Page 78 of Deep End

“Well, I . . .” I shake my head. Huff bitterly. “I’m sorry.”

He laughs, silent. “It’s not a bad feeling, actually. Just overwhelming.” He shakes his head, as if to get rid of bad thoughts. “I had no frame of reference for how much I . . .”

I can fill in the blanks.I liked it more than I thought I would, and it scared me.

He bites the inside of his lip. “I’m . . . not sure I enjoy it. Not being in control.”

Welcome to the club, Lukas. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I doubt it has anything to do withme. I’m just the first not-vanilla girl you’ve ever been with.”

A long, icy stare. He doesn’t reply.

“The thing is, Lukas, I understand how you feel. I really do. And I don’t blame you, but . . .”

I’m silent for so long, trying to put my thoughts together, feeling the clammy weight of this press down on me. Lukas never rushes me, and at last I have my words.

“Even if it’s just sex, it’s not a good idea for me to be with someone who resents wanting me.”

It’s just for a blip, a gaping, voracious, rioting moment, that I can see a hint of how he really feels about this. But it lasts so little, I’m not even sure. Whether he cares. Whether he’s happy to be free of me. Whether he heard what I’m saying.

I swallow around the off-kilter heartbeat in my throat, and then I reach out to squeeze his hand one last time. The marks of my teeth, I notice, are still there. Like those, too, weren’t allowed to fade.

“Bye, Lukas,” I say.

He doesn’t try to stop me, and I never look back.

CHAPTER 33

AS I ONCE EXPLAINED TO BARB, DUAL MEETS ARE OFFICIALand regulated by the NCAA, but “not, like, too much.”

“What you just said makes absolutely no sense,” she pointed out, and she was right.

The most important swimming and diving competitions are clustered in the spring. That’s when our regional conference, the Pac-12, happens, when the NCAA trials and finals happen, and, in a year like this one, when we fight it out to see who’ll get to go to the Olympic Games. Preseason meets are much smaller in size, and it’s understood that no athlete is expected to be in tip-top shape yet. Records or personal bests are unlikely, they are not televised, and the atmosphere more convivial. If we win, good. If we lose:See you in March.

“No synchro for you on this meet. You’re just not good enough yet,” Coach tells Pen and me on Friday night, sounding ready to combat our counterarguments.

Pen and I, though, both slump in relief. “You’re right,” she says. “No need for public humiliation.”

I nod. “We should definitely spare the Texans our shame.”

“Someone could even TiVo us and post us somewhere.”

I scrunch my nose, Pen faux shudders, and we leave a perplexed Coach Sima behind.

Basically, this meet is no big deal. It might even be asmalldeal—if not for two reasons.

One: this is my first time competing since my injury, and the thought has been making every cell in my body want to puke since I woke up.

Two is, of course: The. Inward. Issue.

“It’s normal to be nervous,” Pen says, holding my eyes in the mirror as I part my hair to French braid it.

I half exhale a laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

“Just to me.” She smiles. “Because I know you.”

She does. Maybe our relationship started as circumstantial, but lately we’ve been together so often, it’d be hard not to describe what we have as friendship—even for someone like me, who strives to avoid overestimating her emotional significance in other people’s lives. “I just need to get through the first dive, I think. Then I’ll calm down.”

She lays her head on my shoulder. “I’ll be there, Vandy. If you need anything.”

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