Page 39 of Don't Forget Me
Nick stopped without stepping onto the dock and searched for her to surface.
She came up with a laugh. “See? Not scary. If you know how to swim, you can feel this too.”
“Feel what?” He had to know how the water gave her so much light when it only held darkness for him.
A grin stretched her lips. “Weightlessness. In the water, it’s like no other worries can touch you, like there’s a shield around you, washing the gravity from your bones, your mind.”
He closed his eyes, lifting his face to the sun and wishing he could feel it too, that love for the water he once had.
“Nick.”
He opened his eyes to find her reaching up to hang onto the end of the dock. Her t-shirt hung off her, rivulets of water dripping from the hem. Blonde hair stuck to her cheeks, and before he knew what he was doing, Nick walked out onto the dock, closer to the water than he’d gone in years.
Liz pulled herself further up until she could rest her palms on the dock and straighten her arms, her legs hanging down into the water.
For once, no smile tilted her lips, but there was something else he couldn’t figure out.
“Stay,” she said. “Even if you aren’t getting in the water, don’t leave me.”
He couldn’t if he’d tried. As he lowered himself to the dock, he no longer saw the water, only the woman before him.
Liz dropped away from the dock, a smile flitting across her face.
Nick wanted to call her back, to tell her this time it was him who didn’t want her to leave, to stay here in this simple world where he could shove the fear to the back of his mind, where real life didn’t push in at them, taking and taking until there was nothing left.
For a moment, he didn’t see Liz. Instead, Stephen swam as he had every morning, and Nick wondered if it was how he’d looked in the moments before he went under and didn’t resurface.
Nick hadn’t been there, so he’d conjured a million images in his mind. As they flashed through his head, he slid back from the edge of the dock, his breathing ragged until Stephen transformed into Liz once more.
She dipped her head back, letting her hair fan out around her as she looked to the sky. He couldn’t take his eyes from the way her eyelids slid closed and the corners of her mouth turned up, like she was living in this moment in a way Nick hadn’t in so long.
Without opening her eyes, she kicked her feet, sending a shower of water toward Nick with a laugh. He tried to lunge out of the way, but the lake water soaked into his clothes. “Not cool.”
She opened her eyes and pinned him with that crystalline gaze he wanted to study, to pick out each shade of blue and commit them to memory. “I’m always cool.”
A laugh rumbled from his chest before he could stop it. It was such an uncool thing to say, something her grin told him she knew as she swam out farther from the dock. Who was this woman?
The farther out she got, the harder it was to force air into his lungs. He wanted to call out to her, to make her come back, stay close. Gripping the edge of the dock, he didn’t take his eyes from her, his heart nearly stopping when she dipped under the water.
“Liz,” he tried to call, but his voice came out hoarse, more of a quiet plea than a warning.
As if hearing him, she swam underwater, her form visible near the surface, popping up right next to the dock.
“Hello.” She cocked her head to the side and chewed on her lower lip. “Why are you watching me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re afraid if you take your eyes off me, I’ll disappear.”
He shifted his gaze away as if to prove her wrong.
But this was not a woman to be deterred. She pulled herself halfway onto the dock again. “We said we were going to be friends. Really, there’s no other option. And friends tell each other what they’re thinking.”
“Leave it alone, Liz.”
“I’ve never been very good at that.”
He couldn’t help the irrational anger that hadn’t been there a moment ago. It wasn’t fair. That he was here and Stephen wasn’t, that he got stuck with the one person in the world who seemed to want to know him, who wasn’t deterred by the way he tried to keep her at arm’s length.
