I Locked My Professor's Office Door, and Left Belonging to Three Men novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Rowing Machine
Colin's POV
The river froze over the second week of December, and the masters club moved indoors, and I started rowing in my front room.
I own a bungalow near the Huron with a green door and a bad furnace.
I own one good piece of furniture in it, and it is a rowing machine.
On the Saturday Hannah came, it was snowing sideways.
I had pulled my usual long piece by seven in the morning.
I sat on the seat with my head down, breathing.
I did not hear the knock.
I heard the door open.
She had a key.
I had given it to her on Wednesday, in the department mailroom, in an envelope.
My hands had shaken, and she had put it in her pocket without a word.
"Hi," Hannah said.
She stood in the doorway with snow in her braid and a thermos in one mitten.
My front room is eleven feet wide.
I felt every one of those eleven feet.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Hi. No. I mean, hi."
She laughed.
She kicked the snow off her boots and shut the door.
She came across the floorboards to the erg, and I sat there sweating in a gray T-shirt with my knees up.
"Is this the machine?"
"That's the machine," I said.
"It's a very long chair."
"With a flywheel," I said. "Don't touch the handle. It bites."
She touched the handle.
She ran her thumb along the cold chain and looked at me.
"I'd like to see how you do it," she said.
So I showed her.
I strapped my feet into the footplates and took the handle, and I pulled.
The flywheel whirred up to its note.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Locked My Professor's Office Door, and Left Belonging to Three Men are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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