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The Theory of Having a Good Frenemy
Is there utility in having a friend that isn’t quite a friend?
“You aren’t actually that fast,” Tony said, just as I came up for air.
We’d just finished a freestyle set where he’d out touched me again. I wasn’t sweating the comment. Tony’s constant mind games and verbal barbs had become a useful white noise.
While heaving for air, I glanced over and met his gaze. Our heads sat just above the water. His black tinted goggles hid his eyes, but not his lips, which puckered as if to blow me a taunting kiss.
Our pool sat 60 feet below the busy city street above, and 30 feet below the university’s basketball court. I always smelled the chlorine moments before reaching the grey tiled deck, and heard the subtle splash of water as it flowed in and out of the drains lining the pool edges.
The air was thick with humidity. It clung to everything and would hug every ounce of joy out of you over time. Unless, of course, you were cooling off in the water. I felt bad for my coaches, but not too bad, as seemingly took joy as our arbiters of punishment.
I was a newly minted freshman on our Division 1 swim team. Swimming always came so naturally to me, perhaps because my parents were both swimmers. I’d been the top dog on every team.
