Playing the Field: Getting Wet

Every morning, Rory Holt is the only person in his student apartment to get up with the sun.

He sleeps in a faded collegiate T-shirt and a pair of thin boxers. The room is dark when he wakes, the first rays of sun beginning to peek through the curtains pulled shut above his roommate’s bed. Quietly Rory slips out of bed, then out into the hall, heading for the bathroom. He leaves the light off as he relieves himself. There’s a toiletry bag resting on the back of the toilet; Rory takes it with him back into his bedroom, where he pulls on a pair of sweatpants before tucking the toiletries into his duffel bag. Stepping into his sneakers, he shoulders the duffel and heads back out again, this time taking a left instead of a right, towards the living area.

In the apartment’s small kitchen, he pours himself a glass of milk and downs it in one long swallow. His keys hang on a hook by the door, so he adds them to the contents of his duffel and snags a zip-up hoodie off the back of the sofa. Soft morning blue light illuminates the large window beside the door, sunlight trying to peer in around the blinds to see the mess strewn across the sofa and coffee table. The place smells of stale beer in overturned cans and spoiled Chinese food left about in open take-out containers. A college smell, a bachelorsmell, which would trigger memories in most men in their early twenties of frat parties and late night study sessions.

Rory isn’t one of those types of students who party hardy or pull all-nighters. He’s here on a sports scholarship, and takes his training very seriously. Classes will always be waiting for him—he can study and learn no matter how old he gets. But his chances of making the U.S. Olympic swim team grow slimmer with each passing year. So he has to rise early and exercise, and spend as many hours in the pool as he can, honing his body, perfecting his craft.

It’s a little before five in the morning when Rory leaves the apartment. He lives on the third floor, and he takes a moment to stretch in the cool air, left leg up on the railing, then the right, body laid down flat over each as he feels the muscles along his back and thighs and arms burn into being. By the time he’s warmed up, the sun has just appeared over the tops of the trees at the far side of campus.

Rory’s iPhone is inside the duffel bag. He pulls the earbuds out and pops them into his ears, sets the playlist on shuffle, and rezips the bag. Then he threads an arm through one of the handles on his duffel and puts the other arm through the second handle so it hangs from his back like a book bag. Shrugging to settle it into place, he takes a deep breath to clear his mind.

Then he launches himself down the steps double-time, his sneakers pounding on the concrete, the duffel’s zipper jingling in his ear. It’ll be twice around the sidewalk that encircles the campus, a distance of just over three miles. In less than twenty minutes, he’ll be jogging into the school’s fitness center, ready to hit the water.

* * * *

At twenty-two, Rory has been swimming all his life. Literally. His mother likes to say he was born swimming—the hospital had had an experimental water birthing facility, and Rory’s mother will relate his entrance into the world in excruciating detail to anyone willing to listen. It’s embarrassing. He even overheard her talking about it to the college coach when they came up to tour the campus. “My little merman,” his mother will say, squeezing his cheek hard enough to pink the skin. As if his lanky, 6’ 3” frame doesn’t tower over her by a good head and shoulders in height.

Growing up, Rory spent his summers in the large, Olympic-sized swimming pool in their neighborhood. He remembers long, hot days splashing through chlorinated water, diving into the deep end, swimming down to the bottom to stand with his feet flat on the cool tiles until his lungs were bursting for air, then pushing off until he breached the surface, sputtering and gasping with delight. From the time the pool opened at eight in the morning until the lifeguard chased everyone out twelve hours later, Rory was there, seven days a week. When his friends came, he’d rough-house in the water, slapping up sheets that shattered into cool drops to splatter the girls in bikinis sunning on the sidelines.

But even if no one else his own age was around, he found things to do. He’d swim the length of the pool, starting at one end and pulling himself through the water to the other side, then turning against the wall and pushing off, aimed for the spot where he began. Or he’d circle the pool’s perimeter, timing his laps and pretending he was competing against everyone else in the pool. Naturally, by his own estimation, he always won.