Chapter 12
chapter
twelve
In the winter, I was still living at my parents’ house.
I had a three-hundred-square-foot space in the basement with a sliver of skylight, a workout mat, and a small desk leftover from my college bedroom.
My strength was returning, and my haircut could officially be called a pixie.
I walked along the lake every day during my lunch break, watching the drifting ice flows that cover Lake Michigan.
I used to think that all the water froze, but I learned that lakes freeze from the top down.
There’s an entire ecosystem in the water, insulated from winter by a thick coat of ice.
Just waiting for a moment like this, when the sun is beating down and the wind is whistling about freedom.
The lake is barely recognizable from the frozen beast I walked beside six months ago.
It’s a deep, freshwater blue, sparkling beneath the sun like a net of diamonds.
Pen parks her Audi across the street and pulls a beach bag out of her trunk.
As we trudge through the grass that borders the concrete steps, my stomach is practicing its Tsukahara vault.
The air is faintly smoky from a barbecue a few picnics over, and the gentle waves lapping at the lake’s concrete edge create a soundtrack of running water that attempts to lull me into relaxation.
You can do it, I coach myself. Just talk about the weather.
A new restaurant you tried recently. Another voice in my head volleys back, We haven’t tried any new restaurants, unless you count venturing to the River North Sweetgreen instead of the usual Lincoln Park one.
I tell that voice to sit down and shut up.
It’s like a roller coaster, I switch gears.
Just strap yourself in, and prepare for five minutes of brutal fear exposure.
All I have to do is launch myself over this first hurtle, and my social anxiety will have no choice but to piss right off.
Clara, Izumi, and their significant others are picnicking on a pink gingham blanket with a portable table in the middle set up with charcuterie and wine. The scene is almost too idyllic to interrupt, but Pen marches in unabashedly and plops herself between them. I drag my heels through the grass.
Clara and Izumi exchange polite hello’s.
Pen immediately spreads out a striped, tasseled towel that may have come from a Mediterranean resort.
I sit on my knees on a corner of the gingham blanket, still caught between intruding and settling in as an invited guest. Pen’s dress slinks down her tan legs, revealing a bikini made of aloe-tinted velvet and lace trim.
It’s pretty and feminine, but still sexy.
What would I look like in a swimsuit like that? Exposed here, beneath the sun?
“Hey,” a low gravelly voice says from my right.
I turn to see a guy who looks like he walked off the backpages of GQ: dripping in water, bronze torso gleaming, charcoal swim trunks slung low and stretched around thighs dotted with tattoos.
He has dark eyes with molten irises, sharp cheekbones, and a confident chin.
His hair is buzzed short, which only adds painful emphasis to said cheekbones.
“Hi,” I squeak.
“‘Sup.” Eitan reaches for a dab with this Adonis.
“‘Sup, E.” Adonis clasps hands with Eitan. “This your girlfriend?”
“No,” I say, quick and aggressive. Adrenaline is coursing through me, threatening the steadiness of my voice. “I’m one of Pen’s bridesmaids.”
“Oh, word.” He reaches out a hand. It’s dusted with hair and a faded tattoo of a marigold. I might be drooling. “I’m Andres.”
I shake it, unable to look into his eyes. “Ruby.”
He steps forward while our hands are clasped. “I’m a groomsman.”
A high-pitched, frilly laugh bubbles out of me. “Same.”
Our hands are still shaking hypnotically.
Sensually. The vision of our future starts slow and then overwhelms me, like a sunburn.
He will be a famous portrait photographer who owns a loft in Brooklyn.
We will play footsie beneath the table on a rooftop in LES, eating oysters while our kids learn French at language immersion camp in the Poconos.
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Andres says through a grin.
Someone elbows me. I reluctantly pull my hand away.
“Is Casey here?” Eitan asks from somewhere far away.
“Nah.” Andres shakes his head. “We broke up.” I don’t know Casey, but I am sending my condolences through the aether.
“Sorry to hear that, man.”
Yeah, me too. Super sorry.
Andres shrugs. “Wasn’t meant to be.” He kneels down on the blanket, tattooed hands doing some damage on the snack pool.
Possibility fizzes in my bloodstream. A thought pokes its head up: we are meant to be. It’s—
Someone waves a big hairy hand in front of my face. “Anyone home?” Eitan asks.
I glare at him. He nudges his chin toward the blanket, directing me to move further from Andres so that he can sit. I move closer to Andres, forcing Eitan to take the blanket corner I had been sitting on.
Andres opens a cooler. “Beer?” He holds out a Pacifico to me.
The hypnosis of meeting Adonis-named-Andres wears off and gritty reality waits in its wake: I have to excel at this social gathering as a first step to worming my way back into this circle.
“Do you have” —I clear my throat— “sparkling water?”
He roots around in the cooler. “Yeah, there should be some…”
“I’ll take one too,” Eitan adds. I’m grateful not to be the only one skipping alcohol.
Andres lays down on his side, balancing on an elbow, showing off a rippling set of obliques. He says something to Eitan that I have trouble following, given the amount of skin on display.
“Hey.” Pen squeezes my side, kneeling on the grass so that she can talk to me. “Thanks again, for doing this.” Her eyes are soft, and she looks young again, like the girl I met in Lakeview Writers Group. “It’s so much work, but it feels better with you by my side.”
“I’m really happy to be a part of it,” I say, for once not needing to force anything. It’s just the truth.
Pen walks two fingers up and down my arm. “Do you think you can convince Aunt Lou to go for the dance-floor ceiling?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I tilt my head. “But it’s okay if she vetoes it, right?”
“I think it will make the wedding really special.” Pen pouts. “I mean, imagine the photos.”
Right, the photos. All that seems to matter about this day.
After the wedding has gone perfectly, I’d totally owe you one. This is about what Pen wants, I remind myself. It’s her day.
“I’ll make the dance floor happen,” I say, more confident.
Pen squeals. “That’s why you’re my girl!”
Izumi shoots us a dirty look.
Clara catches it. “I’m jumping in,” she announces. “Who’s joining me?”
I shrink. Maybe if I curl into a ball, no one will see me.
Pen stands and saunters back to her Positano resort towel. “I’m going to get some sun.”
“I’ll go,” Eitan says. Of course. I barely contain my eyeroll.
“Craig, now you have to come.” Clara yanks on her boyfriend’s arm while he groans.
Eitan’s gaze flits to me. “Come on, Bathroom Girl.” He stands. “You have to join too.”
I give him a dirty look. I knew dropping Bathroom Girl was too good to be true.
“I don’t swim.”
“You’ve gone thirty years without swimming?”
“Twenty-nine,” I correct—my soul just shivered at the reminder that I have to exit my twenties next year. “I have swam. Swum? I’ve done it plenty. Now, I’m good.”
“That’s a bummer because it’s required.”
“I’m sorry, who died and made you beach king?”
He kneels down to whisper in my ear, his breath washing over my neck and threatening to trigger another hot flash. We are not prepared for this! my brain screeches. “As your coach, I’m marking this as mandatory.”
I grunt in his direction.
“Come on.” His face blocks the sun, a blinding halo lighting up his silhouette. He holds out a hand to help me up.
Eitan is only offering to help me stand. I know it’s not a big deal, but I can’t help noticing that it’s the first time any of the people here have actually offered me a hand. Seen that, hey, maybe even though treatment is done, there’s still a long way to go to return to normal.
I rip my eyes away from him. I’m reading into this.
He doesn’t say anything else, just tips his head toward the water, reaches his hand even closer toward me. I avoid his eyes as I take it. His hand closes around mine, warm and steady, and pulls me up.
I blush and drop it as soon as I’m standing up straight.
“I still don’t have a suit,” I say.
“Just go in your underwear,” Pen says, offhand. “We’re all adults here, no one cares.”
For some reason, I look at Eitan for guidance.
He shrugs. “Who cares, right?”
“Right,” I say tightly, forcing a smile. I unbutton my jeans, and wait for the world to implode.
Clara is already in the lake with Craig.
Eitan has turned around to change. Andres is laughing at something on his phone.
Pen is tanning in a swimsuit, skin oiled.
No one seems to care—about what I’m doing, about skin cancer, about anything beyond enjoying a glorious summer day. Maybe I should give it a try, too.
I unzip. Luckily, I’m wearing a pair of black cotton panties that could be bikini bottoms if you don’t look too closely, and I put on sunscreen every morning, religiously. I push my jeans down, the lake breeze hitting my legs, and step out of them.
Eitan pushes off his own jeans and folds them on the edge of the picnic blanket. He stands, in a pair of black boxer briefs and a t-shirt, hands on his hips.
“You’re going in like that?” I refuse to look below his waist.
“Yup. Throwing it back to the fifth-grader-in-a-community-pool look.”
An unanticipated laugh hiccups out of me.
He may not realize it, but he’s giving me an excuse to keep my shirt on too, and by extension, delaying the terror of premiering my scars to the world.
Frankenboobs, I tested out calling them, when I finally got a good look at them after the bruises and swelling dissipated.
When I said it, it felt like I was taking control of the change.
Turning it into something light and humorous.
When Grant parroted my joke, it sounded like, Reason you are different. Broken.
My relief is palpable, a thick blanket wrapping around my ribs. “Same, then.” This babydoll top is about to become my own personal floatie.
Eitan walks onto the concrete steps, loping down to the surface of the water, not hesitating once before cannonballing in.
I stand on the edge, feeling the weight of everyone’s eyes on me.
“Come on in, Bathroom Girl,” Eitan shouts from the lake. “Water’s great.”
I toe the concrete, trying to work up the courage.
“It’s like ripping off a bandaid,” Eitan says, words waterlogged. I know he’s not just talking about the water.
His eyes linger on my legs. His attention makes me feel light, like if I jump, I might soar for a few seconds before hitting the water. I watch him, some kind of buoy, and take a sharp breath in, holding my nose.
I take two feverish steps to the edge, and I let go.
Normally, I wouldn’t go near Lake Michigan before July, when the glacial water has had a chance to warm up after being frozen on and off all winter.
But here I am, dousing myself in it, practically undergoing a polar plunge.
I sputter in a breath when I finally resurface, haphazardly wiping the mascara running beneath my eyes and the wet hair from my forehead.
The waves are much bigger when you’re trying to float on them, bobbing us up and down a good three feet.
A targeted wave of lakewater hits me in the face. “Beach Girl,” Eitan shouts, his voice skittering over the surface of the lake. “Sunlight looks good on you.”
I’d blush if I wasn’t trying to stay afloat.
Eitan, on the other hand, looks like he was born of the sea.
Like something not of this world. An alchemy of salt water and sunlight that had to be forged in a divine lab.
He smiles and tips his head back, water dripping from his plastered curls, and hollers at the sun, the way a wolf howls at the moon.
His cry is nothing but a noise, but in it I hear, I’m here. Alive.
In the water, I am weightless. Free.
I howl too.
Eitan paddles toward me, his arms and back soaking wet and gleaming.
My heart stutters, then speeds. He keeps swimming, until he’s right in front of me, and the only word my waterlogged brain can muster is miracle.
I’m not sure what the miracle is—Eitan knocking on my door this morning, succeeding at getting me to go swimming, or just the existence of someone like this. A piece of the sea made mortal.
His broad hand reaches out, and its trajectory appears to be no further than my cheek.
All of a sudden, I want nothing more than to feel his hand on my skin.
To feel our bodies pressing together, no air between, like the point where two oceans meet.
Despite being submerged in fifty-degree water, my body heats, burning from the inside out.
“You’ve got—” Eitan smiles, and gentle fingertips extract something near my eyebrow, detangling it from my hair. He holds up a piece of seaweed before flinging it away.
He tips back and floats, allowing the waves to carry him, oblivious to my turmoil.
I rub my forehead. This isn’t one of the happily-ever-after fantasies I conjure up within one minute of meeting someone.
Eitan is a flesh and blood person, with a penchant for casual hookups, an active stake in Pen’s wedding, and an expiration date.
We are acquaintances. Associates, even. Pen’s agent connection is the closest I’ve gotten in almost two years to moving my writing career forward, and I can’t screw it up by getting distracted by one cute boy with eyes I could get lost in and a face that could quell a panic attack.
There’s only one word that I need to remember when it comes to Eitan Moreno, and it’s dangerous.