Page 55 of Protect Me
For my purpose? We went just fast enough.
Sunshine freckled the ground in spots, and warm rays alternately danced across her skin, illuminating an already radiant expression.
I soaked her up.
Thirty minutes later, we emerged out of the tunnel of trees and onto the muddy bank of Tempest Lake. I stopped, sucking in a sharp breath. All these years that I’d stayed near Pineville after my parents moved away, and I hadn’t visited here, a place that meant so much.
What had I been doing with my life?
Right. Chasing women. Empty hours. Trying to forget something I didn’t want to unearth again. Trying to remember who I thought I should be, instead of who I wanted to be. Such a life felt dumber every day.
Kate squealed.
“Vik! It’s exactly the same.”
A hushed reverence bore her forward. She climbed onto a black, moss-strewn boulder and stood on top. A picture of her and Vinita at eleven-years-old at that exact spot, clasped in each other's skinny arms, stood on my parents’ dresser at home, right next to Amma’s statue of Lord Ganesha. Kate held out her arms and spun.
“It hasn’t changed,” she cried.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
The cut of the shoreline against the trees, the gentle slope of land to mud, reeds, then water, looked exactly the way I remembered it. Sunlight glinted off the top, glimmering in white sparkles. Pearlescent clouds chugged by overhead, reflected in the crystal-clear mountain water, as azure as the sky.
Kate lowered and sat on the warm boulder, legs dangling off. Her tanned thighs beckoned me, but I kept my gaze deferred.
“Let’s go swimming,” she said quickly. “We have to! For old times sake. I don’t have any extra clothes, but . . .”
Laughing, I dropped the backpack. “I’m glad you suggested it, because I am ready for such a thing. Hope you don’t mind, but I grabbed some of your shorts and a tank before we left. I couldn’t find a swimming suit.”
Color brushed her cheeks. “I don’t have one.”
Shock dropped my jaw.
“You don’t?”
Her gaze skated away with a half-shrug that was more uncertainty than defensiveness. “I haven’t gone swimming in . . . a long time.”
Many things about Kate surprised me these days, but this felt like a shock of lightning. Kate and water had always made sense. It had been her happy place. Amma and Appa had a hard time keeping her out of it. She took to water like a fish. I used to call her guppy.
“Why not?”
She swallowed. “I guess it just . . . it didn’t seem that safe.”
Those words fell between us like a miasma. My hands tightened on my backpack before I brushed all of this aside. The past was in the past—couldn’t change that now. But dammit, we were swimming today and we’d do it every day if she wanted to.
“Well,” I said with forced cheer, “I wanted to surprise you with this, so I brought some spares. You can swim in clothes as easily as a swimming suit.”
Instead of annoyance, her eyes sparkled back in delight.
“Yes!”
I tossed the backpack at her feet to rummage through, then slipped my shirt off, kicking my shoes to the side. Already prepared, I had my swim trunks on. The water would be warm and luxurious at this part of the summer. I waded in until it covered my ankles. The loose mud at the bottom squelched between my toes, thick and soft. It distracted my thoughts while Kate slinked away to change in privacy.
Memories filtered through my mind, free to wander like the clouds. Amma unloading a picnic on a wide blanket. Appa attempting to fish, muttering swear words under his breath that earned chastisements from Amma. Vini and Kate chasing bugs and frogs along the shore. I’d brought several girlfriends here—the rock made an excellent make-out spot—but all of those felt vacant in the glow of family memories.
Or maybe it was Kate.
Next to her, everything felt like a hollowed-out shell.
