And those rewards would be better if I got something thatIwanted. What the fuck that might be, I have no idea of yet… But I’ll give Peter what he wants now and wait.
Half of the game here is patience…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aricia
Ihaven’t seen Peter in a week, which doesn’t make me feel as good as I thought it would. The more I keep telling myself that I appreciate him respecting my boundaries, the more I find myself staring at my phone every time it vibrates anticipating a text from Peter Corsini that never comes.
Rana asks me if I have any plans for the weekend and I say “yes”, even if my only plan involves stripping my clothes off and sitting in an Adirondack chair while I watch the sunset. There’s something so relaxing and freeing about just staring at nature. I’ve always found it healing.
Nobody really goes out into my new backyard since I live alone and work a lot, but I own about an acre of land, so I hid my special pocket of pleasure just past the clearing of trees. At work, I tried to focus on my latest management tasks which include sorting out a mess in the accounting department, reviewing the outcome of the Gino Taviani case, and avoiding any thoughts of Inessa and her frivolous lawsuit.
Except… it might not be so frivolous. Rana told me she would have the new partner we hired up from Nashville, Meg Nigel, review everything. She has a background in entertainment law and even worked with celebrities like those white boys fromthat rock band… What was it?Rebel Blood? A black woman working for white rock stars in the south must have cut her teeth on something serious, plus Rana vouches for her, which I appreciate.
But I can’t keep my hands off the documents. I can’t stop thinking about the man I thought I knew so damn well and realizing that… I didn’t know him at all.
In one text exchange, he comes off like a horny highschooler who can barely speak English, not a grown ass man who graduatedwith honorsfrom an HBCU. I just want that chapter of my life to be closed and never haunt me again. What type of pregnant woman even have the energy for this type of legal activity?
One who wants money – obviously.I just wish I could turn this anger outward at someone who deserves it like my stupid, dead ex-husband. What I read in those documents today haunts me and the only way I can break free from this trifling mess is to get in the pool and breathe it out. I give up on the sunsets in favor of my new indoor pool.
There are lots of black women who enjoy swimming, despite the stereotype. I remember reading Kerry Washington’s memoir and loving the parts where she talked about her relationship with the water.
There’s nobody here but me – and that little clump of cells who will soon be my companion – so I don’t feel that strange self-consciousness about stripping down into my bathing suit and even letting my hair get wet. I can take care of my hairafterI swim, but I don’t want to deny myself the pleasure of slipping beneath the water and having my problems disappear.
Unlike running, I don’t have to worry about working up a nasty sweat or looking like an awkward clumsy manifestation of Jack Skellington while I move my body. The pool I built into my house is in its own “house”, which I never unlock when I haveguests. Not even Rana knows it’s here. She probably thinks that it’s just a big shed.
At the pool house, I slip into a basic Baywatch red Speedo bathing suit for exercise, which squeezes my boobs close to my body and pinches everything else in so my body has a smooth figure that’s a little more pear than hourglass, but it’s still mine and over time, you come to love your body just the way it is because of all the ways it has served you through life.
It’s around 75 degrees in the pool house, about ten degrees warmer than it is outside. Buffalo, NY is known for the large amounts of snow dumped here by lake effect, but the weather has that damp grey chill all year round.
My clothes want to come off the second I enter the poolhouse. Slowly, I strip down to my red bathing suit, appreciating the way it highlights my brown skin. And even more so, appreciating how I still fit in it after all the stuff that happened this year.And the baby.Everything with that is still so new that I can hardly make plans around it. I thought my first priority would be writing up a contract to get Peter out of my life, but now that I physically can’t make myself do it, I’ll have to start taking this baby on the way more seriously on my own.
Which means doctor’s appointments. A baby room. Yeah… I really need this swim right now.
When I walk to the edge of the deep end, I’m tempted to just walk off the edge, but there’s a part of me that wants to dive. And for the first time in my life, I’ve felt truly free to do whatever I want to do. And the world hasn’t ended. I kissed a white guy. My firm got his brother off a murder case. I’ve gotten even closer to Rana. Life has been unexpected since I gained my freedom, but that hasn’t been as terrifying as I thought it would be.
I want to dive into the pool, so I stretch my arms out and feel the nervousness in my legs turning them elastic.Just jump. Live the life you want, Aricia.I push off the edge and my dive isperfect. I hit the water and everything goes dark and quiet. Air rushes out of my lungs and I move my spine like a wave to get as far away from the edge as possible.
By the time I come up for my first breath, I’m almost halfway down the 25 meter pool.Woah.I grin as I tread water, gasping for air with joy that I haven’t allowed myself to experience just for me in… ever? Have I ever been this happy? It’s not just the financial freedom – which I’ve had for a long time – it’s the freedom to just be myself. Not to worry about what Kennard would think or how I would make him look.
This is perfect. I finish my first lap and when I reach the edge, I flip. Perfectly. I can’t remember the last time I did a flip turn, but I somehow executed it from muscle memory like I was a young woman again. Not like I’m old but… I’m definitely not the woman I was at twenty-one.
Most women my age would agree with me when I say…And Thank God for that.
I search around the edge of the pool for my goggles, throw my hair underneath a swim cap even if it will cause a huge mess for me in the shower later, and I slowly ease my head under the water to start swimming laps. The first few are easy, but when it gets harder, I don’t want to stop. I love the challenge.
I swim for twenty minutes without stopping, which I definitely haven’t done in years. But when I pop my head up from the water – I’m not alone in the pool house.
Internally, I yelp like a hit coyote. But on the outside, I’m sure I seem calm.
“What are you doing here?”
He takes a step forward. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re breaking into my house.”
“Damn right I am… Now get out of the pool so we can talk.”
