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“There is no way we’ll get this up and running before the Olympics.” Bryce steps closer to peer down into the pool, which is currently a mess of rotting wood and chipped concrete. He wrinkles his nose. “And what is that smell?”

I shrug, but am still desperate to have him on my side for this. “This place was cheap, man. They were eager to sell.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” he comments, moving to head upstairs toward the locker rooms and offices.

I trail after him like a lost puppy. “We know what a pool like this needs, Bryce. It’s going to take a lot of work, but we can do this.”

He turns to look at me for the first time since stepping inside the building, a pinched look on his face. My heart is thrumming in my chest, beating so rapidly I feel a slight shortness of breath. What if I’d made a huge mistake? Buying this place, dragging him into it, him bringing Josie into it, and knowing it’ll all be on them until after the Olympics. I’m a certifiable jerk.

“Obviously we can do it, man.” Just like that, all the tension deflates from me like a balloon. I wonder if he can hear whatever sound it’s making. “I have no idea how we’re going to do it, how long it’s going to take, or how much it’s going to cost, but we can do this.”

I fight the urge to pump my fist in the air I like I did when we were kids. I settle for a grin. “You haven’t seen the outside pool yet.”

His eyebrow arches. “After this, I’m a little afraid to see it.”

I shrug, owning up to overselling the pool when I first pitched the idea to him. “It’s not nearly as bad as this. It should be up and running soon. You might be able to offer some private coaching or even tryouts before long, which will help the cost of everything.”

“Can you even swim outdoors in Columbia during the winter?”

That is another question I don’t know the answer to. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been too busy to focus on all the things I didn’t think through with this decision, but now that I’m standing in this mess of a building with Bryce, I’m freaking out a bit.

“Oh, look!” Bryce’s voice drags me from my anxious thoughts. He’s leaning into the open doorway of one of the small offices. “It looks like we have at least one usable room.”

Before I can jump into all the reasons this place is great, even though it’s literally falling apart in places, Bryce grins at me. He’s joking. I marginally relax. “I’m glad you’ll have somewhere to sit down, dude. That was the top of my priority list when I went looking for a pool to buy.”

“Did you tour more than one?”

“Nope,” I replied, stuffing my hands further in the pocket of my sweatshirt. “I think Josie would call it serendipitous or something like that.”

He chuckles. “And then Mia would declare that to be bullshit. Nothing happens for a reason.”

“Or everything does.”

Neither one of us says anything else as we move through the rest of the building. Taking a couple of moments to absorb it all. It’s more overwhelming to be walking through it this time. I haven’t been here since the first time, but now I feel like I’m seeing it with a whole new set of eyes. This isn’t someone else’s potential mess, it’s my mess—our mess—and I’m leaving Bryce to be the one who mostly deals with it.

I was shocked, but elated, when he told me he had taken my advice to heart and Josie was coming with him. Despite my anticipation to get things moving on the pool, I gave them a chance to breathe. They’d both uprooted their lives—Josie for the first time—and moved out here to do this with me. The least I could do was give them a few of weeks to get settled before I sprung how bad things were on them.

Our focus turned to getting Bryce on all the necessary paperwork. Then, before I knew it, I was headed to Budapest for World Championships while they hung back and figured out their lives in Columbia. Now, here we are, with Worlds behind us, and a huge mess in front of us.

“Okay, you weren’t wrong.” Bryce is walking the deck along the outside pool, the last thing we need to see. “This isn’t nearly as bad as the rest of it.”

The bleachers probably needed to be replaced for safety reasons. The pool would need to be repainted and minor repairs made. We’d need new starting blocks, but otherwise, it wasn’t in too bad of shape. “I think it’d be great to host meets out here.”

There’s a glint in Bryce’s eyes as he looks around. I can tell he’s imagining it like I’d done. “Yeah, it’d be cool if we could get some pro meets out here.”

“Now who’s getting ahead of themselves?” I taunt, earning a laugh from my best friend. “You ready to get out of here?”

He takes one more look around the pool before nodding. “Yeah, let’s grab lunch.”

WesettleonBrickTavern, a local bar and restaurant known for their burgers, according to Bryce, at least. Apparently, this place came to the rescue for him and Josie when they first moved here and found themselves too exhausted from unpacking to cook.

Honestly, I wasn’t hard to please when it came to food. As long as someone else was making it—because I can’t cook to save my life—I’m good.

Brick Tavern is a modern place with an industrial vibe, all dark wood and metal accents. TVs showing various sports hang throughout the place, but the volume is low and the music fades into the background, making it more suitable for a lunch crowd. There are even university students studying with empty plates at the corners of their books.

Eventually, this city will be my home, or I hope it will anyway. Right now, I feel like a visitor who didn’t do enough research before picking a destination.

“We should come up with some sort of plan,” he says.