Chapter 13 Night Swimming
Night Swimming
Under different circumstances, being in Bexley Simon’s pool under a dome of black night sky would have been everything perfect.
It had been a long and quiet drive to the parking garage in Beverly Hills, followed by an even quieter drive in the passenger seat of Bex’s SUV, where Sam had ended up when Bex asked her to come back to her house so they could talk.
When they got there, Bex had wanted to check in with Vic first, and she’d left Sam alone.
Sam had gone out to the patio. Then, before she could think it through, she’d stripped to her bra and panties and slid into the still water.
After the day they’d had, the relief of the water was so good that Sam lost track of time, her mind synching with the hum of the pool skimmers and slowly, blissfully, emptying.
That was why it surprised her when she heard the water break near her, and she opened her eyes to watch Bex slide into the pool in a soft-looking bandeau bra and her tiny shorts.
She tipped her head back into the water.
The huge, fluffy mass of her hair dissolved like candy floss in a cocktail.
When she straightened, it streamed down her back in dark, shiny ribbons.
“Your hair,” Sam said, thinking of the trouble Bex usually took to protect it. “Didn’t you just wash it?”
“I did.” Bex sighed. “But I’m going to have to start over. No amount of product could rescue what happened to it today.”
This was Sam’s opening to talk about the day they’d had.
It was hard to remember that sometime at the beginning of it, she’d kissed Bex.
Especially because, here at its end, they’d had their first real fight as a couple at a strip mall in Van Nuys.
No surprise that it was about the circumstances that had been so difficult over the last six months.
And the likelihood those circumstances would continue.
Sam swirled her hand over the surface of the water. “Isn’t it interesting how everyone keeps assuming we’re detectives now? Even when we were in the middle of finding out how Jen died, I didn’t think of myself as a detective. Just someone who wanted to know what happened to a friend.”
“I was trying to figure out how to keep me and my sisters from falling apart.” Bex sounded thoughtful. “You were back in my life. It was messy. Isn’t a detective supposed to be someone who is in control? Obsessed only with the case? Or someone more mercenary, like Ashleigh?”
“Maybe you’re the kind of detective who solves people’s messy problems from a position of empathy with messy problems.”
“Maybe we are.” Bex smiled.
Sam wasn’t quite ready to talk about we. She needed to ease in, like she’d eased into the water. “You had a hard time finding your feet with Vic and Frankie once they finished high school.”
“Yeah, but everyone who parents does, I think. Family’s hard.
Adult family’s hard, too, just in a different way.
The actual problem was that I made the problem about me.
” Bex circled her face with her finger. “One of two things you absolutely cannot do when you are a parent. The other thing you can’t do is believe you’re uniquely cursed.
Thinking that means you try to hide your problems and only show the world the things about your family that are the same as everyone else’s. It’s stifling.”
Sam couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been acutely aware that her family wasn’t the same as everyone else’s.
She’d learned to make a show of it, as if she were the star of a sitcom about a little girl from Oakland.
Instead of having a mom, she had a dad and four older brothers!
Men everywhere! No wonder she turned out queer! Pause for the laugh track.
But Sam had felt stifled, too. Hidden.
Until the first season shooting Craven’s Daughter, when Bex had brought her sisters to the set. That was when Sam had learned family didn’t have to feel that way.
“What did you and Vic talk about before you came out to the pool?” she asked.
“She’s hurt. I don’t blame her. I told her I was sorry I had taken out my feelings on her, making her feel like she was annoying and messing up what I wanted to do with my time. She may or may not have forgiven me, but we did hug. It was a good hug.”
Sam centered her lower back over a jet, hoping it would work out the hard knot of muscle there. It was easier to talk in the murky shadows and lavender light from the pool. The water muted their voices, and the air was just cool enough to be a perfect contrast to the heated water.
“What feelings were you taking out on her?” She was jumping in feet-first now. No more easing.
Bex pulled the wet hank of her hair over her shoulder. “I felt like my plans had been upended.”
“You hate that.”
“I very, very much do, especially since my plans involved you dressed as you are right now, except with even less clothes.” Bex’s smile was a little bit sad.
“I didn’t plan on Macie showing up on my doorstep.
Or feeling out of touch with Frankie because I didn’t know about Haris.
Or hurting Vic’s feelings. Or having a constant low-level panic attack about this offer to go to New York. ”
“I didn’t have ‘detective’ on my bingo card for this week either. I don’t have ‘detective’ on any card, actually.”
Bex tipped her head back, looking at the sky. “What do you have in your cards, Sam? Seems like you’ve been holding them pretty close to the chest.”
Sam liked the sharp shape of Bexley’s chin pointing at the stars. “I have. I’m sorry I kept my plans to myself. I genuinely don’t want to put on cowboy boots and tromp around a meadow admiring Bradley Wilhite’s beef cattle.”
“That’s real?”
“But then I think about how my agent had a baby last year and wants to buy a house, and all the other people in my circle who are looking out to make sure my bottom line stays healthy so their cut is enough to live on. It feels complicated.”
Bex lowered her gaze. She reached out her hand and let it settle over Sam’s hipbone, where the cool press of her fingers sent a sweet throb through Sam’s middle.
“You’re empathetic. I love that about you.
But you and I both know you’re the one who has to live with the decisions you make, not your team or your staff. ”
“I do know that.” She stroked her fingertips over Bex’s wrist. “The thing I liked about Theomina is that she’s all values and violence. If they’re going to throw her away on Wilhite, I guess I’d just as soon not be a part of it.”
“And you despise him.”
“There’s that.” Sam cupped Bex’s elbow in her palm.
“Follies, though. I thought we had enough history together that you would come straight to me and tell me about this amazing thing happening to you, and we would open a bottle of champagne. Not fight in front of a morally gray private investigator’s office. ”
“I had a weak moment,” Bex said. “There’s too many divorce ghosts in that office.
” The ropes of her hair were plastered across her shoulders.
She closed the rest of the space between them, laying her wet cheek against Sam’s neck, and pressed a kiss there.
“I’m sure of you, Sam. Not knowing how we’ll do this next part in our relationship doesn’t keep me from trusting you or from wanting to see what you’re going to do next.
I’ve already preordered all the Theomina action figures from the movie.
I can’t wait for the premiere. I told Vic she can dress me.
She promised corsetry.” Bex rose to her tiptoes and kissed the corner of Sam’s mouth.
Sam reached out to lift a long, dripping lock of Bex’s hair, running her finger down it and then resting it against Bex’s bare collarbone.
She moved closer. Hearing Bex pull in a breath made Sam warm in new places.
She dipped her head down to taste the pool water off Bex’s collarbones, then kissed her cool skin, taking a moment completely separate from the twist in her middle that reminded her nothing was settled about what came next for either one of them.
Nothing except that there would be a both of them.
For now, it felt like enough.
“Bex!” Vic yelled, her voice coming through the French doors that led into Bex’s room. “I’m having another emergency! I got into your shower, but I forgot to bring a towel. I require rescue!”
Bex shook her head. “How did she survive when I was away?”
“She did fine,” Sam said. “She’s just getting all the love she wants now that you’re here.”
Bex swam to the edge of the pool. She put her hands behind her on the deck and levered herself out of the water with a single effortless push that reminded Sam she was a dancer, with a dancer’s control of her movements. Sam swallowed at the sight of the small, wet clothes clinging to her body.
“I will give her the towel,” Bex said wearily. “I need to call Frankie. I need to wash my hair again. And sleep. You’re—”
“I’m going to head out.” Sam took note of the angry dimple sinking into Bex’s cheek. “Don’t look like that. I’ll call in the morning. We’ll figure it out.”
Her voice was the one she often used in tough situations. Laid-back, go-with-the-flow Sam.
It made her chest ache to hear how it sounded.
She walked to the edge of the pool, close enough to see the furrow in Bex’s forehead. Bex looked like she might be about to say something else, but then Vic shouted her name again. She stood up with a sigh and started walking toward the French doors.
Sam couldn’t leave it like that. “I do want to stay the night,” she blurted.
“If that’s what you were going to ask. But I know you still have things to do and think about here.
You weren’t just away from me all this time.
You were away from your sisters. Your life.
But here’s the thing, Bex. No matter what, I’ll be here.
I’m not going anywhere. Whatever else gets upended in your life or mind, I’m your constant. ”