Title: All that is Solid Melts into Air
Series: The Lives of Remy and Michael, Book Two
Author: C. Koehler
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 02/22/2021
Length: 107500
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, romance, new adult, family-drama, gay, sports, college, rowing team, HIV positive
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Description
Remy thinks life after high school will be easier. He’ll go to California Pacific for a year while he gets a handle on his HIV, then after Michael graduates from high school, they’ll blast out of there for colleges—and life—on the East Coast. Then Remy visits Boston and everything changes. He realizes he likes CalPac. Turns out, Boston doesn’t have anything for him beyond one of the biggest regattas in North America.
Life grows more complicated when he gets home. He can’t find a way to tell Michael that he’s just blown their plan for their lives out of the water. Then Remy’s CalPac coaches drop a bomb on him. Those rowing officials who have been watching him? They are recruiters for the national team, and his coaches want him to try out. They’ll even let Lodestone coach him. Now he has to choose, school or crew, CalPac or Michael, and he still hasn’t told Michael he can’t transfer. Is there even a place for Michael in his life? Somehow they have to withstand training at the highest levels and having different goals. Will love hold them together…or tear them apart?
All That Is Solid Exclusive
One thing that took some getting used to about college was the schedule. Maybe I should say the schedules. It still felt weird being able to take off whenever I had the time. I arranged my schedule around my practices and around when Michael was in school and his practice schedule. Why not? Since I had that kind of flexibility, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it. I could’ve even skipped class, but I didn’t have the balls. If my classes bored me, I might be more inclined to experiment, but I loved school, and then there was that rowing scholarship. My coach kept an eye on my grades.
So, I was essentially done with my afternoon when I drove out to the Cap City boathouse, even though Michael wasn’t done with practice. It felt like coming home to hang out there, like putting on an old pair of jeans or maybe a favorite hoodie. It fitted right. Cap City’s boathouse was next to UC Davis’s and CalPac’s boathouses in West Sacramento at the Port of Sacramento, a body of water charitably called a lake, Lake Washington. The port appeared incapable of turning anything resembling a profit, and cargo ships were rarae aves, leaving the crews more or less unmolested. Surprisingly, the big ships and the shells got along fine. As the big ships passed, the water went up and then the water went down. Their propellers were so deep under water that the wakes were submerged far beneath the surface. No, it was the tugboats operators who refused to play nicely. The tugs kicked up three-foot wakes when they were allegedly idling, and despite state maritime law, they did nothing to mitigate those wakes when in the presence of unpowered watercraft like rowing shells. Jackasses.
But the tugs were nowhere in sight as I wandered down to the dock to watch the boats come in. The junior varsity boats appeared to be in front, and I’m sure Michael would have something to say about that. It was late September, and the Head of the Charles was in a month. CalPac’s practices were intense. In fact, we had three more weeks of that ball-busting intensity before we started our own pre-Charles taper. While Cap City’s junior crews wouldn’t be heading east, there were other races, including Cap City’s own Head of the Port next weekend. That the JV were in front doubtlessly meant they had won a scrimmage, and if there was one thing varsity hated, it was losing to junior varsity. I’d have to gauge Michael’s mood before I said anything snarky.
In the meantime, Coach Lodestone drove his launch toward its berth at the dock. A huge grin split his face as he called out, “Remy!”
“Coach Lodestone!”
I waved as I loped over to his boat. This man had been responsible for some of the greatest triumphs of my young life, as well as helping me through some of my most challenging times. He was a mentor, a father figure, a friend. So, it wasn’t like he was important to me or anything. I rowed varsity under him for three years—okay, maybe not under him in the way some of my more overheated fantasies might have had it—so in many ways he helped to shape the man I was becoming.
I helped pull Lodestone’s launch the rest of the way in. Cap City forbade coaches driving their launches all the way into their berths. Apparently, the club’s board frowned on ripping the bottom out of the boat by forcing it up onto the dock with the engines.
As important as Lodestone had been to me, and as much as I was doing a member of his gentlemen’s crew—being done by?—I’d been somewhat shy about showing my face around here, at least since I stopped helping with the learn-to-row camps at the end of summer. I lived inside my head, but sometimes I didn’t like to examine my motives too closely. I didn’t want to think about making a break from the most important four years of my life to date. My father’s a therapist. I learned a snootful growing up about the stages of childhood development, and when Goff and I were in high school, we couldn’t turn around without hearing about how it was another step in the separation process. If therapists’ kids were nuts, it’s because their parents made them that way. I didn’t want to think about separating from a place in which I had learned so many lessons about life. I didn’t want to think about making a break from a place where I had grown up.
Then something else occurred to me. What if I had avoided the Cap City boathouse up until now because I was pulling away from Michael? It had occurred to me before, and I had discussed the matter with my own therapist, but I sure as hell wasn’t going there right then.
I faked a smile as Lodestone jumped out of his launch. He grabbed my hand to pull me into a bear hug. Guess I wasn’t the only one with familial feelings. “Remy, it’s great to see you! Where’ve you been?”
“Oof. You might consider leaving a rib or two intact, Coach Lodestone.” Seriously, dude, ease up.
Lodestone shook his head. “You could call me by my name. You know, since you don’t row for me.”
“I thought I did.” I pretended to be puzzled. “Your name’s Coach, right?”
I blinked at him in innocence, an innocence no one on that dock believed for a shred of a second.
Lodestone stared at me. “Angels and ministers of grace, was that a joke?”
“No.” I held my face expressionless, even though it about killed me.
“How I’ve missed you.” Lodestone laughed hard. “Do you know none of these boys have the stones to bust my chops?”
“Shocking. I see Michael’s rowing varsity.”
We both lost it at that point. Lodestone, seeing some potential in me, had encouraged me to ride along in his launch so he could show me rowing from another perspective. I learned an incredible amount from those ride alongs, including that a certain now-varsity rower wouldn’t be stuck in JV for long. When I pointed this out to Lodestone at the San Diego Crew Classic one year, he grew rather testy. I stood my ground, and I think he respected that. It helped that I’d been right, because Michael now rowed at seven seat in the gentlemen’s varsity A boat, a boat that was most definitely not going to be first back to the dock.
I could’ve watched Michael row all day, although he was obviously tired. Every so often I noticed a slight hitch in his stroke, nothing unusual at the end of a long practice…for a rower of lesser skill. I noticed Lodestone noticing it too. I thought about needling Lodestone, but I also thought better of it. That was none of my business. What was my business were those muscles glistening with sweat in the golden light of a September afternoon, those and the way his deep breaths highlighted the planes of his face. We might’ve met when we were both in high school, but we had both grown. My own maturation barely registered when I looked in the mirror. I mean, who observed himself on a daily basis, right? But Michael—Mikey—I paid attention to. Two years of puberty had been very good to him. He was now taller than I was and far heavier of build, and I fucking loved it. Let’s be honest, I’m subby, and our physical differences worked very well together.
By the time Michael’s boat landed, I stared openly. He looked up and smiled, so yeah, I’d been caught. Neither of us cared. I guess a few of the other guys noticed. I had only graduated the year before, and some of them recognized me, acknowledging my existence with a nod or a wave, but they had other things to do, like carry the oars to the oar racks and otherwise prepare to get the boat back into the boathouse and wipe the water off it. I didn’t recognize one or two faces. They ignored me, and I returned the favor.
“I said,” Lodestone repeated, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes, “are you going to Boston?”
I blinked. “I’m sorry, I heard some annoying, buzzing sound. Did you ask a serious question?”
“And the ego has landed.” Lodestone shook his head.
I blushed. “It’s not ego if it’s true.” I looked at my former coach. “You didn’t train me to row a novice boat. Junior varsity, freshman walk-in.”
“Damn straight,” Lodestone said.
“As it were.”
Lodestone gave me a shove toward the boathouse. “Go help your boyfriend wipe his boat down, and you’ll be out of here faster. And out of my hair sooner.”
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Christopher Koehler always wanted to write, but it wasn’t until his grad school years that he realized writing was how he wanted to spend his life. Long something of a hothouse flower, he’s been lucky to be surrounded by people who encouraged that, especially his long-suffering husband of twenty-nine years and counting.
He loves many genres of fiction and nonfiction, but he’s especially fond of romances, because it’s in them that human emotions and relations, at least most of the ones fit to be discussed publicly, are laid bare.
While writing is his passion and his life, when he’s not doing that, he’s a househusband, at-home dad, and oarsman with a slightly disturbing interest in manners and the other ways people behave badly.
Christopher is approaching the tenth anniversary of publication and has been fortunate to be recognized for his writing, including by the American Library Association, which named Poz a 2016 Recommended Title, and an Honorable Mention for “Transformation,” in Innovation, Volume 6 of Queer Sci Fi’s Flash Fiction Anthology.
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