Page 97 of Deep End

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

I shrug in his arms. His grip tightens, like he’s no more ready to let go than I am. “Sometimes, I feel like my life is split in two. There was the first part, where I was in control, and was able to make myself do what needed to be done, and then . . . now.”

His hand tilts my chin up to force our eyes to meet. “What’s day zero? When you got injured?”

I nod. “There’s no reason for me to be so hung up on it. I had surgery, and . . . I was solucky. But instead of taking advantage, I can’t even . . .” I free myself and hide my tear-smeared face in his throat. His palm lifts to cup the back of my head.

“What would you do, in the past?”

“Hmm?” He smells comforting and familiar, sandalwood and Lukas andsafe.

“When you’d fail a dive, what would you do?”

“I didn’t. I never used to fail dives. I used to begood.”

He sits on this piece of information for a minute. “What about blocks?”

“What about them?”

“Is this your first?”

I nod. Leave it to me to start with a bang.

“They’re not uncommon among divers, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pen has had several since I met her—not as long-lasting as yours, but my guess is, they’re pretty widespread. What about injuries? Did you have any before college?”

“No.”

“So . . .” He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear, pulling my head back to look at me again. “To recap, on the day of your first NCAA final, you failed your first dive, and had your first significant injury.”

“God, it was such a horrible . . .” I straighten in his lap, wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands, feeling the same spurt of frustration I always experience. “It was everything, all at once. The night before my father contacted me to tell me he’d been following the NCAA competition online and was proud of me and—he’s notallowedto do that, bycourtorder. I tried to call Barb to figure out what to do, but she had patient emergencies, and I couldn’t sleep and was so anxious—and then that morning, Josh, I mean . . . I’m glad he didn’t just decide tocheaton me, but couldn’t he have waited twelve hours to tell me that he’d met someone else—”

“Hang on,” Lukas interrupts. His eyes are narrow slits, his tone low, a little dangerous. I realize that I’ve been rambling.

“Sorry, you don’t have to listen to—”

“Did you just tell me that your boyfriend of . . . how long were you two together?”

“Three years?”

“Your boyfriend ofthreeyears broke up with you out of the blue,right beforethe NCAA finals?”

I swallow. Lukas seems angry, and I—I know, instinctively, he’s not mad atme, but his displeasure is nonetheless unsettling. “He . . . I think things with this new girl he’d met had been heating up, and . . .”

“Right,” he says. His tone is so deceptively mild, I shiver. “WhatI’m hearing is that you had a near-perfect history when it came to diving. Within twenty-four hours you got dumped by your boyfriend and contacted by your abusive father. When the final of the most important competition of your college career came around, despite your state of mind, you went ahead and tried to focus. Under those conditions you failed a dive for the first time in your career, andthat’swhen you became a failure?”

He says the last word like—like it’s all in my head. Like I’ve been misusing it. Like I don’t know what it means. So I retreat into myself, trying to poke holes in Lukas’s story, in his retelling of the worst day of my life thatsurelycannot be an accurate summary of what happened.

Can it?

“Why are you so reluctant to talk about that day?” he asks.

“I’m not.”

“And yet I had to pry the story out of you. We’ve discussed your injury, your relationship, your father. But you never told me, ‘My pieces of shit of a boyfriend and father and their piece of shit timing upset me so much, I severely injured myself to the point that I could barely move for weeks,’ and—did he visit you?”

---