Chapter 35
CHAPTER
VAGUELY, I RECALL a hand yanking me upward, being hauled from the pool onto a cold deck, rolled over like a sack, hands thwacking my back until I retched a stream of chlorinated water and the Clif Bar I ate on the way to the pool onto Luc’s flip-flops.
Now I’m on my back, staring up at the cluster of people and dogs around me.
Somehow Sally got out of the pool. She whimpers a few inches from my head, tail between her legs, entire body shaking like a leaf. She thought I was leaving her.
“Should I call nine-one-one?” Parker Posey’s owner asks, glasses fogged, worry etched deep on his face.
I’m beyond mortified. Luc is beside me and rubs my arm. “I’m okay,” I say and sit up, eyes trained on the tile pool deck. The group slowly disperses, goes back to their dogs. Sally scrambles forward and puts her head in my lap.
Someone brings a beach towel, and Luc wraps it around me. “Sally tried to get you, but the life vest made her too buoyant,” he explains.
A furtive glance, and I see Luc is soaked, too. He pulled me out. Again, I feel humiliated.
Luc glances at the deep end, then asks, “What happened?”
There’s no way to hide from this. “I don’t know how to swim.”
His eyes widen. “Really?”
“Circe took lessons as a toddler.”
“Why didn’t you take them, too, then?”
I want to disappear. “There was always a lifeguard at the beach or club.”
I’ve spent almost seventeen years curating my life on LivLoud, showcasing family vacations that mostly showed Bruce and Circe in the water while I feigned an ear infection or cold, hashtags that trumpeted a happiness I didn’t always feel, and company holiday parties where I was always afraid that I was on the verge of a gaffe.
So much effort. So many lies. For whom? The answer is a kick to the gut. People who never even cared about me.
“Penn?”
“If I took lessons,” I say quietly, “they’d know.”
“Know?”
“That I didn’t belong.”
“You’re complicated,” Luc says.
I steal a glance at him. “Is that a horrible thing?”
“Simple is boring.”
His kindness makes the tears I’ve kept at bay spill over. They join the runnels of pool water still dripping from my hair.
“I don’t know how to cook,” Luc says. “On dates, I used to order out, then hide the cartons and say I’d made the meal.”
I still can’t look at him. “That’s not the same.”
“Undeniably, it’s less deadly,” Luc jokes. “But I was embarrassed all the same. What grown man doesn’t know how to make a simple meal?”
Finally, I meet his eyes. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom?”
“Cooking was a box of cereal and milk.”
“Your dad?”
“Ate out with his buddies,” Luc says, “Then came home and they fought. Rinse and repeat. I’d blast rock music.”
“Your childhood was complicated, too.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I burn pretty much everything, even toast. That’s why Postmates is on speed dial.”
“I could teach you how to cook,” I tentatively offer.
“If you let me teach you how to swim,” he counters.
Luc helps me to my feet, then gingerly picks up his soiled flip-flops.
“Sorry about that.”
“No worries.”
We walk to a shower on the far wall, Frank and Sally trailing, and he rinses the vomit from his shoes, doesn’t look at me when he says, “You scared the hell out of me. I just found you again.”
If I didn’t feel like such a loser, that comment would make me soar.
We’re both too wet to get the lunch we’d planned. Back on the sidewalk, cold air replaces the pool’s humid warmth. My jeans and sweatshirt cling and when the wind kicks up, I shiver. “I’d better head home and into a hot shower.”
Luc shifts from foot to foot, then says, “My place is a block away.”