Wildest Dreams (Thunder Point #9)(2)

He pushed open the door and saw that his mother had been giving Winnie a manicure. Winnie loved manicures. Winnie had become a good friend; they spent a lot of time on their laptops together, talking, figuring things out.

“You are never going to believe this,” he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “The new guy next door? He’s an Ironman!”

* * *

Blake arrived from Australia late at night. He’d slept on the plane so he was up for a few hours knowing that in the next couple of days jet lag would kick his ass. Then it would pass.

He was creaky and stiff. His body had become a little less responsive in the past few years. Things like prerace training and international travel were beginning to take their toll. And it was odd going home to his own house. It was his first. People wouldn’t guess that. He was almost forty and had never owned a home. Not even a condo or town house. He’d given the location a great deal of thought. He wanted to be near the ocean; he liked the cold of the Pacific. As a workout it was more taxing than warm water; the unforgiving nature of the ocean was more realistic than a lake or pool for training. He needed altitude training and he had that in Oregon. Everywhere he looked...mountains. He had seriously considered Boulder or Truckee but at the end of the day he liked this little spot. When he wasn’t racing he was training and when he wasn’t training, he was living. He could get his training done here. And while he might keep up with the training for life, he wasn’t going to race professionally forever. For living he wanted a quiet place that wasn’t overrun by professional athletes and Olympians. Shake a tree in Boulder or Truckee and ten Olympic contenders fell out.

He spent his first day unpacking, arranging his gym and doing a short workout to keep from stiffening up after a seventeen-hour plane ride. Then he drove into a larger town to the grocery store, rounding up his food. He stuck mostly to organic vegetables, legumes and grains, including quinoa. He ordered his supplements online. He wasn’t a vegetarian. For his purposes he found it served him best if he cooked up a little poultry or beef to add to his vegetables and grains. Cooper had suggested that if he got friendly with Cliff, who owned the seafood restaurant at the marina, he could get fresh fish, crab and other shellfish.

When he was training, which was almost year-round, he avoided or at least limited his favorite things—cheese, simple starchy carbs, the most flavorful fats like butter and cream. He limited his alcohol to the occasional beer. But when he was off-season and his training was moderate, when he was relaxing for a little while, he indulged. Not too much, of course, because no one was more disciplined. But a good, greasy pizza was the best thing in the world as far as he was concerned. And yes, he could make his own vegetarian with a gluten-free crust, but if he was indulging that wouldn’t do it. The way he grew up, he still longed for those things he couldn’t have and pizza and beer were a couple of those things.

His second day home he woke up too early, blended up one of his protein drinks, stretched out, dragged on a wet suit and hit the bay. It was eight-thirty but the sun wasn’t quite up, given all that sea fog, and the water felt icy. He didn’t know the exact distance across the bay but after a fifty-minute swim he’d have an idea. He had already measured a couple of cycling and running routes before making an offer on the house.

He loved the house. He’d looked at a hundred of them, at least, in a lot of places, including Hawaii. Hawaii was tempting; the lifestyle was alluring. But he thought most of his future work would be in the US, and while he didn’t mind travel, he’d like to be able to have a base less than ten hours away. If work took him to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles he could get home to Thunder Point in six hours or less. Boulder, being in the center of the country, was practical but wasn’t as tempting as this unpretentious little fishing village on the ocean. There was a house on Cape Cod he liked but the East Coast beyond the cape wasn’t as peaceful or traffic friendly as Oregon. He remembered asking Cooper, Doesn’t anyone know about this place yet? The freeways weren’t clogged, the air was clean, there were some wide-open spaces... When he was ten years old, the idea that he could live wherever he wished had never occurred to him. But then, when he was ten his most urgent concern was eating and staying warm.

He set the timer on his watch, walked into the water, dove, swam out past the haystack rocks and began swimming from end to end across the bay. When the timer went off he’d made seven trips across the bay—he judged the distance across the beach as slightly more than a quarter of a mile. Maybe four-tenths of a mile. He had a laser measuring tool and later he’d check to see how close he’d been, but even those devices weren’t perfect. By the time he exited the water, the sun was shining. He’d ride for a few hours today; tomorrow he’d go for a run. He’d do one test triathlon before the next competition, only one.

There was a kid sitting on the beach stairs to the house next door to his. He had a laptop balanced on his knees and wore black-framed glasses. Blake shook off the excess water and pulled off his hood and goggles. He walked up to the kid. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless.

“Hey,” the kid said. “You came in second in Sydney.”

Blake smiled. “I had a good race.”

“Your times were good but McGill beat you. He beats you pretty regular.”

“You stalking me, kid?”

“Nah, just looked you up. So, what made it a good race?”