“Swimming,” she says, walking through the shallow water that’s just up to her thighs. “Arms. Legs. Water.” She pulls her T-shirt over her head and tosses it in a crumpled pile into the boat in front of me. “An obnoxious boy following you in a boat. Sound familiar?” She keeps walking, and I keep the boat far enough to the side that I won’t bump into her accidentally. She’s wearing a plain suit—dark navy—but tight and shiny and cut high on her leg, like a team suit. As the water reaches her chest, she dips down into the water and pushes herself forward, a billowy cloud pluming up around her as her feet leave the sand.
Sidney disappears under the water and comes up about fifteen feet ahead. Her cheek dips down into the water, and then up, and down, as she swims steadily into the light chop of thelake. I start the motor back up and idle the boat to the side of her, giving her a few feet and keeping pace. I have the air horn Tom gave me in one hand, though a quick scan of the lake tells me there’s not a boat to be seen anywhere near us. The fishing boats are already settled into their spots for the morning, and the speedboats pulling skiers and tubers won’t hit the lake for hours, after the morning chill burns off. The only ones cutting across the lake at this hour are neurotic swimmers and the guys hell-bent enough on annoying them to ruin their own mornings.
I look at the other side of the lake, imagining the little bay I know dips inland there, but it’s still too far to make out. This is going to take a while—Sid isn’t going for speed, she’s building endurance. Open-water swimming is so much harder than in the pool, where there aren’t waves and frigid temps and currents to deal with. I can’t remember the last time Sidney and I spent an hour straight alone together, unless you count the time we spend lying on the deck chairs in silence every morning, after we vie for that stupid padded lounge chair. The unicorn. I know she calls it that, though she never says it in front of me anymore. I laugh, because her head’s underwater and I can. I shake as I think about her diving toward that chair, and standing under a stream of cherry Kool-Aid.Thank you, family dinners.
Sidney’s head bobs up, and down, and up, and down. It’s quiet out here. The motor is barely running; the lake is only slightly choppy, yet to be churned up by a day’s worth of skiers, tubers, and Jet Skis. And Tom was right, I’m already bored. I glance at my phone, sitting on the bench next to me. It’s been ten whole minutes. Swimming in open water is so much slower than in a pool, even in a lake as calm as this one. And Sidney doesn’t seem to be in any rush—maybe this is all part of her plan.
“I’m bored,” I say toward Sidney’s bobbing head, but of course she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even pause to tell me I’m being a baby.She can’t hear you.The thought frees something inside me.
“I can’t believe you do this every other day.” That’s a lie, though, because it’s totally something she would do. “Scratch that. I can totally believe you’d do this every other day. Because you’re the most obsessive person I’ve ever met. You can’t do anything halfway. That’s why I have to pack my bags for vacation like I’m going off to war.” I ramble on, to the open air. “You’re a worthy opponent, Sidney Walters. You’re neurotic, and have a stick up your ass the size of a small oak tree, but you’re worthy. No doubt.”
I raise my voice a little and imagine Sidney can hear me. I like the idea that she’s forced to listen to whatever I say, each of us captive to the other. “Did I ever tell you about the time I tried pranking my best friend Todd?” I laugh. “Of course I didn’t. Well, it was last year, a week after I got home, and I was still wired from the summer. From our… whatever this is. The crap we do to each other. Todd had come over to my house and stolen my favorite pair of headphones—he’d wanted them forever, and I forgot to bring them to the lake, so when they were gone, I knew who took them.” Just saying this out loud sounds like I’m completely unhinged. Saying it to someone’s back is a whole new level. “So I got into his car, and I put glitter in all of his air vents. I had to use a little dropper, to get the glitter to sit on the edge of the plastic vents. Todd’s air-conditioning has been broken since he got that car, but he always breaks down at some point and turns on the air. Like he thinks it’s magically going to fix itself at some point, or that the air coming in will somehow be cooler than the air outside. So he was good and sweaty by the time he got blasted.” I laugh just thinking about it again. “Man, he was pissed. Because it turns out hehadtexted me about grabbing the headphones for a trip he was going on. My mom gave them to him and everything. I missed the text. It took him a million showers to get the glitter off, and I swear it’sstillin his car, wedged into all the little cracks.” When I shakemy head I’m not sure if it’s at myself or at Sidney. Maybe it’s at what she does to me. “You mess my head up,” I say to the water.
Sidney
Asher goes on and on until we finally reach the little bay on the opposite side of the lake. Telling me about how his friend Todd didn’t talk to him for two days. Apparently it’smyfault that Asher was a jerk to his friend? If he’s trying to make me feel guilty, it isn’t working. But if he’s trying to annoy me, then he’s nailing it. Because him talking to me while I swim is a lot like when the dentist has your jaw jacked open and asks you how school’s going.Have you been flossing? Are you still swimming? If bus A leaves Cincinnati on Tuesday and bus B leaves Detroit on Wednesday, what is the square root of pi?It’s a special kind of torture, when you can’t respond. But acknowledging that I hear him would just help his cause, so instead I just push myself as hard as I possibly can, until my arms and legs feel like limp noodles.
When the water starts to lighten and I can make out the bottom—he can’t claim I didn’t make it to the other side, I’m clearly in the bay—I wave Asher over to me. He cuts the engine and lets the boat drift until it’s sidling up beside me. Even though it’s just one of the little rowboats, I know I can’t get in myself. Not unless we let the boat drift in another hundred feet to thereallyshallow water. And I’m too tired for that.
I try anyway. I put both hands on the edge and try to pull myself up, but I can’t get any traction when the boat dips. The metal digs against my palms. I haven’t done an open-water swim in ten months, and my entire body feels spent. If my dad had come, I would have swum a half today, just to ease myself into it. Asher scoots to the edge of his seat and reaches his arm out with a smirk. And as I grab it, all I can think of is how he calledme neurotic, and said I had a stick up my ass. No, atreeup my ass. I brace myself against the boat with one arm and give a tug. And when he loses his balance, I give one more, until he splashes into the water.
“Your turn,” I say cheerily, still hanging from the side of the boat with one arm.
“Brilliant.” Asher shakes his head in the water. “Now neither of us is in the boat.”
“You’reswimmingback,” I say, giving him the sugary-sweet smile I usually reserve for when our parents are around. There’s no hiding my guilt now anyway. Asher is already stripping his T-shirt up over his head, kicking his legs to propel himself up out of the water. The edge of the wet cotton slaps me in the face as he throws it into the boat.
“Gross,” I mutter.
“It’s lake water. You’re covered in it,” he says, rolling his eyes. He holds his breath and sinks down into the water, coming up with his shorts in his hands. As the fabric sails over me and into the boat, I’m suddenly aware of the fact that he’s now effectively in only his underwear a few feet away from me. I spend at least fifteen hours a week around guys dressed in no more than Asher, so I don’t know why I feel heat creeping up my neck now. Maybe because it’s weird to be near your nemesis while he’s naked.Almostnaked.
“Well, there you go,” he says. “You got what you wanted.”
I raise my eyebrows, unsure what he’s referring to.
“I’m practically naked over here.”
My nemesis is not only naked, but also a mind reader, and I want to scream at him to get out of my head, but all I can manage is: “Ugh.”
“Whatever, Sidney. Next time you want me to take my clothes off, you can just ask.” He dips down into the water and surfaces a foot away from me. “Quite frankly, I’m tired of you objectifying me like this. I’m not just a pretty guy in a Speedo. I’m aperson.”
“Hardly,” I say, but my eyes catch on the sharp angles where his neck meets his shoulders, and suddenly my eyes are drifting lower, to the planes of his chest.
Asher laughs, and it catches me off guard, the way it barrels out of him. And as if he realizes his mistake, he dunks down, cutting the sound off with a torrent of water. When he comes up, it’s slow and dramatic, like when a creature emerges in a scary movie. Water drips down his face in shimmering streams. And he’s right in front of me, so close that the water churned up by his legs is brushing against mine. I could count the droplets of water clinging to his dark lashes.
Asher slings an arm up over the boat, facing me. His feet graze mine in the water as they lazily flutter there. Hair wet and glistening, the last little rivulets of water drip down his tanned face, sliding from his chin down to his chest. When he braces himself against the boat all of his muscles tighten, and something in my chest does the same.
“What are you doing?” I don’t mean it to sound so breathless, so alarmed.
Asher leans forward, his mouth next to my ear, his warm breath a stark contrast to the cold lake. Under the water, his hand rests on my calf, and a little shiver that I hope he doesn’t notice runs through me. Every inch of me vibrates at the touch.
“Sidney?” His voice is whisper soft, so close his breath tickles my ear. I should move away, should find some sort of inhuman strength to hurl myself into this boat, but I can’t. For the first time in forever, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to swim.
The water is chilly this far out, but I don’t feel the cold at all now—my entire body feels like it’s on fire. “Yeah?”
His hand slides down the length of my calf to my foot, and he leaves it there, softly cradling my arch in his palm. “I’m helping you into the boat.” There’s a hint of a laugh in his voice.
I find that inhuman strength I wished for when I push my foot roughly against his hand and propel myself up and into theboat. Unfortunately, it isn’t graceful, sexy, or defiant. I flop into the boat much like my heart is flopping in my chest. And when I take the seat next to the motor and start it up, I think I hear his laugh mixed with the roar of the engine coming to life.
