Book #2 in the Medley series
JENNIFER RUE:
I thought I had my life all mapped out.
But nothing throws a wrench in your plans like finding your fiancé in bed with another woman.
Untangling myself from the damage Darren did is hard, but the more I...
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I'm late to my coffee meet-up with Jen.
It has been a hassle finding a time that fits both of us. Jen simply refused anything before ten a.m., and my afternoons are always booked up. In the end, we agreed on Sunday.
Sunday is the only day of the week I don't have training. Six days of practice in the pool and workouts in the gym, and then one day to recuperate and rest. It's the day my teammates kick back and play video games or hang out with their families.
Not me, though. Because a day of from swimming means a full twenty-four hours to devote to my studies.
I've had my head buried in books since I woke up at 6.30 this morning - I gave myself an extra hour of sleep since it's the weekend. First, there was a paper for my constitutional law class, and then I'm trying to work my way through next week's syllabus since I don't have much time between classes and training on most weekdays.
Around noon, I gave myself a break to call my moms while scarfing down a carb-heavy lunch. They moved recently when Mom finally landed a head coach position in Nashville. They were unpacking, passing the phone back and forth so I could see whatever object they were digging out of the boxes. In the background, my younger sisters were fighting, which, from the looks of it, involved Darcy chasing Dakota around the kitchen table with an old tennis racket until she shrieked and hid under the table.
It made me intensely homesick.
Then, it was back to my mountain of schoolwork, and I powered through to complete as much as possible before going to pick up Jen.
People sometimes wonder why I bother with a graduate degree when I have a thriving professional career. Well, mostly my teammates who are still in the NCAA and hope to one day go pro.
The thing is, an injury could take me out of the pool at any given time, and the money would dry up real quick then. I remember how little money I made the first year of going pro; just thankful that my moms was covering my tuition. Besides, even if I manage to keep all my limbs intact, swimming is not an old man's sport - if I'm lucky, I'll be able to compete until I hit thirty, and then I'll have to retire.
I don't want my biggest accomplishments to be behind me when I'm only three decades old. I want to make my mark on the world as something more than an athlete.
So that means a few years of me doing both, and it'll be grueling and make me regret most of my decisions, but it's what I need to do.
And I can do it. I managed to graduate my bachelor's in political science with a 4.0 GPA and get a 165 on the LSAT while training for the Olympic Games. This won't be that much harder.
Once I surface from my books again, it's already 3:30 p.m., and I'm set to pick Jen up in less than thirty minutes, so I rush around my apartment to get ready in time.
I'm never late. I'm annoyingly punctual, actually - this is not the impression I want to leave, so when my phone rings as I'm locking up my front door, I answer without checking the caller ID.
