“Why’d you quit?” I asked, drawing up my legs and sitting cross-legged.

“I was in a car accident almost two years ago.” He lifted his left hand, showing me a scar. I brushed my thumb over the glossy, stretched skin. “I have a pin in my wrist, and some hardware in my left shoulder.”

“Wow.” I touched the scar gingerly before wrapping both my hands around his wrist.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not sure I would’ve continued even if I didn’t get into an accident. I started swimming around eight, and I was really good. Great, even.”

Jack had a swimmer’s body—broad shoulders, long legs and torso, an arm span big enough it seemed like he could hug me twice over. I could picture him cutting through the water quickly.

“I won a lot. More than a lot, actually,” he said, opening his thermos to take a sip.

“Don’t be so modest.” I laughed. “Tell me more about how you won everything.”

He laughed too. “Sorry, that isn’t what I meant.”

“I know,” I said, smiling.

“Okay, you’re going to laugh again, but I kind of wish I hadn’t won so much?”

“Oh my God.” I bumped him with my shoulder and rolled my eyes. “You know that this is the very definition of humblebragging?” He was so adorable.

“I know, I know, I’m terrible,” he said, and I laughed. “But hear me out. When you’re a kid and you find out you’re really good at something, it becomes kind of addicting, the trophies and medals, even if they’re just made of plastic. After a few years of this, it starts taking over your life. I lived to swim, I lived to win, and I didn’t know what I was without it. And then it became less about winning and more about not losing.” He shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. “I know, I know, first-world problems.”

“No,” I said, taking his hand. “I get it, actually. My parents, my brother—that’s exactly what it’s like for them. I’m kind of the family disappointment,” I quipped in an attempt at a joke.

“That sucks, I’m sorry,” he said, and I could tell he was sincere. “If your parents are like the grown-up version of Christian, then yeah, I can see how they’re like that.”

“They’re all kind of intense and I’m just not.” I reached over to pet Lola, who’d taken to sitting by Jack’s feet and resting her chin on the seat of the bench between us. “And it’s like life is a race that’s theirs to lose.”

“Exactly.” He looked at me and my heart skipped a beat. There it was again, that rare kind of connection I felt from the night we met, when you see a piece of yourself in someone else and you feel less alone. “It becomes all about how to stay on top, how to be faster than anyone else and stay faster. But at some point you just can’t. It happens to everyone, and even if I’d never gotten into an accident, I was getting burned out. It was bound to happen.” He shrugged. “But honestly, it doesn’t matter, because I did get into an accident.”