Sylvie
“I’m realizing that I don’t really know how to get out of this spring.”
Knox’s knees are still up against his chest. “Well,” he says slowly, “I think you could probably just walk back the way you came.”
I flick water at him, and he ducks, grinning. “I’m serious! Do I ask you to turn around?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“If you have a bowl of soup you need me to eat one-handed.”
“You are a comic legend,” I tell him. “Really. No one has ever been funnier.”
“So we’re being literal, then? All it depends on is whether you want me to watch you get out.”
My ears are hot. “Do you have eyes on the back of your head?”
“Sure don’t.”
“Why else would I ask you to turn around, then?”
“I thought we still were talking about the hypothetical. You haven’t asked me yet. You’re asking me if you should ask me to turn around. I’m laying out the scenarios.”
“You’re a real visionary.”
“A forward thinker.”
“Honestly this is starting to feel like the kind of logic problem in math class that I’d need to watch a YouTube video on.” I sink lower in the water until it covers my chin, my hair spiraling out around me in corkscrews.
“Am I making you nervous?” He’s genuinely concerned.
“Maybe a little,” I allow.
“Honey, I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do. I promise you.”
This isn’t helping. Now I am thinking of all the things I want him to do.
“You look like a shark attack.”
I slink a little closer, so that this time when I splash him it hits him dead in the face. Winslow gets a little too, and does a machine-gun collar shake.
“Hey!” Knox says. “I thought we were trying not to get me wet.”
“I’ve walked out and back, and it’s only about three feet deep the whole time. A little mucky, but you won’t slip. I think you’d be fine.”
“Is that what you want? For me to get in?”
I don’t trust my voice. “Yes,” I say a little hoarsely.
“Turn around,” he says, and this time it’s not a debate.
So I hear him approach instead of seeing it—the hushed feet on sandy ground, Winslow scrabbling to his feet and Knox trying to tell him to “Stay, good boy, stay,” and it’s no use, because there, that there’s the dolphin sound of Winslow belly-flopping into the water, the breath as he paddles toward me, that’s Knox’s moving slowly, deliberately beside him and I know his cast is held up high above his head, I know his other hand is about to slip forward to touch my shoulder, maybe tangle in my hair and I—
A sound in the underbrush. Winslow bursting into his operatic K-9 unit bark.
A flashlight erupts and my shadow emerges out far ahead of me on the suddenly bright water, Knox’s shadow superimposed around it—we have four arms, two heads, and one territorial golden retriever, and we’ve been caught and I am naked in the woods.
Is this a flight response? I’m surging past Knox up and onto the bank and I can’t see the intruders, just hear some embarrassed scrabbling, the flashlight going wild over our heads—is it the police?
Can you get arrested for skinny-dipping?
—as I snatch up my dress and my shoes from the ground and is Knox behind me?
Make like Winslow, I think, escape, and yes, Knox is following, there’s the thunder of all eight of our feet down the path until we reach the trailhead, the parking lot, the van.
I pull on my dress, my head through the neck hole but whatever, open the door for Winslow to caper gleefully into the van and shake and shake and shake his wet all over everything.
When I finally catch my breath, I say, “Knox?”
“Yeah?” he says behind me.
“Are you decent?”
“That’s such a funny question.”
“Knox! Tell me!”
“Yes, I am wearing my jeans. Decently.”
When I turn to him I throw my arms around his neck. I feel electric. I feel like I could fly around the world using only my arms. “Wasn’t that insane?!?”
“Yeah, totally.”
“I’ve never felt adrenaline like that before.”
“For sure, no doubt.”
“Knox?”
“Yep.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve run naked through the woods, is it.”
“It’s my first time running naked through the woods with you,” he says, his mouth very close to mine.