Gage
Chapter nineteen
As requested, Olivia is waiting for me by the dock after sunset. She’s wearing a sporty two-piece swimsuit with running shorts over it and holding a towel.
She sees me approaching and calls out, “What’s this all about?”
I wait until I’m only a couple of feet away, then I grin. “Night swim.”
The smile that lights up her face is immediate. “Ooh, fun!”
I take her hand and start pulling her toward the dock. “I’d like it to be acknowledged for the record that, despite my baser instincts, I did ask you to wear a swimsuit tonight.”
“Very gentlemanly of you.”
“If, however,” I continue, “you prefer not to wear it, I’m totally game.” I turn my head and smile at her wolfishly.
She laughs. “Swimsuits are a must.”
I heave an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”
“That was a good try, though.” She pats my shoulder.
She drops her towel onto the dock and shimmies out of her shorts and sandals. I realize I’m watching her too intently, my mind and eyes wandering where they shouldn’t, so I clear my throat and focus on my own preparations.
I pull off my shirt and am pleased to find Olivia staring at my bare chest. I flex a little to show off.
She blinks out of her daze and moves toward the side of the dock by the cordoned-off swimming area. I follow. We peer over the edge at the water below, almost black in the low twilight.
“Do you think it’s cold?” Olivia whispers.
I chuckle. “I mean, I’m hoping so. Cooling off is kind of the point.”
She stares down at the water. “It looks so dark.”
I nudge her with my elbow. “Come on. You’re not scared, are you?”
“Of course not,” Olivia says quickly, glaring at me.
“Then jump in.”
“I’m about to.”
“Okay, go ahead.” I nudge her again.
She elbows me back. “You haven’t jumped yet either.”
“Fine. At the same time?” She nods, and I take her hand, intertwining our fingers. “One … two … three…”
We jump together. The water is refreshingly cool, but fortunately not freezing.
Olivia laughs when she surfaces. “It feels so nice!”
I shake my head rapidly like a dog, sending droplets of water from my hair flying everywhere.
Olivia shrieks and dunks under the water, popping up again a little farther out.
Even though I’m closer to shore than she is, I yell out, “Race you to the swim raft!”
Without waiting for her response, I start pumping my arms and kicking toward the small wooden platform fifty feet from shore. It floats on the outskirts of the swimming area, anchored to the lake floor underneath by ropes.
I hear Olivia splashing behind me as she tries to catch up. Suddenly I feel her fingers wrap around my ankle as she tries to yank me back. Her jerking is not very effective, though, and definitely doesn’t stop my forward movement.
She moves her hand a little higher, and a sharp snap of pain has me bending in two as she charges ahead of me. She pulled my leg hair!
I recover quickly and start swimming again, but it’s too late.
Olivia reaches the raft before me, crowing triumphantly. “I beat you!”
I arrive at the raft and rest my elbows and forearms on the platform. “Only because you cheated.”
Olivia smirks. “I didn’t cheat! That’s called resourcefulness.”
“Seemed an awful lot like cheating,” I mutter.
She reaches over and tickles my chin with her fingers. “Aw, don’t be mad.”
She runs her knuckles up and down the scruff on my cheeks, looking damn near perfect, mostly submerged in the water with moonlight shining around her. How could I be mad?
I flash her a smile. “I don’t get mad, babe. I get even.”
She snorts. “Ooh, I’m so scared.”
“Okay, fine. But when you least expect it, I’ll strike.”
She laughs softly, folding her arms on the top of the platform and resting her head against them. I lean my head in, too, and we hang there facing each other like that in silence for a few minutes, kicking our legs gently to stay afloat.
Olivia speaks first. “I realized you never answered my question about why you’re working here this summer. I know you said that Maggie went to camp here, but you were probably making more money working at your dad’s office.”
I don’t respond right away. Instead, I weigh my need to protect my heart against my intense desire to share everything with Olivia.
I want so badly to have as strong an emotional connection as we do a physical one.
Despite agreeing to this whole “summer fling” thing, I want so much more of Olivia than her kisses, amazing as they are.
But she’s hurt me before, and it took me a really long time to get over her desertion.
I’m close enough to Olivia that even in the dark, I can see her pinch her eyes closed. “Never mind,” she backtracks. “You don’t have to answer that.”
But if she wants me to, I will. She could ask me for so much more than this, and I would give it to her happily. She could ask for everything, if only she wanted it from me.
I clear my throat. “No, it’s fine. Um, working at Camp Prairie Star has nothing to do with the money for me. I wanted to be in this place. Maggie did come here when she was a kid. It’s kind of a tradition in her family. They’ve been going to camp here for generations.”
Olivia nods. “You want to feel like you’re part of that tradition.”
I bobble my head. “Yes, but there’s more to it than that. You know, right, that Maggie got pregnant with us when she was fifteen and she was sixteen when we were born?” I look at her for confirmation.
“Mm-hmm. Annie told me.”
“Well, her last summer at camp was the summer before she started high school. She was fourteen. She told me and Annie that this place, Camp Prairie Star, was the last place she remembers still feeling like a kid, feeling like the world was open to her with endless possibilities and promise. She had to grow up quickly after that.”
Olivia reaches one of her hands over to cover mine. “She was so young.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “She was, which is why I understand logically why she felt giving us up was her best option. But …” I trail off, trying to gather my thoughts and the best way to express them.
Another part of my hesitation is that the only other person I’ve ever shared these thoughts with is my therapist, Dr. Francine. I tried to talk to Annie, but it was a conversation she didn’t want to have. I feel awkward and ungrateful at the thought of talking to my parents about it.
Olivia shifts closer to me, aligning our bodies as we hang on the raft side by side. Her hip fits perfectly in the space above mine.
It would be a relief to air my conflicting emotions about my adoption to Olivia, for someone else in my life to see that part of me. At the same time, trusting her with my deepest feelings is terrifying, especially because she’s left me before.
I blow out a breath of air and take a leap of faith.
“But I can’t stop obsessing about the unfairness of it all.
It’s not right that she had to hand her newborn babies off to a stranger.
It’s not fair that Annie and I … that I had to be separated from the mother that grew me and nurtured me before I was even born. ”
Olivia’s forehead wrinkles. “You were only a few days old, though. You can’t possibly remember.”
I shift slightly away. “No, I don’t remember, exactly.
But I still feel it, and that feeling’s always been in me.
A feeling like … it’s hard to explain, but a feeling like I was left to fend for myself, that the one person who was supposed to be there to protect me was gone.
If she could disappear, what would stop everybody else from doing the same? ”
Olivia’s quiet for a few moments, processing. “I didn’t know you felt that way about your adoption,” she says finally. “Annie’s never mentioned that it bothers her.”
I shrug. “I don’t think it does. But that doesn’t mean it can’t bother me,” I say gently.
“No, of course. Sorry.” She rests her chin on top of my bare shoulder.
“And while I’ve always had that feeling of something not being right inside me, I didn’t actually know how to put words to it until recently.
I took a developmental psychology class in college where we talked about attachment theory and how abandonment and grief can impact secure attachments between parents and children. It all felt so … familiar.”
“So, what about your parents? Dawn and Ted, I mean. You don’t feel like you … like you ‘attached’ to them?”
“No, I do. I love my mom and dad. They’re the best. But I also felt like I was always trying to prove to them that I was worth keeping.
Not consciously, but I did well in school because that made my mom proud, and I worked hard at baseball because that made my dad proud.
They never suggested that I needed to earn my keep or anything, but that feeling inside me was driving me. ”
Olivia’s quiet again. “You’re really self-aware about all of this,” she says softly.
I chuckle mirthlessly. “That took time. There’s a term used in the adult adoptee community: coming out of the fog.
It means you’re ready to acknowledge and start to deal with your negative emotions around your adoption instead of repressing them.
Once I came out of the fog with the help of that psychology class, I felt really confused and kind of angry.
I started seeing a therapist who was familiar with and competent in adoption issues.
She’s helped me talk through a lot of this stuff. ”
“I had no idea, but Gage … I’m proud of you. I wish I would have been there to support you through all that.”
I don’t know why she says that, because we both know she wasn’t there because she cut me out of her life, abandoned me after high school.
What I don’t tell her is that her leaving me is what made that niggling feeling inside me grow and fester so that when I read the part in my developmental psychology textbook about attachment theory, it resonated.
That feeling that told me that relationships are not permanent, and the people I love would leave me, got louder because of her.
Of course, she was a teenager and couldn’t possibly understand the implications of her actions back then. I didn’t even know at the time why I reacted the way I did.
I toss my head to clear my thoughts. Although all too often it doesn’t feel like it, high school graduation and the way that Olivia and I parted ways all those years ago are all in the past.
Right now, in the present, I’m with Olivia, and I can pretend that she’ll never leave me again so I can enjoy this time with her.
Speaking of which, I dip my head to place a lingering kiss on Olivia’s forehead. “Thanks,” I tell her.
She tilts her chin up to give me better access to her lips, but instead, I kiss her temple and then her cheekbone right under her eye. From there, I taste her skin down her jawline and onto her neck.
She shifts even closer and kicks her feet in the water for the momentum to wriggle her body up, so our faces are inches apart.
With a smirk, I kiss her neck again, and she whimpers, clearly wanting my lips on hers.
So, I bring my mouth close enough that I’m hovering next to her lips. And then even closer.
At the last second, instead of kissing her, I push myself away from the raft and start swimming back to shore.
I laugh as her frustrated grumble follows me across the water.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” she shouts after me.
I turn my head enough to call back, “That’s what you get for cheating in the race!”
“Gage!” she roars, and I hear the splash of her chasing me down.
That’s where I want us to be, honestly—her chasing me for a change. Because while my little trick is revenge for her pulling my leg hair earlier, it’s also maybe a little bit for abandoning me all those years ago, too.