Deep End

SOME STUDENT ATHLETES ARE ABLE TO HAVE HIGH GPAS, sport their little hearts out, and maintain fulfilling and exciting social calendars that yield solid lifelong friendships.

I am not one of them.

In high school, my catchphrase was “Sorry, I’m busy”—to the point that a bunch of people in Josh’s friend group gasped when I showed up for prom with him. I still remember the icy slither in my stomach when I overheard them from the bathroom stall, something giggled like Did she not have to throw herself from a cliff tonight?

I didn’t take it personally. Josh was outgoing and kind and had lots of buddies I never bothered to get to know. They probably thought I was just another athlete with a god complex, and maybe they weren’t wrong. At the time, I felt invincible, like all I had to do was put in the work, and I’d reap the rewards. I felt in control, tungsten coated, and the people making fun of my dedication to diving or studying or overachieving were never going to scratch my shell.

But that armor is long gone, stripped off by time, injury, and the painful realization that deserving and obtaining are two vastly different things. When I trail after Pen inside the Shapiros’ hallway, and Kyle’s eyes widen in shock, I feel a little tender.

“ScarVan?” he booms over the generic pop music. “Showing up for a party?” He sounds like a children’s librarian seeing Judy Blume show up unannounced: happy, but nonetheless baffled.

“Is that a thing people call me?” I murmur in Pen’s ear.

“People? No. Kyle? I was PenRo for half of sophomore year. Don’t let him see that you don’t like it, or it’ll stick forever and he’ll use it at your eulogy—at which, yes, he’ll manage to book a speaking engagement. He’s that good.”

I take that advice to heart and produce my most unbothered smile. “Hey, Kyle.”

“Look at you.” His eyes travel down my sweater and shorts. “Haven’t seen you in civilian clothes in years.”

“She was observing the period of mourning that is customary for her religion,” Pen says solemnly.

Kyle lifts a hand to his nape, taken aback. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Who did you, um, lose, if I may—”

“No, you may not,” Pen scolds.

He winces, steals an unopened can of Budweiser from a passing freshman, and presses it into my hand. “Here. Feel better, ScarVan.”

“Don’t laugh,” Pen mutters in my ear, pinching my hip. “Kyle, where’s Luk?”

“He and Hasan are talking about soccer—sorry, football—somewhere in the living room. It’s so European in there, I had to get out before my dick turned into a bidet.”

“See you later, KyJess.” Pen takes my hand and drags me deeper into the house. There must be thirty or forty people here, and while I’d probably be able to name only a fifth, most faces are familiar. “All the swimmers came,” she tells me with a smile, like it’s a good thing. And it is, I guess. They’re tight-knit. Hang out every preseason weekend. It’s nice, just . . .

“There’s Luk,” she adds, pulling me through the throng of too-hot bodies. He’s on the couch with Rachel and a few others, fingers closed around a dark glass bottle, wholly focused on what Hasan is saying. He laughs and shakes his head, gesturing as he explains something. The memory of his hand on me is so visceral, my heart explodes in my stomach.

“Restroom,” I tell Pen. “Be right back.”

I’m just not in the mood for this. And by this, I mean the way Lukas looks at me, like he can see the little crumpled-up piece of paper tucked in a corner of my head, the one where I wrote down my secrets. Like he could easily flatten it and read every last word.

He’s unnerving. And other things I’d rather not deal with.

I wander into the kitchen. Lots of swimmers smile and say hi, but I can tell that they either can’t fully place me, or they’re surprised to see me. I sip on my beer, trying to avoid creating fanfiction of people’s smallest facial expressions until I’m certain that they despise me. If only googling whether someone hates me were a possibility.

When was the last house party I went to? Maybe on my recruitment trip, when an upperclassman shoved a White Claw in my hands and left me terrified—half that someone would snitch to the coaches that I’d drunk it, half that they’d . . . still snitch to them, that I was too lame to drink.

Bree finds me a minute later, and I wish her a happy birthday, clumsily returning her hug. “I’m so happy you came,” she tells me. “Bella’s devastated that Victoria won’t.”

“I’m so happy to be here, too.”

It’s not true, but spending the next twenty minutes chatting with her helps. For the following fifteen it’s a swimmer who shadowed me in a chem class last year during his recruitment trip, but he’s clearly looking to hook up with another guy on the team, and when it becomes obvious that I’m in their way, I whip out another restroom excuse. Upstairs I find a small sunroom, and slump on an IKEA Poäng chair—the exact copy of the one Maryam and I assembled last year, during a macabre comedy of errors that nearly became a fatal, mutual murder. Can’t believe we managed to move past that one.

I check my phone, and boy it’s a mistake. Herr Karl-Heinz’s social life must be as active as mine, because four minutes ago he posted the results of our latest German test. I know better than to check, but I do just that and ruin what’s left of my day.

Because it’s a C. With a message.

Scarlett—may I call you Scharlach? Let me know if you’d like to talk about ways to improve your performance. I’d love to see you succeed, and there is no shame in asking for help. Viel Glück!

I cross my legs on Poäng and sink my face into my hands.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I didn’t need help.

I was a competent diver.

I had a boyfriend and good grades.

Once upon a time, I had shit under control. And then I must have pulled the wrong book from the JengAss tower, because everything is collapsing and—

“Not a good night?”

I don’t need to look up to know it’s Lukas, but I do it anyway, hating the flush that immediately hits my cheek. He fills the door-frame in a way I struggle to comprehend, ominous, backlit, the strong lines of his face destructively handsome. His muscular arms hold both jambs, and he’s once again barefoot, even though no such request was made of guests upon arrival.

“It’s good, I just . . .”

His eyebrow lifts, inquisitive, and I fall quiet. “Pen was looking for you,” he says.

“Oh? Does she—are we leaving?”

“Just checking in.” His lips curve a little. “She’s protective of you.”

She has been lovely, really. Taking me under her wing. I’m wondering why Lukas came to find me, but as usual he’s reading my mind.

“Just trying to escape being offered coke for the third time.”

“The doping officers would love that.”

“I considered doing a line, just to give them something to talk about.”

I laugh quietly. Some of the tension relaxes. “I was going to return downstairs in a minute. I just . . . I’m tired, I think.”

“MCAT’ll do that to you.”

How does he . . . ? “Did Pen tell you?”

“You did.”

“When—oh.” On Wednesday. The Day. The Day of the Touch. “It’s so barbaric.”

“Yup.”

“I feel like I could sleep for a hundred hours.”

“Hyperbole?”

I snort. “Not this time.”

“I figured. You think you did well?”

“I think I’d rather carve out my liver like Prometheus than retake it, so I better have. But I doubt it. And then I got a C on my German test,” I add, even though I shouldn’t—because he didn’t ask. I try to sound self-deprecating, like I don’t care too much about my recently developed inability to . . . to function.

Of course, he reads right through it. “Lots of med schools don’t have foreign language requirements, Scarlett.”

So unnervingly compelling, the way my name is distorted through his accent, inside his mouth. “It looks good, though.”

“So does a near-perfect GPA.”

“I don’t have—”

“Yes, you do.”

I pinch my lips. “How do you even—”

“I don’t. But you’re not the type to leave that to chance.”

I nod, wishing he left—or came all the way in. It’s confounding, the way he’s just on the edge. He is confounding. “Why did you do that? On Wednesday.” As far as questions go, this is the Budweiser’s more than mine. But once it floats between us, I realize how much I need to know. If he pretends not to understand what I mean, I will scream. Something wild and vicious will come out of my throat, and it’ll have every single person in this house stop by the knife block and then stampede upstairs. It will be so liberating.

Lukas, though, doesn’t give me the satisfaction. “Because you seemed . . . touch starved.”

I blink at him once. Maybe twice.

“And lonely.”

He pushes away from the frame, finally inside. My brain hums, then blanks.

“A little hungry, too.” He’s not talking about food.

“You—” I shake my head. Where is his filter? Was he born without one? How did Pen ever get used to this? “You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t. But no one else here does, either, which proves my point.” He stops a few feet from me, and the room shrinks to half its original size.

I’m at a bit of a bifurcation. I could play the outraged, derisive, Who the fuck do you think you are? card, and it would be wholly within my rights. As tired as I am, though, I just want to understand him. “The way you’re acting with me. What you did on Wednesday. Is it some kind of game? I can’t figure out if you’re hitting on me, or just . . . Is it because I didn’t take you up on your offer when you emailed? Are you trying to convince me that I made a mistake?”

“I have no interest in that.” I must look skeptical, because he continues. “What I want from you requires enthusiastic consent, not convincing.”

I rub my thumb against my eyes, trying to untangle this mess. “Are you trying to use me to get back at Pen for breaking up with you?”

He seems amused. “It would be a very ineffective way to go about it, since she’s the one who first suggested we do this.”

“Is it an ego thing, then? Am I the first person to ever reject you? I know that with all the medals, and the way you look . . . but the thing is, not every girl is attracted to you—”

“You are, though.”

This time, an affronted gasp makes its way out of me.

“Come on.” His smile is faint. “You’re always flushing or fidgeting. You either do your best to not look at me, or you stare.”

“I’m just a generally awkward person who—”

“You are. You’re also uncomfortable with men. This, though, is different. It doesn’t take a stratospheric ego to figure it out, not when your face is . . . You’re not good at hiding anything, Scarlett. I could tell when you didn’t know I existed, and I could tell when you became aware of me.”

My stomach sinks, and I want to deny it so, so bad, my throat itches. Instead I bury my face in my hands and pretend that this, the last two weeks, the last two years, didn’t happen. I’m going to fall asleep here, cradled within Poäng’s loving embrace, and wake up as a freshman, on the day of the NCAA finals.

A redo. I won’t mess up that inward, get those unmanageable curtain bangs, or ever acknowledge the existence of Lukas Blomqvist.

Who’s currently taking my wrists and pulling my hands down. He kneels in front of me, still managing to be imposing. I’m not a thin-boned, birdlike creature, but his hands swallow my entire forearms, and liquid heat crawls up my spine. It gets worse when he transfers his hold to the right, and the knuckle of his free index finger slides to tilt up my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes.

I expect triumph, maybe some gloating. Not a genuinely puzzled, “Why are you embarrassed about this?”

I groan. “Maybe I just don’t want to shovel more fuel into some guy’s already overactive hubris furnace?”

“That’s not it.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s just never happened to me.”

“What has never happened?”

I swallow. This whole conversation is so . . . baring. “I’ve just never been attracted to someone that nearly everyone else in the universe seems to be attracted to.”

“You think I care whether people are attracted to me?” He sounds almost offended at the idea. But . . .

“Yes?”

“Why would I?”

“I . . . because?”

“No, seriously.” His accent seems to be a little thicker. “Why would I care about everyone in the universe being attracted to me? What would I get from that?”

“The certainty that the sack of skin and meat you’re saddled with as you walk god’s green earth is pleasing to them, and that they will . . . I don’t know, have sex with you, if you want?”

His palm shifts upward, gripping the side of my face, the hinge of my jaw. His thumb rests right below my lower lip.

“Come on, Scarlett.” His mouth twitches. “You know who I want to have sex with.”

His low voice makes my entire body spark, and brooks no misunderstanding.

“Look at you.” His expression softens to something almost tender. “Is it so hard to believe that I saw you, and thought that you needed touching?”

I cannot breathe. “How?”

“I have no idea. But I saw you, and you made sense to me. And the more I looked, the more I knew how hard you work. How it paid off until it didn’t. How little you like chaos. You want to maintain control in every aspect of your life, and yet you are unraveling. And that was before I knew that you’re kinky as shit.”

The pad of his thumb presses against my bottom lip, a shock of heat to my system. I inhale, sandalwood and chlorine and beer flooding my lungs and my brain.

“You know what fucks with my head?” It must be a rhetorical question, because he continues: “You’re at ease with me. I don’t think you realize it, but you tend to move closer when others are around. Sometimes you look to me, for reassurance maybe. And we’re alone right now and there are no signs of distress, and—at some point you chose to trust me, and you get why that gets me going so hard, right?” His voice is a slow roll that starts in his chest, travels through our limbs, ends in the red of my cheeks, the spill between my legs.

For people like me, like him—like us—trust is the real currency. I nod, hazy.

“Thank fuck,” he exhales, and my lips part against his thumb without meaning to.

It gives him an idea, or maybe it was his plan all along. His finger slips inside, hooks just behind my teeth, hot and big and salty over the flat of my tongue. I let out a choked gasp and feel it inside me, electric, syrupy. Lukas could do whatever he wants to me, and I’d welcome it. Push the pad of his thumb deeper inside my mouth. Stand, undo his belt and his pants, grab the back of my head and—

He pulls back, and it’s like the first dive of every morning practice—freezing water slapping against my skin, jerking me awake. He stands and walks away, leaning against the doorframe. His arms fold on his chest, casual, unaffected. I was, maybe still am, ready to do pretty unspeakable things for him. In an open room. With thirty to forty people downstairs. If only he were to ask.

The shame eats at the arousal in my belly.

I guess I’m that desperate. I guess I could walk myself into interstate traffic.

“Okay.” Lukas’s voice snaps me out of my self-flagellating party. He looks authoritative. Making decisions. Laying out timelines. “We have to . . . this is what we’re going to do. You have two options. Say nothing, and I won’t ever bring up anything like this again. You and I meet at Avery, we work together on Olive’s project, whatever you want. But this conversation and the ones before never happened. Pen never got drunk, never told me about you. I never noticed you. I never touched you.”

Anything like this, he said. This. So vague. I understand exactly what he’s talking about. “The alternative?” I ask, surprised at how firm my voice is.

“Say the word, and . . .” His jaw tightens. I marvel at the play of lights on the hollow of his cheekbones. “We’re going to find a time and place to meet.” It’s a subtle shift, but his fist tightens under the elbow, knuckles bleeding white. It’s a sign, a promise. Goose bumps chill my skin. “And we’re going to negotiate.”

He gives me all the time I need to reply, and then some. He slouches, lazy, composed, and I’m struck by how much I want to say something, by how difficult it is. I can’t think clearly around the pounding of my heart. Around the odd mix of fear of making a mistake, fear of not making a mistake, and just pure fear lodged behind my sternum.

He gives me all the time I need, and when I stare in helpless silence, he’s true to his word. There is a moment of twitching tension, but it fades immediately. His smile is warm. “I’ll see you around, Scarlett.” Then he’s gone, padding away barefoot, as confident as when he arrived.

I, however, am a coward.

I beat myself up about it for five minutes, and it takes me ten more to collect myself enough to return downstairs. The lights have dimmed, and the party has gathered in the living room, around a sheet cake decorated with too many lit candles.

“. . . the thought process behind it?” someone is asking.

“I dunno—since Bree’s turning twenty-two, and Bella’s turning twenty-two—”

“You put forty-four candles on their cake?”

“That’s just not how it goddamn works, Devin.”

Kyle pats Devin on the back. “C’mon, Dale, let the kid show off his math.”

“Is it time to cut into that amazing cake yet?” a girl next to me yells. There aren’t enough seats for everybody, and Pen is perched on one of Lukas’s legs, leaning forward as she chats with Rachel. Behind, Lukas is once again talking with Hasan. It’s like he never left.

Stupid, I tell myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“There’s actually a surprise we’ve been working on for a while.” Devin clears out some space at the center of the room and looks at Kyle, whose phone is at the ready. “We have a choreography for you,” Dale declares.

The room fills—cheers, groans, whistles, claps. Bree shoots to her feet, almost flipping the cake over. “Oh my god, is it BTS?”

More excited screams.

“Can’t wait for when Coach asks me how they pulled a quad and are out for the season,” Lukas says.

“Just don’t drag BTS into this,” Hasan suggests. “Say they were giving a lap dance.”

“Shut up, you losers,” Pen commands. “This is gonna be the best!”

“Thank you, Pen.” Dale salutes her. “For your support, and for helping us refine this over countless sessions. You’re a true friend, unlike your boyfriend and his boyfriend.”

“You guys, it was my pleasure.”

Lukas and Hasan exchange amused headshakes, and—

I’m always on the sidelines, always detached from what’s happening around me. I never mind. But tonight, watching Lukas laugh with others, something greedy opens up in my stomach.

A little hungry, too, he said upstairs. But I think it’s more than a little.

I think I might be ravenous.

The music starts, and so do some questionable body rolls. Laughter. Nearly everyone takes their phones out, and I do the same. Except, I’m not filming. I’m not even watching. Instead I pull up an old email, type three words, and hit reply.

When and where?

Devin and Dale gyrate their hips. Lukas’s phone lights up on the coffee table. I see him glance at it once, distractedly. Then again when the message registers.

He doesn’t even have to search the crowd. His eyes lift up to meet mine, and when he nods, I finally manage a true, genuine smile.