Deep End

UNKNOWN: I see you’ve been following my advice.

I stare at the text, trying to recall the Beware of scams and phishing email Stanford sends every quarter.

UNKNOWN: It’s Mei, by the way.

I laugh. Save her contact.

SCARLETT: I have. Thank you so much.

I chew on my lower lip before adding: Is it okay if I send you a couple of TiVos? I’m not super happy with my armstand.

MEI: I thought you’d never ask.

The men’s swimming and diving NCAA championship is separate from the women’s portion, because . . . I have no idea. But I’m glad that in two weeks the men will fly to Atlanta, and in three weeks the women . . . won’t.

For the first time, the women’s tournament will be at Avery.

“The luxury of it.” Pen sighs. “No new pools. No jet lag.”

“No having to put on compression socks for a flight.”

She studies me, narrow eyed. “You use compression socks?”

“You don’t?”

“How old are you?”

“Shut up.”

She shakes her head. “At least I know what to get you for your next birthday.”

The lead-up to the NCAA hits different—electric, a center of gravity, ready to gather the crackle of energy accumulated during the season. Divers don’t normally take breaks before big meets, and aside from reducing strength training, our routine doesn’t change. The twins, though, didn’t make the cut for any NCAA event, which means that their season is over, and their presence at practice is optional. It’s just Pen and I, and while the number of times we get our bodies wet is well into the triple digits, our tattoos persevere. At least two journalists have commented upon them. In written pieces. That can be read on the internet. By any individual.

I quietly pray that med schools are too busy to google prospective students.

There are so many parties, I lose count. Over thirty swimmers have qualified for the NCAA championship, and they’re all in taper.

“A tapering swimmer’s a dangerous thing,” Pen tells me when she comes over to get some help for her programming class. She has been feeling much better—because of our wins, and because time does heal all wounds. This morning, when Theo texted her to congratulate her, she rolled her eyes and blocked his number.

“How so?”

“So much time and energy on their hands, all of a sudden. Lukas goes nuts. He’ll pace. Gaze longingly at the pool. Wash his hands a lot. Wake up earlier and earlier. You know, the perfectly normal acts of a totally non-deranged person.” She shrugs. “Anyway, I gotta go. There’s a party tonight. This rower I like will be there.”

After she leaves, I manage to hold off for about half an hour. I’m texting Lukas to check on him, I tell myself. Because of what Pen said. Because he checked on me over and over when I needed him. Plus, Pen seems to be over the idea of getting back with him.

More simply: we’ve both been competing out of town for the past two weeks, and I miss him.

SCARLETT: Are you tapering?

LUKAS: And I hate it.

His reply is instant—so odd, for someone who barely checks his phone when we’re together. Maybe he’s bored. Clawing at the walls. Eager for distractions.

I can’t picture it. I run my finger over his photo—Netherlands. Sunglasses interrupting freckles. That indulgent lift at the corner of his mouth.

SCARLETT: Pearls to swine

LUKAS: No idea what that means. Not flattered, though.

I feel almost drunk. Remarkable, the energy that sparks from two texts after such a long stretch of nothing. Tech bros should harness it for their cryptocurrency-mining endeavors.

SCARLETT: Want company?

LUKAS: Not particularly.

LUKAS: Would love to see you, though.

The power requirements of the world’s water desalination plants are met.

SCARLETT: Where?

LUKAS: Maples.

I think of Maples as the basketball stadium, but an informal volleyball game is going on. Both teams are mixed, three men and three women, with no referee. A handful of spectators scatter on the bleachers. Lukas sits next to Johan, talking with a tall, blond girl in a Stanford volleyball jersey.

Johan notices me first, and waves. The others turn, too—the girl with a curious expression, and Lukas . . .

Lukas.

I stop right next to him, trying not to stare like he’s a piece of avant-garde performance art. “Practice game?”

“More for fun, really.” The girl’s accent is as faint as Lukas’s.

“Scarlett,” he says, “this is Dora.”

We shake hands. She smiles. “You’re the diver, right? Premed?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Oh.” I dip my hands in the back pockets of my shorts. “Same,” I say, just to be polite.

Both she and Johan laugh. “That’s nice of you,” she says, “but I doubt Lukas talks about me that much.”

“Dora, maybe Lukas was secretly in love with you all along,” Johan offers, which has her laughing even harder, and Lukas giving an amused reply in Swedish, a short back-and-forth. By the time Dora returns to the bench area, I’m wondering if I’ve been summoned here to be the butt of a joke I can’t even understand.

“Hi,” Lukas says, moving his water bottle to make room for me.

“Hey.” I take a seat, leaving a few inches between us. His arm, though, snakes behind my back, loops around my waist, and pulls my flank flush against his. Then he lets go.

“You seem—” I break off. Clear my throat. “Less inconsolable than I was led to believe.”

“Inconsolable?”

“Pen mentioned that tapering messes with you.”

He gives me an odd look. “How so?”

“Increasingly intense handwashing. Lots of early mornings.”

“I wash my hands a lot to avoid getting sick—standard guidelines before big meets. And I wake up early because the championship will be on the East Coast.”

“Oh. What about the rumored yearning glances at the pool?”

“I don’t know. Were you in it?”

Blood sweeps up, into my cheeks. I lower my eyes to my knees.

“Not yet, huh,” he says cryptically. “Too bad.”

“Congrats on Pac-12,” I rush out. As good a topic as any other.

“You, too.”

I smile. He does, too. And then tells me, “You looked happy. Not as anxious. During the competition, I mean.”

“Thanks. I actually came out a tad too quickly in one of my voluntary dives, and any other time it would have completely thrown me off, but I was able to trick my brain into—” I glance away. “Sorry. You didn’t ask for an unabridged recount of my mental state.”

“Scarlett.” A heavy weight on my knee. His hand, warm and rough. “I did ask. And it was nice to see you up there.”

It’s like the contents of my rib cage are being wrung out. I almost, almost cover his hand with mine. Stop myself. Take a deep, inconspicuous breath. “So, since when are you guys volleyball fans?”

“Since the party we were at got very boring,” Johan says from the other side of Lukas, who drinks from his water bottle and then offers it to me. I take a sip, even though I’m not thirsty.

I missed him.

So. Much.

“That guy over there?” He points at a tall, dark-haired man on the court. “He invited us.”

“And the game had the advantage of not taking place in a frat house,” Johan adds.

The name on the back of the shirt reads Torvalds. “Another Swede?”

Lukas nods. “We’ve infiltrated every sport and branch of government.”

“Uh-huh. Are you and Torvalds related?” I ask jokingly.

“Yeah, he’s my cousin.”

My eyes bug out. “For real?”

“No.”

I huff.

“He’s my cousin, though,” Johan says.

“Wait. Really?”

They both snort at my gullible American soul. I deserve it.

“Do you guys have a Swedes’ club? With your secret language?”

“You mean, Swedish?”

“Yup. Do you meet for fika every day? Screen Americans for potential Midsommar human sacrifices?”

They laugh. “I’ll be right back,” Lukas says. The game is at a break, and he heads down to the side of the court to talk with Torvalds the Cousin.

“Lukas is right about you,” Johan tells me.

I turn, alarmed. “Whatever he told you, he lied.”

“He just said that you’re funny.”

“Oh. Then maybe he didn’t lie.”

“And that you were out of his league.”

I blink at sweet, baby-faced Johan. He’s what, two years younger than me, tops? But so naive. “When did he say that?”

“When I asked him if you two were dating, outside of Avery. Months ago.”

What? “Are you sure that—”

“Let’s go.”

I look up. Lukas holds out his hand. “Where?”

“Home.”

I sneak a glance at Johan. Should we leave him here, all alone? Should we be talking so openly about . . . Well. The Swedes are not easily fazed. “Mine or yours?”

He shrugs. I take his hand. Johan seems unsurprised by this turn of events and waves goodbye.

“Is he going to hate me because I stole you?”

“Nah. His boyfriend’s playing.”

“Ah.” We exit the court, still holding hands. This is . . . more public than we’ve agreed on. But if Pen is at a party with some rower, maybe she’s okay with them finally announcing their breakup. Plus, it’s just the two of us. I can’t find it in me to pull away, not even when he gently eases me into the wall and bends down to kiss me.

He tastes like beer and himself. Smells less like chlorine, more like soap. His shoulders under my hands, the scratch of his cheek against mine, it’s all so fiercely familiar, it could be the stairway up a diving platform.

“You know,” he says against my lips, “I wanted to be righteously angry at you. I told myself I wouldn’t be with you until you were ready to be honest.” I don’t ask about what. It would be supremely dishonest. “But I’m just so fucking happy to see you, Scarlett. I can’t be mad at you, when every time I think about you I am reminded that you exist.”

I don’t think he’s joking, but I smile anyway. “I’m glad you’re not angry,” I say, pulling him down again, deepening the kiss until he’s licking into my mouth and I’m arching into him. The heat and comfort and joy that come simply from being close to him rip through me, burn in my stomach. He tries to ease back, but I can’t let him go, not after so long without him.

“Fuck, Scarlett.” He groans, like my inability to unwrap my arms from him physically devastates him. “Not here.”

“Why?” I protest.

And maybe there’s no good reason. Because he looks around and finds a door. It’s a meeting room that smells like lemon and disinfectant. There are chairs, a whiteboard. One of those insipid inspirational quotes Stanford loves to paste all over athletic facilities, something about pain and discipline and regret. I read the first half while Lukas wedges a chair under the doorknob, but he’s already kissing me again, lifting me on the closest piece of furniture—a podium.

My hands run to the fly of his jeans.

“You can’t just—I can’t fucking do this,” he says.

I manage to undo a single button, but he stops me with his fingers. I’m forced to look up. His eyes are a dark, relentless, vaguely desperate blue.

“This is so much more than sex,” he tells me. “It was the first time, and sure as hell is now.”

I stare at him, breathing heavily. Find something in his face that’s half plea, half determination.

“I need you to admit it, Scarlett.” His voice is a low, resolute rumble. “I need you to not leave me alone to face this.”

I’m going to burst into tears. They are lodged in my throat, behind my eyeballs, and I have to swallow past their sharp heat before I can say, shakily, “From the very start, I . . .”

It’s good enough for him—but it changes everything. His urgent, frantic kisses melt into slow, reverential trails over my shoulders, cheeks, eyelids, collarbone. His hand closes against my breast, grazes my nipple. He says my name, over and over. I say his. My shorts and underwear are pulled down, gently, and he doesn’t have to check whether I’m ready to take him in.

It just works. He sinks inside, little by little, inexorably. It’s so good, so alarmingly exquisite, I let the tears flow. He licks them up and buries deep, husky sounds into my skin. In and out, full and empty, and it’s so easy. We’ve been leading up to this for the past eight months. Every time we met, fucked, spoke, touched, looked, texted—every time I thought of him, it was all for the sake of a perfect moment.

In some shitty multimedia room in Maples Pavilion.

I let out a hushed, watery laugh. He shakes his head and continues to move, slow, good, as good as always, maybe even better. But new. “I fucking can’t with you,” he says, before kissing me like he can, with me.

“Lukas.” I exhale in the cotton of his shirt. My arms, around him. He’s not holding me down. This is vanilla. We’re both out of control. It’s me and him, suddenly equals.

“Slow down,” he asks, instead of making me. “Just a little. Or I’m going to come, and it’s going to be over, and I don’t want that.”

We stop, and kiss, soft and open mouthed. We start again, and then it’s me who’s going to—“A minute. Just a minute. Please.” His hips rock into me. Stop. We laugh in each other’s mouths. We break away, breathless. We make it last as long as we can. We arch into each other, clutch and grope, but never too hard. He sighs. I cry.

It feels good. Him and me. Like something else altogether. Not less or more—just unexplored, but suddenly accessible.

“I want to do this with you every day and night for the rest of my life.”

I nod, still full of tears. Me, too, I think. Me, too.

“Let me say it,” he demands. “I want to say it. Just once.”

I know what he means. I cannot take it. I bury my head in his throat and shake it, because I cannot.

“Scarlett,” he pleads. “Let me tell you, please.”

Pen, I think. There’s Pen. And everything else. The future. The past. What if he says it, and then I lose him. What if I fail at this, too? How will I bear it, then?

He’s so deep inside me, my entire body trembles with it. “Please,” I beg. “Don’t.”

“The thing is.” His forehand drops against mine. “I don’t know if I can keep it in.”

“I just—I—”

He grunts in frustration, but then says, “Hush. It’s okay, baby.” He moves a little faster, a little harder, cupping the back of my head and leading it to the spot at the base of his throat, holding it there like he wants to protect me from something, and a moment later the shudders start, and my cries are muffled into his body, and I’m coming like a dam breaking, and Lukas—

He says it.

Just, not in English. Slow, musical sentences. Words, repeated over and over. I’m awash with them as he comes inside me, his broad shoulders shaking under my arms. And yet, I have the luxury of pretending that I cannot understand him.

I cry anyway. After, he kisses my tears dry, and he’s not angry, or impatient, or anything but reveling.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just . . . I need to . . . I need to square out a couple things. Make sure Pen is . . . before I can . . .”

He nods. “I know.” He pulls out of me, and I gasp at the sensation. He kisses the intake of breath off my mouth. “It’s okay. We’re going to figure it out. I l—” He huffs a small, rueful laugh, catching himself. His hand touches my cheek, and then he straightens my clothes, scattering kisses on me like breadcrumbs. “Let me take you home and—”

Buzzing startles me. Lukas finishes zipping up my shorts and pats the pocket of his jeans, looking for his phone. “Pen?” he asks, a tinge of impatience in his tone. There was no ringtone, which means that he must have deactivated the emergency bypass.

He tenses. Pen’s sobs are so loud, even I can hear them, and he’s saying things like Calm down, and Where are you? and Slower.

“Come on.” He tells me after hanging up, taking my hand. “We need to go get her.”