Chapter 4 #3
Gabe wasn’t fine, obviously. He wasn’t fine when Anya showed up out of the blue.
He wasn’t fine when she swam back and forth in front of him for what felt like hours while he read the same paragraph of his novel over and over and didn’t absorb a word, her curls rippling in the water, her body undulating like a damn mermaid.
He wasn’t fine when she started singing a haunting little tune under her breath (was she literally a siren?
was that what was happening?), and he certainly wasn’t fine when she climbed out of the pool dripping wet, visibly freezing with goosebumps running all the way down her body, that soaked red bikini concealing basically nothing of the curves beneath it.
He felt so humiliated that seeing her like that immediately gave him an erection—the guilt of the way he’d behaved in Ohio combined with the nakedness of how his body responded to her made him feel like he needed to run and hide.
But since standing wasn’t an option given what was happening in his swim trunks, the best he could do was roll onto his side and pretend to read.
At dinner, Anya sat at the opposite end of the table from him, which was both a disappointment and a relief.
She didn’t talk much (not like her), but she laughed a fair bit, her throaty little rapid-fire cackle.
Gabe tried to focus on his conversation with Kyle and Ben—about their various races, what they wanted to do next—but every time he caught a peal of Anya’s laughter, he couldn’t think about anything else.
And now he could hear her walking down the hall, coming to spend the night in his bedroom. He hurried to pull on gym shorts, sort of wishing it was appropriate to wear jeans to bed instead.
The door was open, but Anya still knocked softly as she came inside, wearing oversized gray sweatpants and a boxy black tee with a New York Mets logo. Her hair was pulled back as usual, and her face looked fresh and a little red, like she’d just scrubbed it clean.
“Welcome to FAO Schwarz.” He waved a hand at the shelves of toys and games. “Can I interest you in a round of Hungry Hungry Hippos?”
She gave him a tight smile. “I was always more of a Trouble girl myself. Because it’s, you know…”
“Pop-o-matic?” Gabe offered.
“That’s the one.” She looked so uncomfortable. Gabe felt like he might die.
“Listen—” he started.
“This is so weird,” she blurted at the same moment he started speaking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.”
“No! No, this is weird,” he agreed. “And not even because it feels like that shelf of stuffed gorillas is looking at us.”
Anya turned to face the gorillas. “Oh my god, why are they so focused? Do you think they’re, like, gorilla versions of Jane Goodall, and they’re studying us?”
“Humans in the mist,” Gabe joked, and Anya gave him a smile, which he took as encouragement. “The political operatives are exhausted and a tad bit tipsy, which makes them even less equipped than usual to handle awkward social interactions.”
“What the hell was that voice?” Anya laughed, and Gabe fucking loved the sound of it.
“David Attenborough, obviously.”
“Obviously? He’s British, and that was— I don’t know what that was. Australian? But not?”
“Naur.” Gabe exaggerated the accent even more, hoping to make her laugh again, but her face grew serious instead.
“Look, clearly neither of us is thrilled that the other is here.” Anya squared her shoulders and spoke directly. “As for sharing a room, I told Kira I’d be happy to sleep on the couch, so if you’re at all uncomfortable, that offer stands.”
“I told her the same thing,” Gabe said. “If anyone’s gonna sleep on a couch, it’s me.”
“How chivalrous.” Anya rolled her eyes, and Gabe clenched his jaw. How was it that no matter what he said to her, it was always wrong? “There are six beds in here, so I’m good if you are. You don’t snore, do you?”
“Not that I’ve been told,” Gabe quipped, and Anya snorted.
“I’m gonna sleep by the board games,” Anya told him. “Have fun with the gorillas.”
She climbed into the bottom bunk nearest the door and flipped on a little bedside light. She’d brought a paperback; Gabe didn’t recognize the title, but it looked like one of those fantasy novels she’d once told him she liked.
“I’ll get the light then?” Gabe asked.
“If you want,” she said without looking up from her book, like it made no difference whatsoever.
After he flipped the switch, the only light left in the room was from Anya’s bedside lamp, which made it much easier to see the dark jungle through the glass wall.
It was a little eerie, Gabe thought—not ideal for a children’s room.
He walked across the room and climbed to the top bunk farthest away from Anya, thinking this would give them both the most privacy.
But the beds were angled in such a way that he had a direct line of sight to her bunk.
In the dim yellow light, he could see her lying on her back and reading, knees bent, eyes wide, lips slightly parted in total engrossment as she flipped page after page.
Gabe pulled the covers over his body. The bed wasn’t quite big enough for him, but he was so tired he didn’t care.
His eyelids felt heavy, and he remembered suddenly that he hadn’t slept properly in almost forty-eight hours.
Since then, he’d won an election. He’d flown to Vieques.
And Anya might hate him, but she was lulling him to sleep all the same, with her soft intakes of breath and the sound of her turning pages.