Zach & Ryan

(4) Just keep swimming - Zach

a/n thank you for all staying with me this far, sadly this chapter had to be published before the alpha reader could help me out so if there are any mistakes I'm sorry. All grammar checks go through word editor and obviously each chapter is written by me, feel free to leave any constructive criticism :) also please press the little star and vote for the book as it helps with rankings and will push my writing out to more people <3 

tw (trigger warning)                             cw (content warning)

Tw Body image issues

Water is wet. Which is why my hair is currently plastered to my forehead. Joining the swim team was genuinely one of the best decisions of my life, it's so freeing. Providentially, being tall gives me such a big advantage- longer reach being the main one. Especially with front crawl, longer legs giving more powerful kicks letting me leave my teammates in my wake. Being tall really has its precedencies in swimming. I could tell when I pushed off doing those butterfly kicks that this was the best 100 metres, I had done in months maybe years. All my muscles working together, contracting and stretching, pushing and pulling the water, my head tilting to the side. In and out. Each time my ear came above the water I heard the cheering of my teammates, each stroke I stretched further, pulled harder, pushing my body to its limits. Here comes the tumble turn one, two, three breathe then tuck yourself in and push. Nice! Solid push off, rotate your shoulders- let your body roll with it and butterfly kick. Keep pushing. Keep kicking. 50 metres left just push and push and push. Finally, my head broke the water gulping the air down into my oxygen starved lungs. Damn. 

"You got your time down by 1 millisecond! Soon you're gonna have the best time in the county." 

Hell yeah, I've been stuck at the same time for 3 months now, my times in breaststroke and butterfly keep lowering but I had a mental block. Hands reached for me as I pulled myself out of the chlorinated depths. My friends slapped my back leaving red handprints on my olive skin, water scattering as the impact dislodges them from their rivulets. 

Practice went on aeons, everyone practicing their racing dives. Diving into the frigid water, cooled to reduce the amount of sweat we would excrete, the navy-blue tiles delineating the proximity of the walls, allowing us to keep our bodies underwater for longer periods of time. Perched on the side I watched people repeatedly dive propelling themselves as far as they could keeping their heads straight to ensure that they didn't dive too shallow or too deep. After I had proved myself with my timed 100 metres, I sat on the side stretching and doing some workouts as other people used the pool and I didn't want to get in their way. Somehow, I ended up in a push up competition? 

"You're going down Zach." 

"You wish."    

We got down on our hands, three of our teammates standing around us, we started. Up and down in a careful and controlled rhythm. Textured tiles being imprinted into our hands, the same ones that prevented us from slipping and cracking our skulls open. 

"Ten!" 

I'm not paying attention to how Will is doing because he always wants to prove that he's stronger than me. Most of the time I beat him in heats and in competitions, but sometimes he gets the upper hand and I end up too engrossed in my introspection and he pulls away- which goes straight to his head. He has this fallacious understanding that he was better than me- only God knows why. 

"Thirty for Zach with Will in the lead with thirty-five!" 

Of course, he's doing them faster because he knows he can't use proper technique and still beat me. All I need to do is continue doing what I'm doing. Afterall, I know I can do at least 40 comfortably and with competition added to the mix I'll push another five maybe even ten out of my arms which will indisputably put me in the lead.