Deep End

OUR FIRST DUAL MEET OF THE SEASON IS AT HOME, AGAINST UT Austin.

It’s a huge relief: traveling is fun in theory but exhausting in practice, and usually requires us to skip classes. I’m “too much of type A dictator freak” (Maryam’s words; probably the truth) to rely on other people’s notes, and “too much of an antisocial turd monkey” (also Maryam’s words; certainly the truth) to have made reliable friends within my major, which makes every absence a huge hassle.

In preparation for the meet, practice has been ramping up, and I’m pleased with how much my body has recuperated and its ability to produce clean dives and controlled entries. Still, it’s hard to be optimistic when I know that an inward dive will be required, and that my failures will reflect on Pen during synchro.

“Did you discuss it with her directly?” Barb asks me when we FaceTime.

“Yeah. Well, kind of.” Pen has been nothing but great, and I feel even more guilty for dragging her down like a giant anvil wrapped around her neck.

It’s just preseason, Vandy.

Dual meets don’t mean that much.

The last thing I want is for you to feel like you’re disappointing me.

“I had this idea,” I tell Barb. “You know how people who suffer from insomnia are told not to toss and turn, and instead to get out of bed? To avoid forming negative associations with it?”

“I did not know that.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“Must not have come up in my orthopedic surgery residency.”

“Well, I’ve decided to stop trying to force my inward dives for a few days. Avoid negative associations with the platform. Might help, like a factory reset?”

“What does your therapist say about this?”

“She’s not against it.” Because she doesn’t know. In fact, I had to cancel our session because of a lab this week, and never bothered rescheduling.

I’m doing to my therapist what Lukas is doing to me. I’m just not sure Sam and I are going anywhere.

“I’ve always hated this preseason malaise,” Pen says on Tuesday night in the dining hall. “The constant reminder that we’re about to start something. Like a pimple that’s ripe but cannot be popped yet.”

“What delightful imagery.” Victoria drops her fork into her mashed potatoes.

“What I’m saying is, I’m ready to squeeze that white goo out of my body, and I’m glad UT’s coming.”

“I beg you. Less pimple-popping philosophy and higher hurdles, okay?”

Pen’s right, though. Exhaustion and anticipation are in the air. Everybody’s training harder, and Avery is full of wincing steps, athletes guzzling post-workout coconut water, overworked PTs. I’m not immune: my shoulder is holding up, but my back seems to be in a May-December relationship with the rest of my body. Cold baths help, but they’re hell in liquid form, and I can only stomach them if they’re followed by hot ones. Bree and I usually take them together, but the more strenuous training gets, the more I find myself lingering afterward. “I’m pruning,” she tells me on Wednesday morning, stepping out of the Epsom salt tub. “You’re really staying longer? Are you sure you’re not going to . . . deliquesce?”

I laugh. “How’s that chemistry class going?”

“Like shit. Did I use that word right?”

“Almost.”

She sticks her tongue out, and I’m left alone in the recovery room.

The tub is a medium-sized, rectangular sunken pool. I turn, leaning my elbows on the deck and leaving the lower two-thirds of my body submerged. I put on my AirPods and spend about ten minutes looking through the PowerPoint for my psych lecture. Once I’m done, I turn off the music, roll around, and nearly drop my phone in the water.

“Vandy!” Kyle’s loud voice freezes my blood. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Oh.” I glance around. The landscape of the tub has changed. Vastly. It’s me, Kyle, Hunter, and four more male swimmers. Jared, one of them, was in my freshman math class. He waves at me. I try to wave back, but I’m overwhelmed.

It’s a lot of men. And me.

“What’s up?”

Breathe. Breathe. “Not much.”

“We’ve been calling you,” another swimmer says. I’m certain I’ve never talked to him in my life.

“I d-didn’t hear you.” I point at my earbuds.

“Makes sense. We thought you were ignoring us.”

“Yeah, like—what did we do to piss Vandy off?”

Their laughter echoes off the walls. It’s just—there’s six of them, and they take up a lot of space, and they’re between me and the ladder, and I’m . . .

Low-key terrified.

“I’m sorry.” I try for a smile, but my cheeks won’t behave. Calm down. “I better go . . .”

“Nah, stay,” Kyle says.

“Some company would be nice,” Jared adds. “Kinda bored of these losers.”

“Asshole, who did you call a loser?”

“Shut up—Vandy, stay in my mojo dojo Epsom tub.”

In the steaming heat, I shiver. “That’s lovely, but I have class.”

“What class?”

Shit. What class? “It’s—” No class. Think. “Psych.”

“Wait.” One of the guys scowls. “Is there a psych class on Wednesday afternoons? My adviser told me that—”

“Come on,” a deep voice says from behind me.

Two strong hands slide under my armpits. I clutch my phone, and for a second I’m suspended in the air, a toddler in floaties plucked out of a pool. My feet touch the floor, but I don’t turn around to see who my rescuer is.

It’s not a touch I could ever forget.

“Sweedy.” Hunter frowns. “Did you just, like, steal her from us?”

“You okay?” Lukas asks me. When I nod, he adds, louder, “We have to go. We’re working on something.”

“Ah, yeah.” Kyle nods wisely. “That physics project.”

“Bio,” Lukas corrects.

“Same difference!”

Next thing I know Lukas is ordering his teammates to behave and pushing me out of the room, his hand hot on my lower back, not too far from where the bruises have started to fade, no matter my—deranged?—attempts at keeping them alive. In the hallway, his fingers close around my shoulder. He turns me around. “You okay?” he asks again.

I’m really, really relieved to not be in the tub anymore. So much so, I don’t care if it’s a bit awkward, seeing him after nearly two weeks, wearing joggers and nothing else, smelling like soap and him. He looks at once like Lukas Blomqvist, Pen’s ex, the Greatest Swimmer in the World or Whatever, and like my Lukas, who printed out a checklist and peels apples and hates rhetorical figures, and it’s all . . . confusing.

I shush the odd pang in my chest. “Thank you. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed there.” Not that Kyle & Co. would have done anything. But my gut isn’t always aware.

“I’m going to talk to Kyle,” Lukas says. His mouth is a straight, displeased line.

“What?”

“He needs to give you space.”

“There’s no need—”

“I won’t tell him why. He’s not a bad guy, but he has no idea how he comes across. He, Hunter, and a few of the others move in a pack. It’ll be good for him to know.”

I want to tell him not to bother, but—why not? It’ll be a ten-second conversation between them. Saves future unpleasantness. “Okay. Thank you.” I give Lukas one last smile and turn around to leave.

He stops me with a hand around my wrist. “Where are you going?”

“Oh.” I squeeze out one more smile, and that’s it. I’m all out for the day. “I appreciate your help, but I’d rather not make this weird.”

His eyes close, like he’s gathering the strength of a dozen Valkyries. He slowly exhales from his nostrils and says, “Scarlett.”

“It’s fine. I’m not—”

“Scarlett,” he repeats. It’s a harsh, frustrated command. I’m lost as to what he might want from me.

“Lukas, I’m not sure what the protocol is.” I’m unable and, frankly, unwilling, to be anything but honest. “We had sex, or—or whatever, and you didn’t call me back. I’m trying to take my cues from you, and I think you want to pretend it never happened?” I shrug one shoulder, the one not attached to the arm he’s still holding. “This is baby’s first ghosting, I’m going to need some direction,” I add, just to lighten the mood.

Lukas’s mood, though, is nothing but dark. The more I speak, the angrier he looks. Always unfazed, Pen said. She was wrong, but I can’t pinpoint the object of this rage.

Unless there was a breakdown in communication? I hate the hopeful little spark that lights up my chest. “Is that an inaccurate read of what happened between us?”

“No.” He finally lets go of me. “It isn’t.” That impatience, though, is still there. The set of his shoulders, the lines in his brow.

“Is there a good reason you didn’t contact me?”

He looks away, jaw clenching. Then back to me. “No.”

Irritation pops through me. “Then I—”

“Lukas!” a man calls. He’s walking toward us, at once familiar and unknown. His eyes settle on me, inquisitive, and when I notice the unique blue of his eyes, something clicks in my brain.

“Jan, right?” I ask. “Lukas’s brother?”

I immediately regret it. Is it pathetic that I recognized him after one single photo? Does Lukas think that I’ve been sequestered in my room, drawing his genealogical tree, making collages out of used Q-tips pilfered from his trash can?

Hard to beat myself up about it with Jan grinning at me. “I am flattered.” He throws an arm around his brother’s shoulders, delighted. He has the body of a retired athlete—big frame softened by time and real life. There may be over a decade between them, but with Lukas having put off shaving for a while and Jan’s full beard, they look like they could be twins. “Does he talk about me all the time? Scrapbook about our imaginary lives together?”

“I only ever saw one picture, but it was prominently displayed on his lab bench.”

“I knew it.”

“It’s not a giant picture of your ugly face,” Lukas says flatly. The tension of whatever was happening between us has relaxed. “This is Scarlett, Jan. Do leave her alone.”

“Swimmer?”

“Almost,” I reply. I don’t feel intimidated by Jan, probably because of his similarity to Lukas. “Diver.”

“Wow. Those things you guys jump off of, they terrify me.”

“Me, too.” I keep my laughter as non-bitter as possible. “Were you a swimmer?”

“Almost.” He winks at me. “I came to the US on a water polo scholarship, back when you weren’t even born.”

“Jan, she’s twenty-one.”

“Or conceived.”

“Jan.”

“Not even an idea in god’s beautiful mind.”

A deep sigh. “Scarlett, you do not have to listen to this.”

“Of course she does. Hey”—Jan turns to me—“did he mention that I taught him everything he knows about swimming?”

“He taught me to play dead in the pool to scare the lifeguard.”

“And it was hilarious. Scarlett, do you hike?”

I blink at the abrupt change of topic. “Yeah?”

“Have you ever hiked around this area?”

“Oh, yes. Several times. I’m happy to give you some recs, if—”

“Nah, we know where we’re going. Would love for you to come with us, though.”

Oh. Oh. “Thank you, that’s really lovely, but . . .” Does he think I’m Lukas’s girlfriend?

“But?”

Say that you have class. A date. Say something about being allergic to the sun. But when I sneak a glance at Lukas and find him staring, all I feel is a frisson of annoyance that he’s not the one put in the unpleasant position of lying to his kind brother, and what comes out of my mouth is “I doubt Lukas wants me to go with you guys.” It’s, at least, the truth.

Which is why I’m taken aback by the deep laughter that pops out of Jan. “I’m no mind reader, but I know my brother, and he very much wants you to come. And even if he didn’t . . .” His smile is a bottomless pool of charm. “I want you to come. That’s what matters.”