Page 70 of Deep End

“And when is yours?”

“Two weekends from now.”

“I see.”

“Maybe what I really need to get over my block is to be put on the spot?” I swallow. “Maybe if I justhaveto do it, my brain will bypass the fear . . .”

She just looks—not dismissive, but measuring. “Fear of what, Scarlett? You have not answered my question.”

Whatareyou afraid of?

I curb the urge to roll my eyes. This—this needling psychoanalytic digging—isnothelping.I need to be able to do an inward dive in ten days, I nearly scream.Can we focus on that?

On the upside, I get a whole-ass seven out of ten on my next German assignment—Ich bin so stolz auf dich, Scharlach!Herr Karl-Heinz writes. It requires some googling to figure out that he’sproud of me, but once I do I’m a bit teary-eyed. I do my conditioning. I call Barb and ask her to put Pipsqueak on the phone. I bring Pen a batch of homemade soup, watch comfort rom-coms with her, and hug her when she comes back on Friday, looking pale but whole. I restart my med school essays. I fight with Maryam, eat plenty of lean proteins, and by the following weekend, when it looks like the bruises Lukas left behind might fade, I press hard into them, biting my tongue, hoping the trick will make them last.

I always wear one-pieces for training, mostly out of an irrational terror that a bikini top will come off. I could keep these marks forever, and no one would see. Not even Lukas, because as it becomes obvious by Friday, he has no interest in further contact with me.

I text him once more over the weekend, short and to the point (Let me know if you’d like to meet this weekend) and the reply I receive is:I will.

That’s it.

He has dropped the (perfectly processed) input dataset on Dr. Smith’s server for me, and I find out only because Zach emails me. All signs point toLeave me the fuck alone, Scarlett.

I guess I have failed at sex. It’s nothing new (my first blow job to Josh ended with us debating whether I should drive him to the ER). Tragically, this time I failed at the kind of sex I hoped to be good at.

Since I’m also failing, ranging from moderately to spectacularly, at diving, school, applying to med school,andhanging out with my dog as much as I’d like, I should be used to it—but I have failed atthat, too. After Saturday practice I let out a half-miserable, half-amused laugh into the jet of the shower. It gets me puzzled looks from two freshman swimmers, and I summon my mostnothing to see heresmile.

I used to define myself by how well I could perform. I used to flail myself alive when I got less than nines for my dives, or wasn’t first in my class. Now, I’d just like to not crash and burn.

It doesn’t help that I see Lukas around all the time—a painful reminder that I should be . . . different. Because Lukas is not dead, not kidnapped, not too swamped. I catch sight of him around Avery. In the dining hall with Johan and other people I don’t recognize. In the weight room as he hands Pen his water bottle, busy with a thick, low conversation that ends in laughter. Part of me wants to feel the rage of having been used and discarded and bedpost-notched, but it doesn’t add up. Lukas is not the kind of asshole who’d leave me on read out of boredom.

Icouldconfront him. But I don’t, and it stems from more than my well-cultivated conflict avoidance. Stuff like what we did—the potential to hurt the other person goes both ways. Boundaries are important. So I quietly step out of Lukas’s way whenever it looks like we might be thrown together. It works so well, I have to wonder if he’s doing the same.

By Sunday night, I’m knee-deep in the cognitive restructuring of what happened: a Manna-like, onetime event that confirmed something about myself. I’d been wondering if I’d like the real thing as much as the fantasies of it, and . . . it was the best sex of my life, and it did what I hoped it would: Gathered my scattered thoughts. Stilled me. Quieted my mind for a few hours.

It doesn’t make Lukas’s rejection less painful, but it’s at least worth it.He’s probably pining after Pen,anyway, I tell myself.It was never going to be anything serious. I do my best to shrug it off and re-download my old dating apps, as well as a couple more sex-forward ones.

“Want me to start with the good news or the bad?” Coach Sima asks Pen and me on Monday, at synchro practice.

My “Bad,” fully overlaps with Pen’s “Good.” We burst into laughter.

“Glad to see y’all are having a jolly time, since your dives clearly are not.”

Pen fights a smile. I pretend to look for my shammy.

“Today’s practice wasn’t as bad as last week’s.” Coach wags his finger in our direction. “But it better be heaps worse than the next.”

Pen bats her eyes. “No need to spare our feelings, Coach.”

“Hush. You”—he points at Pen—“splashed like the fountain on Trevi, and your arm circle looked like a parallelogram, and”—he turns to me—“you came out of that pike position way too late, and did you hear thattutum?”

“Do the synchro judges even listen for that?”

“Are you serious? The judges’ only purpose on this overheated rock of a planet is to take points off for the inanest reason. You think,Oh, our hurdles didn’t match but we caught up in the air, they won’t mind.” His impression of me is high-pitched and a little breathy. Do I sound like that? “They are drooling for every little point-ducking splatter.”

“Doesn’t sound paranoid at all,” Pen mutters, which earns her a tundra-blazing glare.

“Wanna try the backward pike again?” I ask her.

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