“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He gazes out at the water. It’s so still across the way, it looks like a rolling line of green suspended in a light-blue sky. “It’s like you can think out here. Without all that other noise.”
A white bird with long legs flies down and dips its beak in the water before flying off again.
I look down at my hands. “I don’t like thinking.”
“No?” He takes another long drag, looking out.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because then I’d inevitably have to think about my mother being dead. My father losing his temper. My future full of uncertainty and an ambling, fruitless path to my own grave. I’d have to think about how there’s nothing extraordinary about me. Nothing to give this world, and so I can’t ever dream of taking from it. And that the only person to really ever love me is gone forever, and so what’s left? Just this. Just now. Just me and just him.
I push my glasses up. “Why think about things when you can just do things?”
He looks at me with a half-smile. “You might be on to something, pal.”
He stands and unbuttons his jeans. He takes them off so he’s just in his underpants. He puts the cigarette out and leaps into the water, splashing me. He surfaces and swims over, tugging at my foot.
I feel my face heat. “I can’t swim.”
I watch the way his shoulders and arms move in the water. The sunlight dappling his skin. I look away because my face is getting hotter, and I might just jump in the water anyway to get to him and drown trying.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” His voice is gentle.
I watch the cattails, swaying.
“Do you trust me?” he asks with a slow smile.
My heart unfolds like a bud. “Yes.”
“Come on.” He swims away, his head nodding toward the shore on the other side of the cabin.
I make my way over and stand just where the water laps over the sand. He stands a few feet away, the water at hip level, smiling and beckoning. “Come on.”
I take my blue jeans off and wade in carefully. He reaches out a hand and I take it. He pulls me to him, and he smells like the lake, wild grasses, and sun-kissed skin. He puts an arm around my waist, his chest a cool damp against mine.
“I won’t let you go.” His eyes search my own. “I promise.”
It could almost be a vow.
I look down at the water lapping against our bellies. “I can’t see the bottom.”
“Here.” He kneels and gestures for me to do the same. “Lie back.” He opens a palm behind me. “Lie back against my hand.”
I hesitate.
“I won’t let you go.”
If this had been anyone else, I would have just gotten out of the water in disbelief, shaking my head. A big fat no. I had a swimming lesson once, at the municipal pool, and jumped into the deep end without realizing it. I never found the bottom and I panicked. The lifeguard pulled me to the surface and slapped my face, thinking I’d swallowed water. My mother was puzzled when I told her I never wanted to go back.
Water and I are not friends.
Not in that way.
But I forget all about disastrous swimming lessons and sink back against his arm. I feel his hand on the middle of my back and he coaxes me to lift one leg, then the other, his other arm slides under my knees.
