Deep End

MY VOICE RICOCHETS AGAINST THE TILED FLOORS. PEN AND Lukas look at me, equally taken aback.

I swallow and force myself to ask again, “Do you need anything, Pen?”

“Vandy? I didn’t know you were—” Her mouth curves in a puzzled tilt. Then the distrustful way I’m regarding Lukas must register, because her eyes widen, and her lips part. “Oh my god, I . . . oh, no. No, he wasn’t—we were just . . .” She lets out a breathy laugh, and turns to her boyfriend to share her amusement at the misunderstanding.

But Lukas’s gaze lingers on me. “Everything’s fine, Scarlett,” he says. I’m not exactly inclined to believe him, but he doesn’t sound defensive, or annoyed, or even angry at my obvious assumption that he’s a danger to Pen.

Also, he appears to know my first name. Even though I’ve been Vandy for the entire sports community since I was six. Fascinating.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” I say, unrepentant. Maybe I’m hypersensitive when it comes to situations like this one—okay, I’m a stack of hypersensitivities in a trench coat—but I have my reasons, and I’d rather make a fool of myself and err on the side of caution than . . . whatever the alternative is. “Just making sure that—”

“I know,” Lukas says quietly, that blue gaze still settled on mine. “Thank you for looking out for Pen.”

The soft praise in his tone has my mind shorting for a second. By the time I recover, he’s giving Pen’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and brushing past me. I follow the play of muscles on his broad back until he turns the corner, the baby hair drying at his nape, the black-inked outlines rippling on his left shoulder and twisting down his arm. It’s a full sleeve, but I can’t quite make it out. Trees, maybe?

“Shit,” Pen says.

I glance back. Find her wiping a hand down her face.

I definitely overstepped. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be nosy—”

“It’s not you, Vandy.” Her green eyes are shiny, a hairbreadth away from overflowing. I was fully willing to be Pen’s meat shield if it came to that, but pulling her back from crying? I doubt I can manage that.

“Do you . . . would you like me to call Victoria?” They’re both seniors, and she’s Pen’s closest friend on the team. Not much of a pool: the twins are very absorbed with each other, and I’ve barely been around. “Or I could ask Lukas to come back?”

“Call me for what?” Victoria appears—aviator sunglasses, inside. Purple smoothie. That dark, curly mullet that should be an aberration, spectacular on her. “I told you, I won’t be complicit in the assassination of any more spiders—what the . . . ?”

It all happens so fast. Pen’s tears bursting free. Victoria’s scandalized gasp. The voices of the water polo team, filling the hallway. Before I can excuse myself from whatever the hell is going on, the three of us are barreling into an equipment room.

The door firmly shuts under Victoria’s back. “What the hell happened?”

She alternates staring at Pen (with worry) and me (with . . . murder?), and I feel a sudden spark of compassion for Lukas. Maybe people shouldn’t go about indiscriminately glaring at others, after all.

“I was having a fight with Luk.” Pen wipes her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Aww, babe. About what?”

“I’ll give you guys some privacy,” I murmur, reaching for the doorknob.

Pen’s fingers close around my hand. “No, stay. I don’t want you to think that Luk could ever . . .” She takes a deep breath. I shift on my feet and think longingly of the locker room, the Epsom salt tub, a creepy porcelain doll factory—anywhere but the here and now. “He could never be violent, or mean. He’s the best person I’ve ever . . . We’ve just been in the process of—”

“Oh, god. Is this about the whole breakup thing?” Victoria asks. Significantly less gently.

Not my business. Not my business. Intensely not my business.

But Pen nods tearily.

“Listen.” Victoria sighs, like they’ve been over this. “Babe. Honey. I get it, you and Lukas have been together since you were, like, twelve—”

“Fifteen.”

“—and popped each other’s cherries and now you’re wondering, what would an uncircumcised dick be like?”

A sniffle. “Actually, in Sweden most people don’t—”

“TMI. The point is—what the fuck are you doing?”

I’ve always found Victoria’s bluntness delicious, but this seems a bit harsh. And Pen might agree, because the weeping fades into a scowl. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am. As someone who’s on your side and has been on the dating scene for the last two years, I’m telling you, you do not want to lose that man. There are lots of assholes out there, and Lukas is a smart, decent, hot guy who puts the toilet seat down and has yet to contract the French disease. That’s much rarer than you think.”

“But I’m not happy. And he’s not getting what he wants from this relationship, either.”

“Pen. Come on. If he told you he’s okay with not doing that stuff—”

“He’s settling. Just like I’m settling. If we stay together, we’ll get married, have a house in the suburbs and two point five bilingual kids I cannot understand, and will always wonder what we missed out on. I won’t know what being young and free feels like, and he’ll be bitter because he had to give up all that kinky shit, like spanking people and tying them up and ordering them what to do.”

I freeze. I should really not be here, but I can’t leave, because my feet weigh a million pounds, and every drop of blood in my body is flowing up to hang out on my cheeks.

“I get it.” Victoria is exasperated. “But you need to decide—”

A hard pounding at the door. We all jolt. “Hey? Is anyone in there?”

Victoria shouts, “Yeah, just a sec!”

“I left my gear bag in there, so if you guys could move your orgy to the showers . . .”

Victoria rolls her eyes but opens the door. We march past Gear Girl—Victoria, with a defiant expression; Pen, wiping residual tears; me, stubbornly refusing to make eye contact. The conversation may have resumed, but the twins are coming our way. “Where were you guys?” Bella asks. I panic, but Victoria makes up something about a missing shammy on the fly, because for her lying doesn’t require two to three business days of careful preparation, and we all go warm up, like a big happy family.

I’m still flushed. Aware of my pulse. Cogs turn in my skull. All I can think of is: Pen has always been so lovely to me.

After my third surgery, when Barb couldn’t take more than a week off without collapsing the field of medicine, Pen popped by to check on me every day. To make sure your evil roommate isn’t making belts out of your skin, she’d say with a wink, but she’s just a naturally caring person. And there was the time she sat down with me after my first dual meet, to remind me that a few splashy entries didn’t make me a bad diver, that sometimes we’re just too much in our heads, that she’d been there, too—that chaotic, overthinking feeling that makes the platform feel like a tightrope and turns your body into an unreliable narrator. That moment when your focus dissolves into panic, and the dive is irreparably fucked before it even begins.

It had meant so much to me, back in the fall of freshman year. Everything was new and raw and too big, but Penelope Ross, world and Pan Am medalist, NCAA champion, held my hand and told me that she felt like I did.

I think about it during Pilates, and dryland training, and while climbing up the infinite steps of the diving tower. I think about it as I stretch every muscle I possess, with special care for my tender, stupid shoulder, the one that all my doctors insist is healed, but in my nightmares shatters like a champagne flute at least twice a week.

By the time practice is over, I’ve made up my mind. And while the rest of the team chatters away in the locker room, I walk to her side, take a deep breath, and ask, “Could we go get coffee after this? Just you and I.”