Twenty-Four
THERE’S A MAN FAST ASLEEP ON MY BEDROOM FLOOR, and I have no idea how he got there.
Jesus, I have no idea how I got here. In my bed, in my pajamas, my hair in a bun, confused by the distinct lack of that itchy discomfort one suffers after a night sleeping in mascara.
My pulse thumps an unhappy beat behind my temples as I roll onto my back with a groan, my stomach roiling in solidarity, my flushed skin crying out in relief as I kick myself free from my bedsheets and feel the cool morning air trickling in from the window someone had the good sense to crack last night.
Swallowing the bile that tickles the back of my throat with even the slightest of movements, I drop a leg over the bed’s edge and unceremoniously kick the lump of muscle sprawled across my floorboards. ‘Hey.’
The lump groans.
‘Heath.’ I kick a little harder. ‘Wake up.’
Quicker than a half-asleep man should be capable of, my guest rolls onto his back and grabs my offending limb, strong fingers squeezing my ankle as sleepy eyes level me with an unimpressed look. ‘Stop kicking me.’
I try to wriggle free only for his grip to tighten – I watch his thumb stroke the fine bones of my ankle only for it to make my head hurt worse. I shift my gaze to the heavy-lidded one fixed on me. ‘Why are you on the floor?’
‘For the sake of my sanity.’
I frown. ‘What?’
‘Never mind.’ Squeezing once more, Heath releases me and pushes himself upright, the scent of him invading my senses as his upper body flops against my bed. ‘How’re you feeling?’
‘Wonderful.’
He lifts his head enough to flash a grin. ‘You look it.’
With a snort that makes my head throb, I flick him on the forehead. ‘Shut up.’
A low chuckle momentarily soothes all of my aches. Shifting again, Heath struggles to his feet only to make my mattress dip as he perches beside me. I frown again as I peer up at him through squinted eyes, déjà vu tickling the back of my poor, hungover mind.
We sat like this last night, I think. Or some way similar to this.
Me curled in a pathetic ball, him looming over me.
He . . . he stroked my hair, I think. Said something that made me feel warm, except that doesn’t really track because there’s an odd, bitter ball lodged behind my ribcage, and I don’t know how it got there. ‘What happened last night?’
Tired eyes crinkle at the corner as they squint. ‘You don’t remember?’
‘I remember lots of alcohol and bad dancing and Kai attempting to rumba, and then I’m out.’ I push myself upright with a loud groan and rake a trembling hand down my face. ‘Why? Did something happen?’
Those green eyes suddenly find something extremely interesting on my headboard. ‘Nah.’
Lie. Big fat lie. Something happened and he doesn’t want me to know, and if he doesn’t want me to know then it must’ve been—
Oh.
Oh, God. Oh fucking God.
It comes back to me like a slap to the face. Not a forgotten memory, but a repressed one. Deeply, deeply repressed, stuffed beneath a death-inducing dose of mortification and someone else’s regret.
What does he know, Dani?
We shouldn’t have done that.
I’m not kissing you like this.
Face red-hot, I quickly look away. My cringe melts into a frown when my gaze lands on red, scabbed skin. ‘What happened to my knee?’
‘You tripped up the stairs.’
Of course I did. ‘Great.’
Heath drops to an elbow so he can stroke the curve of my knee gently, and there it is again. That pesky déjà vu. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’ I oh-so-nonchalantly shift myself out of his reach. ‘Must’ve gotten back late if you passed out here.’
‘You asked me to stay.’
‘Oh.’ Fuck. I was hoping I was mis-remembering that. But, no, this whole awkward ordeal really is my own doing. Great. Fantastic.
God, I’m never allowed to drink again.
Stomach bubbling at the mere thought of alcohol, I swallow hard before forcing myself out of bed.
I ignore the wave of nausea that washes over me, I ignore the man who yawns and stretches and lazily gets up only to perch on the edge of my bed, I ignore everything that isn’t the top left drawer of my dresser, and the plethora of swimsuits inside it.
‘What’re you doing?’
Plucking out a plain black one-piece, I wave it in the air with a grunt. ‘Getting ready.’
‘For?’
‘Practice.’
‘You’re not seriously going.’
I half-turn to shoot him a scrunched look. ‘You’re not seriously surprised.’
‘Dani, you can take one morning off.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Maybe you can.’
‘Oh, c’mon. You know you’re better than me.’
‘I do.’ A matching sweatsuit slung over my shoulder, I hip-check my dresser drawer shut and start picking through the toiletries littering the surface. ‘Because I don’t take mornings off. You’re that good all on your own.’
‘It’s a genetic gift.’
I huff, that signature sarcasm rubbing me the wrong way this morning.
‘It’s one practice,’ he presses, and, fuck, if that doesn’t jab at me too. ‘It’s not that serious.’
‘For you, maybe.’ My scalp pulls as I wrangle my hair into a too-tight ponytail, and I blame the ensuing tension headache for my next question coming out quite so snippy. ‘Is anything serious for you?’
Slowly sitting up, Heath blinks. ‘Woah.’
‘What? It’s just a question.’
‘Kind of a pointy question.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s me. Pointy.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing is wrong with me.’
‘Is this about yesterday?’ he asks carefully, and my entire body locks.
I only marginally relax when he clarifies, ‘Your stepmom?’
And I stiffen right back up again when he adds, ‘What you told me about your dad?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You told me some fucked-up shit, Dani.’
‘That wasn’t fucked-up, Heath,’ I snap, instinct driving me to defend my dad. To defend myself. ‘That was hard work.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
I scoff a mean, nasty noise. ‘How would you know?’
Ever-so-slightly, Heath flinches. ‘You think I don’t work hard?’
‘I think you don’t work hard enough.’
‘Why? Because I don’t put swimming first over everything else in my life? Over my happiness? Over my health? Because, God forbid, I actually have a life?’
‘Fuck you. I put swimming first because I have to. I have to work to be the best. I don’t have all of this God-given talent, this genetic fucking gift, or the luxury to just squander it, and it’s infuriating that you do.
It’s insulting, and it’s fucking disrespectful that you don’t respect what you can do, what I do.
There are people that would kill for your talent. I would kill for it. I would kill you.’
‘I don’t believe that. I don’t believe anything that just came out of your mouth. You put swimming first because someone told you that you had to. You swim because someone else wanted you to. Someone else put swimming before you, and now it’s all you know how to do.’
‘You don’t know anything about my dad.’
‘I know what you told me.’
‘I was drunk.’
‘But you weren’t lying, were you?’
My breath is a sharp, painful rattle. As defensive as the arms I wrap around myself, the chin I lift high, the eye roll I pair with a suffering sigh.
‘Fine, Heath, you win. He was a shitty dad with shitty parenting skills and even shittier coaching methods, but he was my dad. Everything he did was only because he wanted me to be better.’
‘He should’ve wanted you to be happy, Dani.’
He says it so calmly, so evenly, nothing accusatory about it, just pure, sad honesty, yet I bristle like he just spat on my dad’s grave. Like he just spat on me. ‘You have no right to talk about him like that.’
‘I have no right to care about you?’
‘That—’ Frustration leaves me in a huff, my scalp tingling as I rake my hands through my hair.
‘I know, okay? I know it wasn’t just hard work, I knew it wasn’t, and I know it wasn’t okay, but he’s dead, Heath.
What do you want me to do? Dig him up and make him pay?
Spend the rest of my life resenting him?
Because that doesn’t hurt him, Heath, it hurts me.
It makes me feel guilty because he gave up his life for swimming as much as I did.
He never missed a meet, he spent every free second coaching me, he took out a loan so we could move to a different school district because they had a better swim team.
He gave me everything I needed to succeed, and I’m supposed to hate him because he didn’t ask first? ’
‘That’s not what I’m saying, honey. I just . . . you don’t owe him the rest of your life.’
Don’t I? a meek, young voice in the back of my head whispers, shaky and unsure. Don’t I owe him at least a little bit of it? ‘I need to go.’
‘Do you want to?’
I don’t answer. I don’t have one. I just repeat myself, and I lock myself in the bathroom, and by the time I come out, Heath is gone.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m upset he actually left.
Hours later, I storm out of the pool complex with someone humming the Jaws theme tune in my wake.
As the rest of my team snickers, I ignore all of them, incapable of even conjuring a withering look to shoot over my aching shoulder.
Or, rather, I’m perfectly capable, I just fear I might do something worse than just look.
Something murderous. Something to alleviate the unrelenting frustration bubbling beneath my skin, the fucking mortification that forms on the heels of the shittiest practice of my life.
‘What the hell is wrong with you today?’ my coach screeched, more than once, and I wish the answer was my hangover.
I wish my poor times and languid strokes had something to do with a throbbing headache and a sensitive stomach and the fucking twinge in my shoulder that won’t go away no matter how steadfastly I ignore it.
I wish more than anything in the entire world that it wasn’t a boy plaguing me.
A stupid fucking boy, burrowed into every single crevice of my brain, distracting me exactly the way my ex claimed he would, and, fuck, it was like Ben knew.
He knew exactly what was going on in my head, and all his sideways smirks and self-satisfied huffs and a barely audible told ya made me want to crack his head against the pool tiles.