger sister by fourteen years. At thirty-five years old, her age gap between us and our mom is the same. However, my mother and Coco are not close in the slightest, and Coco is more than just an aunt to Kick and me. She’s kind of a hybrid older sister, mom, and girlfriend.

  Kick throws her arms around Coco when she reaches her, not bothering to acknowledge she’s dripping wet. But despite Coco’s expensive wardrobe and fondness for high fashion, she will never mind staining a designer dress with chlorine-soaked pool water if it means a hug from me or Kick. Before Kick releases her I’m joining in on the love fest, forgetting my utter exhaustion as I squeeze Coco tight in a three-way hug.

  “My baby girls!” Coco squeals. “I need a girls’ night! What do you say? You’re legal now so let’s go out on the town and go a little wild!”

  Oh boy. Girls’ night with Coco usually means staying in watching girly movies, painting toenails, talking about boys, and maybe some girly cocktails. But clearly, Coco has a different kind of night in mind. And Kick is all over it.

  “Hell yes!” Kick pumps a fist in the air. “Tell me you brought us some hot little dresses from Ella’s new line.” Coco’s friend Ella Frost is an up and coming designer. Or maybe she’s already big. I wouldn’t know. I don’t keep up with designers. But I’ll admit, the clothes we get from Ella, or from Coco who gets them from Ella, make me look good. And they feel good too.

  Coco puts a hand on her hip and juts it out with a sassy look at Kick. “Did you meet me yesterday?”

  Kick squeals and claps her hands like a five-year-old told she gets a princess costume.

  Coco shoos us away. “Go do your thing and then let’s get some food and catch up. That workout looked brutal. Maybe you should take naps before going out tonight.”

  My “to-do” list for classes flashes in my head, and I decide I can afford a day off. Tomorrow I’ll have to buckle down, but Coco’s right, a nap is in order. “Works for me. I’m starving and beat. So food, then nap, then girls’ night.” I’ll have to let Jett know we won’t be hanging out tonight, which is probably good since so much has happened in the last day and I need time to process. Kick, however, has a different opinion.

  “Our girls’ night might have to get cut short. Shay promised her new boyfriend they’d hang out together tonight,” she announces with that same wonky grin she had all morning.

  Oh, boy. Coco, as expected, is all over this news. “New boyfriend?” She shouts loud enough that our teammates already in the locker room probably hear her, not to mention the guys’ team with their heads underwater. “Who? When? How? What’s he like? I can’t wait to hear all the details. But you two totally need to change so we can eat. And absolutely he can crash our girls’ night. I need to meet this guy. Wow. You haven’t had a boyfriend since Colin Boyland in high school. He was cute and sweet but I always knew you weren’t in love with him. Like, really in love. Wait, are you in love?” She slows to ask this question, using her most dramatic tone. When I just stare at her, trying to process everything, she turns to Kick. “Is she in love?”

  Kick doesn’t hesitate. “It’s quite possible. They’ve only been together for like” —she looks at her watch— “twelve hours maybe, but I think it’s serious.”

  Coco throws a hand to her chest and gasps. “Wow,” she loud-whispers.

  “Okay, I’m showering,” I declare. “See you in fifteen outside the locker rooms, Coco.” We rarely refer to her as Aunt Coco. That’s what she is, of course, but we went with just Coco early on and despite our mother constantly correcting us, it stuck.

  When I get to the showers, Beatrice lets me know that someone heard Coco shouting about my new boyfriend, and now my entire team, all hanging out in the shower area, is speculating about him.

  “Sorry Shay,” Bea calls out when I enter. “But you’re going to have to fill them in. I told them it wasn’t Julian, and all hell broke loose.”

  A few girls laugh, and Ashley, the top sprinter on our team, explains that there was a debate about whether or not it was Julian, and the girls mostly assumed it was, that we’d finally gotten around to making our non-relationship something more. Then Beatrice said it wasn’t but she didn’t think it was her place to tell. “So now we’re about fifty-fifty on whether it’s someone on the guys’ team or a non-swimmer.”

  “I’m not sure how to say this without insulting all of my teammates at once but here it is: you girls need to get a life. You clearly spend way too much time in the pool if the revelation I have a boyfriend gets you this worked up.” The girls only laugh harder. And I was being serious, dammit.

  The truth is, all twenty-two of us spend an absurd amount of time together, much of it testing our physical and mental limits in the pool, which means we’re tight in a unique way only swim teammates can be. And we’re all up in each other’s business. There was a lot of interest in me and Julian last year, and when they realized I didn’t care that he hooked up with other people, the interest dissipated. It didn’t totally disappear and tended to pick up when there wasn’t anything else interesting going on, but now I’m back under the spotlight.

  The girls are all talking at once, giggling with their outrageous predictions as to who my new boyfriend could be. When it starts to quiet down, I finally relent with a huge sigh. While lathering shampoo in my hair, I drop the bomb. “It’s Jett Decker.”

  Silence.

  For about four seconds. Then squeals. Apparently, everyone knows the name, with the fanfare surrounding him at the Olympics and then even more so locally at the announcement of his transfer. There’s some more screaming, “Shut-ups” and “You are kidding me!” Some speculation that Julian’s going to shit his pants when he finds out and he’s an idiot for not committing sooner. Some more speculation that Jett Decker will start hanging out with our team, and about Jett’s track teammates and which ones are hot and how great it will be to expand our social group to the guys’ track team.

  “It’s about time,” Tori says. “I’m a senior and there are only so many hot guys on the swim team. We need a bigger pool, ya know?”

  “Definitely,” Kick agrees as she joins us in the showers.

  I like the buzz of excitement and especially like that no one asks me for specifics about how we met and how long we’ve been together because that’s way too hard to explain. My girls just accept it and take it in stride, and I love them for it.

  “Did I see your aunt Coco up there in
the stands?” Fran, a senior from Germany, asks. “Does this mean we’re going to party with her tonight?”

  Oh boy, now the whole team is going to want in, and if Jett ends up coming, wow. Looks like all my worlds are about to collide at once. So much for taking the time to process.

  “As in Coco Sterling?” one of the freshmen, Molly, asks. “I thought I heard she was related to you! I’m obsessed with Gigi’s Closet.” Oh, right. I sometimes forget that Coco is a small-time celebrity of sorts now that she’s been on the fashion reality show, Gigi’s Closet. She was runner-up last season and is now trying to leverage that to start her own clothing line.

  “Yup, that’s her,” Kick confirms. “And we are definitely partying tonight. How about everyone comes to our place around eight to pre-game and we’ll decide where to go from there?”

  Burger. Fries. Milkshake. Three-hour nap. Kick’s homemade lasagna. And Coco’s girly drinks in girly cocktail glasses she gifted us for this very purpose. All this is the recipe for a girl like me to be in party mode. Oh, and the company. Coco, Kick, Bea, and basically my entire team – girls only. Yup. If Shay Spark’s going to party, this is how it’s done. It wasn’t even this perfect for my twenty-first birthday which, I can hardly believe, was last Saturday. I didn’t get a long enough nap that day, didn’t get a burger, fries or a milkshake, and even though I had birthday cake, Coco wasn’t there to make these incredibly delicious pink drinks that are making me a little tipsy. We haven’t even left the condo, though we’re rallying the troops to make that happen.

  We’re dressed as if we’re going to a club, at least I am, after Coco outfitted me in a little black dress with a single strap over my right shoulder, and then did my nails, makeup, and hair until she declared I could pass for a runway model, only better because I had muscles. It was a nice thing to say, and now that I’m putting on the shoes she got me for a twenty-first birthday present, which bring me to about six feet tall, I’m feeling like I could really pull off the runway model thing. Something about the drinks Coco throws together always makes me feel sexier than usual. And the dress. Right, the shoes help too.