Drowning in You (28 page)

“
Shut up, will
you?” she asks of me.

Well, now I know for sure she’s
most definitely had at least one drink while I was upstairs. She’s
nuts.

“
Mmm,” she
grunts into my ear, pushing down on me. Yup, she realizes exactly
the effect she’s having on me.

She tangles
her fingers through my hair, and pulls my mouth to hers while she
hungrily bites at me for more. I grip onto her waist and pull her
down on me hard. It’s painful thrusting her on me when my shorts,
sweats and her bathers separate us. I need them gone.
Now
.

I’d much rather rip them off,
but not like this. Not when she’s not my girlfriend, and not when
things are too unsteady for her to be my girlfriend. Not while
she’s not herself after that drink and certainly not with her
father dead for only about two weeks.

“
Give it,” she
breathes in my ear. “Come
on
,” she begs.

Certainly
, I think by grabbing her
waist and ignoring all my thoughts to do anything otherwise,
pushing her back down on me until it hurts so good and I don’t even
know what I’m doing. I grab her hair and thrust it back so her
chest arches into me, her head dipping back, her breasts against my
chest, nipples hard nubs against me, feeling like we’re already
skin-to-skin with these wet clothes.

Stop
, some part of me thinks.
I have important things to say
. Always, somehow, my pull to Charz is as instinctual and
innate as my need for sugar when I’m having a hypo. It’s that or
total collapse. As my hypo overrides my rational thoughts, so does
Charz. I’ve never been a whipped boyfriend and I’m not Charz’s
boyfriend to begin with, but she dips her head back, arches her
gorgeous body, and I am easily reduced to an obedient
child.

Her neck is so beautiful, so I
kiss a spot just under her ear, under her chin, and unable to pull
myself away I kiss a path down her sleek neck and back up to that
spot that makes me lose every thought except for the way her
breasts and hips curve and, well, everything in between.

“
Don’t make it
stop, ever,
please
,” she begs, prying open my drawstrings.

That’s when it hits me—of how
horrible I am by taking advantage of this girl I love. That tone in
her voice wasn’t sexual desire, but a human longing for need, for
help. Yes, in this moment, I love every bit about her from the way
she fiddles with her hair to how she could look stunning in an
over-sized T-shirt and baggy sweats.

And taking advantage of her
when she’s so delicate like this is wrong.

“
Charz,” I
pant, forcing myself to think of my mother naked because holy crap,
yep, it does the job. I pull Charz off me, and take a moment to
clear my head. “We really need to talk.”

“
Oh, Dex, you
see…” Charz drawls on, “You can do me and then go back to Raych.
Because I’ve come to realize I don’t mind. I really—”

“
I—I can’t do
this with you,” I say, suddenly sobering.

Charz turns away and waltzes
out of the water, leaving me realizing I’m not only trembling, but
also slurring and off balance. I was so occupied with the computer
thing and Elliot and then her all over me…shit.

“
I’m not hurt,
Dex. I’m not. Don’t worry,” she says, oblivious.

I try not to startle her, so I
take a step forward, arms outstretched for balance. It’s moments
like this my pride isn’t a concept anymore, because survival mode
takes over.

Blackness swirls in my head,
clouding my vision. My feet slip, dropping my shoulders under, but
I manage to straighten.

Right then, I realize I could
slip under this water, and it would be quite possible for Charz not
to notice—just walk away. My head would be too heavy and my mind
too slow, not processing, to make me stand up. Beyond that, when I
have a bad hypo, my muscles relax. They’d give way and under the
surface my cries for help would send a surge of water down my
throat and I’d die. I’d lie under the water, crying for help,
drowning, as blackness wiped away my vision. Maybe the last thing
I’d know is feeling the water holding me under, limbs useless, all
spent from energy, as my hypo spins me out until I finally fall
into a coma.

And. No. One. Would. Know.

It’s a scary feeling. One that
reminds me of how my brother, Jack might have felt when he and Lily
slammed into that tree.

What do you want most in that
last moment? I know I need Charz and forever will.

That’s when I realize what Dad
and Walter were talking about. This thing between them. Mustering
every ounce of energy I have left, I splash to stand and say,
“Charz. Help.”

She turns around, seeing how
quickly my body has betrayed me. This useless, diseased thing that
I lose control of in an instant. I have a million things to tell
her, from all about Jack to how much I love her, so I try again,
“Help!” and she dives in, scooping me up and pushing me to the
edge.

My head lolls
back, and everything seems so happy and dreamy, yet there’s the
side of my brain screaming panic, shrieking at me to get my ass out
of there and find some candy
now
. But that side isn’t in control
anymore. My sugar has plummeted farther than ever. I know there
must be damn near none in my body now, because the slightest of
movement washes blackness over my eyes.

I’m so, so tired, so I count
backward from one hundred. I get to ninety-eight before it’s all
too hard, so I go for the straight one, two, three. I can’t fall
into a coma if I’m counting, can I?

I close my eyes, because the
sparks of light up in the hazy roof hurt too much and make me
dizzier.

I don’t know why, but she is
ramming me against something hard. Again, she says something, and
it takes ages for my mind to process this as, “Come on, Dex. Get
up!” and I realize she must not be able to drag me out of the
water. My dead weight must be almost triple of hers.

We glide to the side, me
counting from one again, because I can’t keep up, because behind my
lids everything is so dreamy and sleep has never been so
tempting.

More sounds, but I don’t know
what she’s saying. I hear the words, and I know them, but their
meanings are lost. Meaning is something that happens in the mind,
and now, with blackness having taken over my vision, and realizing
it’s all too late to go and grab some candy, three things occur to
me.

One, I’m running away from my
issues by not caring enough about my diabetes in the same way that
Charz chose to drown herself in alcohol and lies tonight to escape
Walter’s death.

Two, I hope she can get me out
of here and to a hospital in time, so I can tell her about what
really went on with her dad and my dad.

And three, I black out before I
remember ever leaving her pool.

26. Ask. Answer.

Charlee

After heaving at Dex’s body for
what feels like forever, I finally lug him out of the pool, and my
hands feel weird, as if they’re still pulling at him. My cell in
one hand, I hover over his body with my other to his chest because
I need to feel the rise and fall as the line connects. I need to
feel him. I am directed to ambulance services, one is dispatched to
my house, and an officer stays on the line with me.

“
Is he awake,
Charlee?”

Fingers trembling, I touch his
face to poke some sort of life out of him, but all my hand does is
slap his unconscious body. Seeing his wet hair splayed across his
face, I smooth it two times after it’s back because the motion
feels right. Seeing his soaked clothes and how big he suddenly
seems reminds me of my mother’s lithe, broken, small body, because
death, you see, comes in any form, in any size.

I almost, almost, let the cell
slip from my hand and give in to the pull inside my gut to fly away
from here, fly away from death because Dad and Mom are
here—bleeding and immobile, and I’m not ready to face that yet.

“
Charlee, it
is critical if you can tell me if he’s responding to your touch or
voice.”

“
N-no,” I
stammer. “No, he’s…”
Dead.

She asks me if
he was involved in an accident, what happened directly before this.
Well, he just dropped, is what. When a sack of potatoes falls, it
tries to spread but the sack holds the guts inside. Dex? His soul
left this body before he gave way. In my arms he was faint but
awake, now he’s
nothing
and I don’t get it.

“
Do you know
of any pre-existing conditions?”

“
No!” I cry
out. “He’s really fit. He goes to the gym and doesn’t drink Coke.”
These are the things that come to mind now. It’s the little things
that stick with you forever, while you wait for death. And it’s
horrible, because I know the officer isn’t asking me for pesky,
irrelevant answers but it’s all that I can say. He’s perfectly
healthy, more than anyone else, I want to tell her.

Like my mother.

“
No epilepsy,
heart conditions, diabe—”

“
Yes!” I cry,
hearing that trigger.

“
He has
diabetes?”

“
Yes, yes. He
does.”

My eyes drop to Dex. I lower my
ear to his chest, but turn my face upward so he won’t be out of my
sight, and cup his cheek with my hand.

“
Type 1
diabetes?”

“
I don’t
know,” I say. “But he likes my chocolate cookies and rum balls
sometimes when he says he gets a hypo. Wait,” I find myself saying.
“Yes. Type 1.”

“
Please check
if you have anything semi-liquid to rub on Dex’s lips.” I run to my
pantry, thankful to have the space because the panic was starting
to mess with my ability to think. I trip on my breath, but catch it
back once I get into the main rooms, away from the pool house. The
dense, chlorinated air and the shock had strangled my thoughts, but
now I’m cooler, away from the scene, helping while not having to
see the helpless situation I’m in. “Check for honey, sweetened
condensed milk—any thick liquid like that you can rub on his
lips.”

Lips? That won’t do anything! I
need to give him those rum balls or, or, I know I have Coke! “I
know I have Coke. Oh! I have cookies for him. Will they do?”

“
In Dex’s
state, he could choke on any forms of food or liquid. It’s crucial
that—”

“
I’ve got it!
Honey,” I say bolting back to Dex. My muscles fight me as I lunge
to him as fast as I can pump my legs. It’s as if my body is trying
to convince me to run out of this place.

If Dex
dies
. I gasp. If he…

I shake the honey bottle
downward in the air in three quick jabs, but the stuff is old and
almost solid. I wedge the phone between my ear and shoulder and
crush the bottle in my fist, shoving my fingers inside, and
scooping out honey. It dribbles over my fingers and spots Dex’s
shoulder.

“
Now wipe the
honey on his gums and tongue and mouth,” the paramedic
says.

I do this, swiping crazy
amounts of honey. I coo to Dex he’ll be okay, over and over.

The doorbell rings, and the
officer says to check if it’s the paramedics. It is, I tell her,
and hang up, only remembering to say thank you once I’ve ended the
call.

The paramedics rush to Dex’s
side, pulling out their gear.

“
He’s type 1
diabetic?” the male officer says.

“
Yes.”

If I wasn’t sure about the
seriousness of Dex’s condition before, I do now. I can tell that by
when they pull out a syringe, open a bright orange container and
stab it in the vial. You don’t go stabbing injections into someone
unless you have limited time to save their life.

The male officer is checking
Dex’s vitals, while the lady stabs this needle so long it must
spear right through to Dex’s bone, despite his huge arms.

That’s when my body gives out,
my head spins and I lose balance. Large hands catch me, and tell me
I’m fine.

Now look at me: Dex is dying
and I’m stealing his show. That’s how horrible I am. But these
minutes have taken hours and I cannot think. I cannot do anything
but listen to the soothing voice of some strange man telling me to
breathe deeply as my head spins, feeling a mask being suctioned to
my face and a sharp bite of air when I inhale.

It seems like the next moment
my head clears. There are a few voices as I come to.

The hand that
picks up my head and lifts me from ground is so familiar, the type
that instantly registers in your brain as
oh, it’s Dex
, that I know this before
opening my eyes and looking up.

“
Are you
okay?” we say at the same time.

“
Aren’t—why
aren’t you in hospital?” I say. He almost
died
!

“
Charz, baby.
This stuff happens to type 1 diabetics. These cool officers here
have done their job. I’m actually pinging here with this sugar
rush.” Dex sighs and grabs me against his chest. “But what’s
important is you saved me, Charz.”

Something snaps at this. I
didn’t save him! I had a shot or two of vodka, leaped into this
pool, ignored Dex trying to tell me he was having a hypo and almost
killed him. If I’m not a death omen, I don’t know what is.

I was selfish and wrong to
think I could bring Darcy home and everything would return to
normal after a few months, maybe a year. Tonight, watching Dex so
nearly lose his life under my responsibility has broken my heart.
I’m good at near drownings. I saved a little girl, my swimming
student, from a fear of water, yet I almost killed Dex.