Deep End

IT ALL STARTS WHEN PENELOPE ROSS LEANS IN OVER THE restaurant’s solid wooden table, lifts her index finger, and declares, “Tenth circle of hell: you find the love of your life, but the sex is intensely meh.”

In front of the entirety of Stanford’s diving roster.

At eleven fifteen in the morning.

During my twenty-first birthday brunch.

Four seconds ago we were oversharing about our digestive issues, and the whiplash is disorienting. I’ve been taking advantage of my newly acquired legal rights, but no amount of alcohol can prevent me from blurting out, “What?”

Not my most tactful moment. Thankfully, my incredulity is drowned out by the reactions of the rest of the team: Bree’s spit take, Bella’s scandalized gasp, and Victoria’s skeptical “Isn’t Blomqvist the love of your life?”

“He sure is.” Pen nods.

I fill my mouth with mimosa. The taste is far worse than plain orange juice, but the buzz is very welcome.

“Pen. Honey.” Bree wipes espresso martini off her glasses using the shirt hem of her sister, Bella—who allows it. Twins stuff, I guess. “How many drinks have you had?”

“Like, half of that pitcher.”

“Ah. Maybe we should—”

“But in mimosa veritas.” Pen leans forward even more. Her voice drops as she makes a sweeping gesture. “I am confiding in you, guys. Being vulnerable. We’re having a moment.”

Victoria sighs. “Pen, I love you, ride or die, would follow you into the very fires of Mordor and all that shit, but we’re not having a moment.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re making shit up.”

“Why?”

“Because Blomqvist fucks.”

I sit back in a semi-zonked state and force myself to think about Lukas Blomqvist—a rare occurrence for me. People assume that I’m fascinated with everything that goes on in a pool, but nope. The only sports I find remotely interesting are diving and land-diving (or, as the normies call it, gymnastics). The rest is out of my purview. There’s just too much stuff going on in aquatics. I can’t keep track of Stanford’s water polo teams, let alone the swimmers.

And yet, Blomqvist is hard to ignore. Because of the truckload of medals, maybe. The world records. Plus, if the captain of my team is part of an athletics power couple, it behooves me to be aware of its other half. And Pen and Blomqvist have been dating since forever. For all I know, they were betrothed at birth to cement US-Sweden diplomatic relations.

I close my eyes to resurface my spotty memories of him. Black Speedos. Tattoos. Short, choppy brown hair. Above-average wingspan. The majestic and yet improbable build of every other DI swimmer who ever lived.

Victoria is right. We can safely hazard that yes, Blomqvist does fuck.

“I didn’t say he doesn’t. He’s great. Just not . . .” Pen winces, and it’s such an odd break from her sparkling self-assurance, it slices right through my mimosa haze.

The thing about Pen, she’s kinda great. Aspirational. The type of person who instinctively knows how to make someone feel at ease. She’ll remind you to drink water. Offer the ponytail holder on her wrist when your hair sticks to your lips. Remember your half birthday. I could take personal development workshops till I turn fifty and let a team of data analysts reprogram me, but I still wouldn’t have a third of her charm, because charisma like hers sprouts from base pairs nestled in chromosomes. And now she’s biting into cuticles like she just discovered social anxiety? I don’t love it.

“Just not . . . what I want. And honestly, vice versa,” she adds in a low mumble.

“Which would be?” Bless Victoria for asking what I don’t have the courage to. The extroverted, filterless member every team needs.

“Oh my god. I just want to . . . you know, sometimes . . .” Pen groans.

I stiffen, suddenly alarmed. “Is Blomqvist forcing you to—”

“No. God no.” She shakes her head, but I must look unconvinced because she continues, “No. He would never.” Everyone else has dropped off the conversation—the twins, bickering over whose drink is whose, Victoria, gesturing toward the server. “Luk’s not like that. Just . . . how do you tell a guy that you need something different?”

Why is she asking me? Have the lines on my forehead arranged to form the words previously asked someone to spank her?

Honestly, it would check out. “Aren’t Scandinavians very open-minded?”

“Maybe? He’s definitely open-minded when it comes to—” But she breaks off, because a small posse of out-of-tune waiters interrupt us with a string of happy birthday to yous, and many things happen at once.

I blow on the single candle haphazardly plonked on top of a lava cake. A team present of new stretch cords is produced. I am briefly verklempt that someone as chronically introverted as me found people who are, god, so nice. Victoria needs to use the restroom. Pen gets a call from her aunt. Bree wants to know which classes I’ll be taking in the fall.

It’s too much. In too little time. We never end up returning to the topic of Penelope Ross and Lukas Blomqvist’s mysteriously imperfect sex life—which is for the best. Whatever issue they’re dealing with is probably trivial, anyway. She doesn’t like the brand of condoms he uses. He falls asleep without cuddling her. They’re tired after practice and squabble over who should be on top. Not my circus and/or monkeys, so I let the matter slip out of my mind, smooth as a longfin eel.

Until a few weeks later, when everything changes.