Deep End

STANFORD HAS A DEDICATED ATHLETIC DINING HALL, BUT there’s enough of us that it barely matters. We’re right in the middle of dinner rush, which means crowds and loud noises. Lukas, a head and some change taller than most, spots a free table, tells me to hang on to him, and leads us there, our plates and drinks stuffed on his tray.

I look down at my fingers, how they fist the fabric at the hem of his hoodie for dear life. It’s like we’re friends. Like I have the right to orbit around him. I briefly disassociate and picture myself narrating this moment to the swimming coaches at my old club. Then Lukas Blomqvist ordered stir-fry with rice, thanked the lady who gave him extra, and when the crowds parted for him like the waters of the Red Sea during the exodus—

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod, taking a seat across from him and grabbing my plate. I’m a voracious eater—the alternative is not sustainable under my training regimen—but I find myself blinking at the mountain of food on his plate, then glancing away. I bet journalists ask him about his diet all the time. It must be annoying, people’s curiosity about the honing and maintaining of his speed machine of a body. Intrusive at best, objectifying at worst.

“You don’t look okay,” he points out.

I force myself to spear a few penne. “What were you saying about the cell line?”

We talk about the project for twenty minutes. He’s very passionate about it, and it’s clear that it’s been a labor of love for him—but it’s just as clear that he’s stuck, and that building algorithms is not his forte.

“It’s because you’re using a recurrent network,” I tell him.

“There is a sequential element—”

“But it’s spatial data.”

He leans back, drumming his fingers on the table. “What would you do, then?”

“Convolutional neural network, for sure. It’ll be a million times better.”

“A million.”

“I—many times better. It’s feedforward. And the filter and pooling layers would . . .” His knit eyebrows tell me he’s not following. “Hang on.” I fish into my belt bag for something to write with, then look around for a flyer or a scrap of paper. Find none. I consider using the back of my hand.

Lukas’s, though, is so much larger.

“Here.” I reach across the table and grab his wrist. “You have your input, right?” I start drawing under his thumb and follow with the rest of the model. “You move to your first layer, the convolutional one, that picks up spatial features. Then pooling. Then there’s another—”

Booming voices, the rasp of scraping chairs, and I instinctively pull back. When I look up, three people have joined our table, and Kyle Jessup is sitting next to me.

“Luk, you piece of elk shit.” He steals one of my grapes from Lukas’s tray. “You left for your thing. I had to deal with Coach Urso and the lane-separator saga.”

“He told me smooth separators were a go.”

“He told you. Second you disappeared, went back on it.”

Lukas massages the bridge of his nose. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“While you’re at it, mention the touch pad issue . . .” He cuts off and turns to the swimmer who sat next to Lukas, Hunter something or other. He’s coughing so loud, people around us are staring. “The fuck is wrong with you, H?”

“I drank a gallon of water during that bucket set. My tummy and my nuts hurt.”

Lukas pats him forcefully on the back. “An elite athlete.” It’s directed at me, a hint of complicity in his eyes, like I’m a friend he shares jokes with. It has the unfortunate side effect of making the others notice me.

The shift of attention is a physical, tangible thing. “Who do we have here?” Kyle asks. “I thought you were Pen.”

It’s not inconceivable. She and I have similar builds—platform divers, like us, tend to be on the taller, leaner side. We both have long hair. That’s about it, though.

I sip on my water to temporize. Over the rim, I say, “Surprise.”

“Little Scarlett Vandermeer. Long time no see.”

I make myself smile. Kyle is loud, but has never been anything but nice. “Hello.”

“How are you, Vandy? I missed those dimples.”

Don’t stiffen. “And I missed that . . .” I search his Midwest-wholesome face for something of note. “Nose?”

Hunter convulses into laughter. “Your fucking nose.” He claps at me and nearly rolls off his chair, like I’m the jester that keeps on giving.

God, they’re loud. It’s all I can do not to jolt.

“She meant that my nose is beautiful, you moron.” Kyle laughs, too, but kicks Hunter under the table.

“Dude, maybe that’s why you’re so slow in the water. Your nose drags.”

“I’m faster than you.”

“Not this morning you weren’t.”

“I’ve been injured—”

“Hey.” Lukas cuts through the squabble. “Could you sad sacks go eat elsewhere?” It’s phrased as a request, but he’s not asking.

They begin to stand, even as Kyle mutters, “Why?”

“Scarlett and I have stuff to talk about.”

“And we can’t be here?”

“Nope.”

Kyle faux pouts. “This really hurts my feelings, bro.”

“I’ll kiss it better later, bro.”

“Cannot wait, b—”

“What do you guys have to talk about?” a female voice asks. I look up, and—Rachel, I believe. The third swimmer. She was sitting on the other side of Kyle, that’s why I didn’t notice her. I vaguely remember her from my recruiting trip. Backstroke. Long distance. Used to have long, blond hair, now cut pixie-style.

I think she’s friendly with Pen. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Biology,” Lukas replies.

“You’re doing a project together or something?”

“Or something.”

“Huh.” Her eyes slide to the back of his hand. The model I drew. “And where is Pen?”

Her tone is . . . not quite insinuating, but it has my cheeks burning, and I pause mid-sip and open my mouth to explain myself. But before I can blurt out something socially destroying (It’s not what it looks like and even if it were they broke up and it was Pen’s idea and also I didn’t ask to be born just leave me alone okay), Lukas shrugs. “No idea.”

Rachel wants to press it, but Kyle swings an arm over her shoulders. “Come on, we’ve been dismissed. See you at home, Sweedy.” He leads her away. Hunter points silently at his nose, gives me an overenthusiastic thumbs-up, blows a kiss to Lukas, and goes on their heels.

I swallow a sigh of relief. Grip my fork. “So, you and Kyle live together?” I ask into my food. When Lukas doesn’t reply, I glance up.

He sits back, his plate forgotten, studying me. The quiet weight of his gaze is familiar. So is the curve that sets in his mouth: he’s observing something; coming to conclusions. My belly feels tight and warm. “I thought it was just me,” he says. “But it’s men in general, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“We make you nervous.”

My fork hits my plate with a clink, swallowed by the background chatter. “How did you . . . ?”

“Earlier, in the hallway, you kept putting barriers between you and Zach—me, mostly. Then your face, with Kyle and Hunter. It’s not hard to guess, if one cares enough to pay attention.”

My heart beats in my throat. And do you? Care? It’s a fair question. He and I have had so few interactions, all of them products of force majeure—malfunctioning doors, academic coincidences, Penelope Ross. What the hell are we even doing here? seems like something we should ask each other. Instead, to my horror, I say, “I had some issues with my dad, growing up. I’m not—it wasn’t that bad, but . . .” I suck in a deep breath. Silence the voice in my head that cringes and yells, Stop. Unloading. On Lukas. Blomqvist. “I just don’t like loud noises. And too-crowded spaces. And . . .”

It’s not that women can’t be noisy, but boys feel so unpredictable, with their deep voices and abrupt movements and boisterous attitudes. Male athletes, on top of that, tend to take up so much space. I know it’s unfair of me, but my issues are not rational. My high school therapist kept using words like trauma response and PTSD, words that feel too big, like I don’t have a right to them. They belong to war reporters and ER doctors, not girls with shitty dads who bossed them around and told them they’d never amount to anything.

In the end, the therapist said, the measure of whether you’re doing well is: Is your condition preventing you from living a fulfilling life? And I know the answer to that.

“I function fine,” I say, chin tilted up, a hint of challenge.

It’s unnecessary. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Okay. Good.”

He resumes eating, quick but meticulous, but his eyes stay on me.

“I know it seems . . .” I start. Do I wanna go there?

“Seems what?”

“Like someone who’s into what I’m into, shouldn’t be all . . . fearful.” It never ceased to puzzle Josh. You have issues with authoritarian, aggressive men in everyday life, but you want to have authoritarian, aggressive sex? He never judged me, but he did not get it.

Lukas finishes chewing, wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Actually, I still don’t know what you’re into,” he points out.

My belly swoops.

“Aside from your doctor fetish, that is.”

I turn away to hide my smile.

“Regardless, no. I don’t think it makes sense to conflate everyday violence with the kind of stuff you—we—are into. In fact, I don’t think the two things are related at all.” His gaze is steady. “What you and I want, it’s all about trust. We decide to be part of it. It sounds like whatever happened to you had little to do with you making any decisions, right?”

Right. That thick warmth flares up again, this time in the hollow of my chest. You get it. Thank you for getting it. And: “Thank you for asking your friends to leave so that I wouldn’t be uncomfortable.”

He nods. Doesn’t pretend that it isn’t exactly what he did. “Thank you for getting Mrs. Sima off my back at the barbecue so that I wouldn’t have to talk about my mother.”

All about trust, he said. I won’t betray his by asking why he doesn’t want to do that. “First exit diversion is on me, but the next will cost you.”

I hear his amused exhale, and let a comfortable silence wrap around us for the rest of the meal.