Deep End

THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY SATURDAY MORNING PRACTICE IS Coach Sima’s applause after my back three-and-a-halfsomersault tuck, one of my most difficult dives.

“This might be the best goddamn dive I’ve seen in my collegiate coaching career,” he tells me from the deck while I’m still in the pool, wiping droplets from my eyes.

I smile up at him, a burst of the pride I haven’t let myself savor in months neutralizing the too-cold water.

“Which is nice,” Coach continues, “since you gotta make up for the line of zeros you’ll get for your inward dives.”

“Wow.” I elbow myself out of the water. “Can’t believe I fell for it.”

“Me neither, Vandy. Me neither.”

He scheduled individual corrections for today, which means that the twins arrive right as I’m leaving Avery. I wonder if Pen’s turn will be after theirs—and then get a single text from her.

PENELOPE: We need to talk.

The period at the end of the sentence does not sound affable. I must have done something terribly wrong, and it could only be one thing—which happens to be several inches over six feet and rhyme with Bukas Llomqvist. I stare at Pipsqueak’s pic on my screen saver and forbid myself to spiral.

Send me strength, Pip.

Pen is sitting on the green-despite-the-droughts grass outside the dining hall, eating a red apple. Her sunglasses make her unreadable, but the line of her mouth is somber.

“Hey.” I try for a smile and plop down next to her, canting my face toward the sun. “How are you—”

“Vandy.”

She won’t look at me, but her grip on the apple tightens. Her tone is . . . not promising.

“I’m not sure how to say this without sounding like a total asshole.”

Shit.

“I know it’s probably unfair of me, but I can’t move on until I say my piece.” She turns to me. “And you owe it to me to listen.” Lowers her sunglasses, stone-faced. “Because . . .” She shakes her head, and my heart is so heavy it’ll drag me underground, deep down to the center of the earth, where I’ll deservedly burn, because Pen, whom I’m starting to consider a dear friend, is . . .

Grinning?

“I told you so. I told you so. I told you so—I told you so. Who told you so? Me. Moi. Penelope Fucking Diana Fucking Ross, ladies and gentlemen and nonbinary friends, that’s who!” She breaks into the most uncoordinated dance I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing.

I’m going to kill her. “I hate you so much,” I hiss, high on relief.

“No, you don’t, you loooove me.”

“I just lost twelve years of my life!”

“It’s for the best. Climate change will ravage the earth, and the machine czars will subjugate us to harvest our toes. Anyway, not to repeat myself, but—I told you so.”

I groan and bury my face in my hands. “Did Lukas tell you?”

“Yup. He called me early this morning. Said, You got your drunken wish, Penelope, and guess how I replied?”

“‘I told you so,’ seventy-three times?”

“Precisely.”

I let a cautious smile stretch my lips. “Are you really okay with the idea of your ex having sex with your synchro partner?”

“Put like that, it does sound weird.” She giggles. “Can I be honest with you? Like fully, one hundred percent, ‘please don’t judge me’ honest?”

I nod. A new weight threatening to expand in my stomach, but Pen’s smile is serene.

“I was the one who initiated our breakup, and I’ve been worrying about him. It’s hard for him to date freely, but I hate the idea of him pining alone while I’m out there having fun. He’s a great guy. When no one else wanted anything to do with me, and I thought that my diving career was over, he stood by me. He’s loyal. Kind. He’s still my best friend. But I have to admit that he’s not exactly . . . passionate. It can be hard, for someone as cold as he is. But it sounds like you’re mostly interested in him for the sex, and the stuff you guys like”—her voice lowers—“it’s hard to romanticize being flogged, right?”

I blink. Did she just—

“I love that you two are gonna get to be all horny and pervy together. Congrats, my friend.”

Honestly, she’s right. I really like Lukas, and I definitely don’t perceive him as cold, but I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to catch feelings for him. Not beyond lust, anyway.

”Anyway,” she says, “while we’re on the matter of horny and pervy . . . as you know, I, too, have taken a lover.”

I wince. “Terrible phrasing.”

“Right? Since Luk is my best friend, you’re the only person I can tell about my sexual skylarking.”

I savor it, the quiet pleasure of someone wanting to confide in me. “And how’s that going?”

She lies back in the grass, and I follow. We stare at the sky for a minute, silent, until she rolls over on her elbows. The glare of the sun beats against my eyes, and I lift my hand like a visor.

“When Lukas and I first started having sex, we were young and had no idea what we were doing. There was a learning curve, you know? But with Theo—”

“Theo the Hot Teacher!”

“Yup. Theo the Hot Teacher.” She grins. “It just kind of fell into place. I really like that he’s a little more . . .” She sighs. “I really like him. Luk is so overwhelming sometimes. Even when he’s actively trying not to be. Sometimes he’ll just be sitting there doing readings for class and still manage to suck up all the air in the room, and I—I kind of get lost in it. I forget about myself. I forget to be my own planet and just start orbiting around him. And I think it feels right to him, to be this monolith of forbidding energy, but Theo is so much softer, and . . .” She bites her lower lip. “He calls me honey.”

“Oh. Is that a good thing?”

She shrugs, a little embarrassed. “It’s trite, I know, but Luk never calls me anything but Penelope.” She works in a slight Swedish accent. “He’s just not naturally affectionate. Theo the Hot Teacher is. And, I slept, as in, actually slept, at his place.”

“You didn’t sleep at Lukas’s?”

“Not really. Not if we could help it. We’re both fussy sleepers. With Theo it was nice, though.”

I nod. I’m happy for her. I’m happy that she got what she wanted. We stare at each other for a while, her elbow brushing my shoulder, the quiet of a Saturday afternoon on campus balmy against our skins. Laughter in the distance, birds, the rustling of trees.

And then something occurs to me.

I sit up. Almost choke on my saliva. “Your name is Penelope Diana Ross?”