Chapter 4
FOUR
AUGUST
Waffles? What was I thinking? Fucking waffles?
Of course I didn’t realize the momentous decision I’d congratulated the beautiful woman for, five minutes earlier, like a fucking dumbass, was leaving her husband.
I could have just asked a follow-up question at the time, naturally, but I hadn’t wanted to pry.
So you just made an ass of yourself instead. Awesome.
I’m glad for the slap of icicles slicing into my skin at the fresh cold plunge after the hot tub. Of course a woman like her was married. Well, at least until today, when clearly she’s leaving for greener pastures.
Which is definitely not me.
I’m shit pastures. Literally the kind full of cow pies that you realize too late after you’ve already stepped in it and then—
Yeah.
She’s clearly a smart, beautiful woman who’s got her shit together if her instinct was to steer clear of this walking disaster.
I dive deeper like the cold will clear my head and swim the length of the pool before exploding back to the surface for breath.
But as I do, I just happen to sorta clock a quick peek that shows the top of her head visible over the rim of the hot tub, steam rising around her.
She’s still there.
She decided to stay longer after I came back over here for more laps. Fuck, I hope I wasn’t making her uncomfortable by going over there in the first place.
Stop noticing she’s still there. Focus on your routine. Laps, then bed.
Why is it always the smart ones who are the most interesting and attractive?
I do my turn and push off hard. Just keep your head down and swim, you dumb bastard.
She’ll be gone tomorrow or the day after and I’ll be here doing my laps. She’ll be a story I tell myself about the gorgeous woman who was in the hot tub the night after she left her husband. We talked a little. She was interesting. That was that.
We both made good decisions.
The end.
I’m four more laps in when I hear the splash behind me.
Oh shit, she just jumped in the pool.
It’s not a smooth entry like a dive or even a careful step-down, but one of those full-commitment splashes when someone just flings themselves into the water before the more sensible part of their brain can object.
I immediately start swimming towards her as she lets out a yelp that isn’t a scream exactly. More like every vowel leaving her lungs simultaneously.
Because she jumped in a sixty-two-degree pool in January in a camisole and gym shorts. After having been in a hot tub for the better part of half an hour, which means her core temperature is elevated. Which means the cold shock is going to hit her harder than it would otherwise.
And she is not swimming, which is kind of the entire key to surviving in sixty-two-degree water.
“Hey,” I call, almost to her. “Hey, you need to move. Right now, start moving.”
“I’m—” Her teeth are already chattering. “I’m moving—”
“Swimming, I mean. Actual swimming. Your body needs to generate heat or the cold wins fast.”
I get to her in four strokes. She’s standing in the shallow end, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide with something that’s equal parts shock and not regret, not exactly. Something more like oh. So this is what this shocking fucking cold feels like.
“I didn’t—” She gasps. “You do this every day—?”
“I’m also not getting in straight from a hot tub in January my first time. Either get out now or swim to the wall.”
She looks at me. She looks at the far wall. She makes a sound of pure indignation at the distance between here and there and then she goes.
Not gracefully, or with any technique to speak of. Mostly it’s controlled flailing, but she goes, and I follow at a distance. She’s a stranger who just got in a sixty-two-degree pool and if she goes under, I need to be close enough to do something about it.
She swims to the wall. Then turns and looks back at me with an expression of genuine triumph. Like she’s just won something.
“See,” she gasps. “Swimming!”
“That was not swimming.”
“It was approximately swimming.” She flails to keep herself afloat in the deep end. She looks like the world’s most adorable drowning rat.
“Okay, back to the shallow end now, hero.”
She makes three laps total. On the third one she slows badly coming back and I come up beside her. She grabs onto my arm and says, with tremendous dignity through her chattering teeth, “T-t-think I’m done now.”
“Hot tub,” I say.
“Hot tub,” she agrees.
I get out first so I can make sure she’s got her footing on the steps because her legs are going wobbly and unreliable after the cold water. But she makes it out and stands on the deck and I help her to the hot tub.
Her eyes fly back open wide the second she steps down inside the bubbling hot water. “Pins and needles!”
I grin. “But good pins and needles, right?”
Another noise comes from lower in her throat. “I can’t decide yet!”
But after another twenty seconds she sinks lower in the bubbling water. “Definitely good pins and needles. Holy shit! I feel amazing.”
A chuckle erupts from deep in my chest. “That’s kinda the point.”
Her eyes close for a moment as her entire body relaxes and then fly back open. “Holy shit,” she whispers it this time. “And you do this every night.”
“When I can.”
“Woooow,” she breathes out. “Thank you for not letting me drown, by the way.”
“You weren’t going to drown.”
“I was at least going to be embarrassed.”
“You were already embarrassed.”
She gives a hard, sharp laugh, one from deep in her guts.
Okay, so here is my problem.
I have spent the last forty-five minutes being extremely reasonable about this woman. Of course, I noticed that she’s interesting and clearly smart and has a quality to her attention that’s rare.
She looks at you and actually listens. Take those women in the tattoo shop earlier, who are like most of the kind I run into. They’re women who just give a performance of listening when really they’re just thinking up the next thing they want to say.
And I’ve been setting all that noting carefully to one side because she literally left her husband today.
Today.
The ring was on her hand when she got in the hot tub and even though it’s off now— Whatever that means, it’s not anything that should involve me.
I was being totally reasonable, doing my laps and about to turn in for the night.
But then she jumped in the pool.
Entirely reckless of her, and it wasn’t because I asked or dared her to. I certainly didn’t expect her to do it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
People don’t do the unexpected thing.
In my experience people do the expected thing reliably and somewhat desperately, and I’ve always been the problem in the room because I’m the one who doesn’t.
I’m the mess.
I’m the one who goes sideways.
She’s leaving tomorrow, I tell myself.
She just left her husband today, I tell myself.
You have a son and a custody arrangement and a therapy appointment on Tuesday and your life is finally starting to resemble something functional, I tell myself.
“I should let you get sleep,” I say, climbing out of the hot tub for the last time. Making better choices is kinda my whole gig lately.
“Yeah,” she says. “Sleep is a good idea. It’s been a long day.”
We walk to her cabin. I don’t plan to walk her there. I’m just headed to my RV. I mean, obviously, that’s where I’m going. The path to my RV just happens to take me by the cabins.
And she’s walking beside me and neither of us says anything for the thirty seconds it takes to get there.
She stops at her cabin door.
I stop because she does.
“Goodnight,” I say, because she left her husband today, and I am trying very hard not to become her next bad decision.
I turn away.
Her fingers close around my wrist.
“What if you didn’t go?” she whispers.
And just like that, my brother’s wife—though neither of us knows it yet—becomes the first woman who has ever made staying feel more dangerous than leaving.
I stop because she does.
“Goodnight,” I say.
She looks at me. The neon from the hot tub is still going, faint at this distance, and it catches the wet in her hair.
Leave, I think. This is the part where you leave.
But just as I turn to go, her hand reaches out and snatches my wrist.
“What if you didn’t… go?” she asks tentatively. “What if you stayed?”
“Marie,” I say low. It’s not a warning exactly.
Just more like saying her name is the last reasonable obstacle I can put between us and whatever comes next.
But then I go further, because I really am trying to make better decisions: “You’ve had a long, difficult day, it sounds like, and I don’t want to be the guy who takes advantage of a woman. ”
But she doesn’t let go of my hand.
Instead, she whispers, “I’m a grown-up, August, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I know my own mind.
If you’re game to help distract me from my difficult day, I sure would love to have sex with you.
Because I don’t think I’ve ever actually had good sex in my life.
” Then her eyes drop. “But I get it if I’m not your type... ”
Snap. There goes the last thread of reasonability holding me back from her.
Not my type? Is she kidding? She’s every straight man with a pulse’s type. Mine especially, with her light-hearted humor and intelligence. Not to mention those goddamn legs that just don’t quit.
I spin her and press her against her cabin door, leaning my body into hers and enjoying her surprised, excited gasp.
I reach for the doorknob behind her.
I don’t kiss her. Yet. I just lean down so that my five o’clock stubble scrapes ever so lightly across her bottom lip.
“You sure?” I breathe out.
She throws her arms around my neck and closes the teasing gap I’ve kept between our lips in a hungry way that has my cock immediately thickening.
I’ll take that as a yes.
I put an arm under her ass, and she does a little hop up, and I finally push her door open. Then I carry her into her cabin and kick the door shut with my foot behind us.