I glance at Austin beside me. We’ve trained together for five years now, and swimming next to him feels like second nature. Austin, AJ, and I all stayed in Florida after our undergrad degrees, doing additional courses. At least one part of my life feels like it hasn’t changed too much.
I slide into the water and it holds me up the way it always has, the way almost nothing else does. I push off. Count strokes. Flip. The pool is strangely quiet. I set the timer and start the next set. But I’m off, and I can’t work out why. On the first 400 metres, I’m two seconds behind where I want to be. On the next, I’m three seconds behind. Then I blow up in the breaststroke and come into the wall with my chest tight, like someone’s tied a strap around my ribs. The tiles around me seem distorted and shining and it takes me several minutes to calm my breathing. My pulse shouldn’t be this fast for what we’ve just done. My vision blurs more and I shake my head quickly, before swiping away the water dripping down my face.
Coach Campbell glances at the pace clock, then at me. He doesn’t need to look at the board to know I missed.
“Take a 100 easy, Fletcher. Reset.”
I nod, push off, but the water suddenly just amplifies the noise in my head. I can’t be messing up in training like this.
I hit the wall and hang there. Austin’s already back out into the set, cutting through the water as smooth as a knife. I tell my hands to push off. They don’t.
Coach walks down to our lane and kneels so his eyes are level with mine.
“Hey,” he says. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” I lie.
He waits. He’s good at waiting.
“Just tired, Coach.” I hear the brittleness in my voice.
“Then be tired later.” He taps his marker against the pool tiles. “What happened that last set?”
“Breaststroke fell apart.”
He nods at me, face serious. “What part of the breaststroke?”
“Everything.”
“That’s not true, Fletcher,” he says, blue eyes looking at me kindly. “Your pattern was off. That’s all. Let’s try something different today.”
“Sure,” I mumble, tugging awkwardly at my swimming cap.
I train on my own for the rest of the session, and by the end, it’s starting to feel good again. The pool floor looks less shiny than before and my heart doesn’t feel so erratic. I finish the session feeling a tiny bit more cheerful before moving to the gym to stretch.
I’m on the mat with a purple band looped around my thumbs, shoulder blades pinned to the floor, when AJ flops beside me, hair dripping onto the foam. He starts stretching his hamstrings before pausing as he looks at me.
“You’re chewing your lip again, Fletch.”
I let my jaw go and taste a little metal. “Didn’t notice.”
He props up on an elbow, studying me like I’m a start list. “You good?”
“Yeah. Just needed to fix the timing on my breaststroke.” I pull the band into a Y and feel my shoulder complain. “Coach was right.”
AJ snorts. “He usually is.”
We stretch in silence for a few minutes. God, my shoulder kills right now.
AJ stands, stretches his arms overhead until his back pops. “Don’s still pushing that ‘Beach but make it wrong’ party on Saturday. I’ve got a shirt that looks like it lost a fight with a mango. Are you coming? I definitely have a shirt or two you could borrow.”
“We’ll see,” I say. A small part of me is curious about what a shirt that looks like it lost a fight with fruit could possibly look like. But only a very small part.
“Translation: no.” Then he clatters off to torment someone else.
When the door swings shut behind him, the room goes quiet except for the fans and the soft squeak of mats. I keep stretching out my shoulder, I need it to be better for the Olympics.
I dig my phone out of my bag and open my photos without thinking, scrolling back to Rio. Opening the album is like falling through a trapdoor.