Angie started to come to all Charlie’s swim meets, and it did him a lot of good to see her in the audience with us. Of course she’d come to some of his events before, but it was different now, and she was his biggest fan. It was pretty cute. He would always look into the stands and grin when he saw her.

She was there when he had the worst injury of his career, the one that would stop him from going pro after he graduated college. That had always been his dream, but he was taking a dive from one of the boards, twisted a little too soon, and ended up coming down hard on his right shoulder. At first we were terrified that his head had hit the side of the pool, but one of the lifeguards who we knew quite well signaled to us that he hadn’t. When he came up, he was dragging his arm in a funny way and upon being looked at by a medic, was told that he’d dislocated his shoulder and torn some ligaments.

That was pretty much it for his swimming. He still competed after his recovery, but it was never the same, although he still did incredibly well for being injured. He did give going pro a try, but was never able to get much further than third or fourth in trials, which didn’t translate to a lot of time in the water. He was still noted for his expertise with the sport though and some of my colleagues at ESPN contacted him soon after he’d graduated in order to recruit him for one of the network talk shows. He jumped at the chance. That was also the night he proposed to Angelica.

Preparing for their wedding was a lot of fun, mostly because Alice was such a wreck about it. She’d burst into tears whenever it was brought up, and all of us laughed at her. It was cute, though. I’d always hug her and tell her things would be fine, and she’d just answer, “I’m old!” and wail about that for awhile. She was still beautiful to me, though, and as we all met for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding the next day, I felt really lucky to be with her.