Page 77 of Deep End

“See? She’s a rapt audience. For two whole years he didn’t season his food. Not even salt. Before that, he would wake up an hour earlier than he needed to.”

“Jan,” Lukas warns.

“It’s his thing. His way of feeling in control. But it’s foolish—we are humans. We are not in control. Self-determination is a myth.”

An icy, heavy weight sinks to the bottom of my stomach. I turn to Lukas. “Do you still do that?” I ask, as if from a distance.

“Well,” Jan interjects, “by now he’s successfully proven that he is capable of divesting himself ofaaallworldly attachments—”

Lukas snaps something in Swedish. It doesn’t sound melodic or soft, and it has Jan falling silent, then replying in the same language.A short back-and-forth ensues, but Jan’s eyes remain calm, and he looks at Lukas with something that can only be affection.

When Jan turns to me again, his voice is kind, and the topic is over. “Eat up,” he tells me.

I don’t put a single bite in my mouth.

CHAPTER 32

LATER.After Jan hugs me, gives me his email, and makes me promise to stay in touch.

After Lukas drops him off at his hotel.

After it is agreed upon, without any conversation, that he’ll drive me home.

After I tell him my address and ask, “Should I type it into the GPS?”

After he shakes his head and remains silent for several minutes.

After he kills the engine in front of my apartment building, unbuckles his seat belt, unbucklesmine, and then sits back half against the door so that he can look at me.

After he patiently waits for me to speak for a long stretch of silence that seems to claw at my throat and expand within my body.

I ask, “How long?”

He knows what I mean.

How long were you going to deny yourself, this time?

How long till you planned to reach out to me again?

“Fifteen days.” There is no shame in his voice. And maybe there shouldn’t be. He was on track to make it, after all.

I nod. “Just a few more, then.”

His arms cross on his chest. I wish I could read his expression, but his face is blank. When he finally talks, a million moments later, it’stome, but I’m not sure it’sforme.

“That first day, the Sunday, I almost called you a dozen times. It was . . . difficult. Last week Pen mentioned that you two were having lunch together, and I went to the dining hall just to—I don’t fucking know. Look?” He shrugs, detached. It’s like he’s reporting the results of an experiment. On me. Onhimself. “On day seven Jan arrived. He’s good at taking up every free second of a person’s day with no regard for their schedule.”

“How nice of him.”

“I thought the same.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Did you consider that I’m not a bed, or a condiment. I’m not hot water.” I try to sound as disengaged as he seems to be, but I doubt I’m succeeding. “Did you consider that I might be the type to hold a grudge? Or self-respecting enough to pick up the phone on the fifteenth day and say, ‘Fuck off’?”

He nods, like I’m being nothing but reasonable. The quiet, impersonal civility of this conversation is . . . devastating, actually. “I think part of me hoped you would.”

“Why?”

It takes him a while to answer. When he does, he’s not looking at me. “Because sometimes I can’t breathe when you’re around.”

---