Drowning in You (31 page)

He sprints up the stairs and I
seem to be gravitating to the pool room before I even decide where
I want to go. That place is my home.

It’s not until I trip and fling
my hands out to catch myself, narrowly missing a crash by catching
the back of a reclining chair, that I really come back. Looking
down, an inflatable beach ball has somehow planted itself in my
path. I kick it hard and it ricochets between walls, stopping in
front of the two French doors that lead out to the balcony.

Why, Mom? Why, Dad? Isn’t it
enough you’ve left me? Do I have to see this reminder of stinking
hot summer days in the pool house forever and ever? That every time
I see this ball, I see Dad counting how many times he can whack Mom
in the head before she gets really pissed off.

Collecting a breath and
exhaling, I grab the beach ball and put it aside. As I push open
the French doors, my predictable tear ducts give way. The tears
boil up, my cheeks on fire. They’re heavy, so heavy, and I almost
can’t stand—

Thump. Thump, thump.

The noise gets louder, going up
the stairs. Screaming voices join it and suddenly I don’t know what
I was about to do, but I sprint back to the front of the house.

Another smaller bag is planted
beside Darcy’s and dirty shoeprints are scattered along the tiles
and up the carpeted stairs.

I’ll kill him, is my first
thought. My second is to run up those stairs and thrust open his
bedroom door, or the games room door, wherever they are, like angry
people do in the movies.

Skipping up every other stair,
ears pricked for the source of the noise, I know where it’s coming
from before I get there. When I lunge at the door, it flies open,
and yeah, I feel like I’m starring in a movie. Except that I have a
strange feeling eating behind my lips, snarling these awful things
at me to yell at Darcy, telling me to scream things I’ve never
said. After a moment, when I take a breath, the air soothes me.

Three boys, including Darcy,
stare at me. I’d stare at me too.

At least I didn’t get
angry.

“
What’s…”

“
We’re
playing
, Charlee. Can you
get out?” Darcy says, finger pointed outside the games
room.

I look around at Marty, who’s
playing a full-body simulation game, and at his little brother
who’s on the other TV playing Warcraft. Their eyes bulge at me, me
who’s barged in like a crazy mother and almost flown off the
proverbial handle.

I clear my throat. “I thought
you said your friends weren’t coming over, Darce.”

Darcy responds
by winking at Marty.
Well?
I prod with my eyes.

“
I said I
wasn’t inviting my
friend
over,” he says, a grin across his Peter-Pan-happy
face.

“
So you
lied?”

“
No, I didn’t,
cuz these are my friend
s
.”

I bite my lip to hide my
amusement because, okay, my little brother can be so smart it’s
hard not to laugh at sometimes.

“
Ba-dum-bum,”
I say, banging invisible drums.

I walk away but when I reach
the door, my hand flies to the doorjamb, holding me in place. I
don’t know why I’ve stopped myself from walking out, but I do know
I started imagining the beach ball with the heart-breaking memories
along with it. At that moment, Marty cries out a self-professed
love for his godly abilities at virtual basketball, which
solidifies my feet in this spot.

“
May I join
this party?” I ask, spinning around.

The two-ten-year-olds give me a
long stare and a slack-mouthed nod, but it’s Marty’s little
brother, who at seven is able to say “yeah” without any surprising
tone.

Darcy’s on his iPad, which
couldn’t keep me interested if I tried, and I hate the thought of
killing people in any reality, so I pop on the game gear and step
on the plate that’ll simulate my actions onscreen to show Marty
some competition in basketball.

It takes half an hour, but
eventually I do tie my score with Marty, at which point he recruits
Darcy’s help to boost his team. Within a minute of Darcy joining
the game, I’m back to watching three-pointers and shots, instead of
making them.

With my new loss comes clarity.
I’m standing here with these white gloves and bodysuit on, a weak
attempt at what body armor might look like on me, flicking,
punching, and leaping in the air in front of a TV screen. Why am I
even bothering?

I drop my hands, and begin to
peel off a glove when a little voice next to me squeaks, “No,
wait!”

Turning, I see Marty’s little
brother there, dressed up in the same type of ridiculous white
gloves and bodysuit I’m in. Darcy stands parallel to Marty, his
little brother stands parallel to me and joins my team. Since age
has nothing to do with winning this game—I lose at twenty but my
ten-year-old brother and his friend can win—this little guy is a
legend. He shows me I’m reacting too quickly without focusing on
the basket, and shows me how to shoot better.

Another half hour goes by and
it’s fair to say that Darcy doesn’t know how to react to loss. He
promptly kicks me out of the games room, claiming he doesn’t know
why he let his dorky sister in here to begin with, and only emerges
a couple of hours after that when Marty and his brother’s parents
show up to take them home.

Once the sound of their car
fades into the distance, I whirl around to face Darcy, hands on my
hips.

“
Come on, be
cool, Charlee!”

“
Mr. Darcy
May, you bring those stomping feet and come back,” I say to him as
he attempts to run off.

He drags his feet back and
hangs his head, saying, “What?”

“
Come on.
Let’s grab a Coke.”

Darcy lifts
his head and joy spreads over his cheeks. The look shouts
really!?
And yes, really,
I mean it. I don’t know what I’m meant to do in this role, but my
sisterly urges have yet to be replaced by motherly ones.

Darcy has this thing about
going in the pool house. He only goes in of his own volition if he
a) can’t be bothered showering, b) it’s hot and he’s bored or c) an
alien has landed on earth. Quite ironic for a swimmer, but he only
gets in when he has to train. As today is none of those days, he
goes around the pool house, out on the fold-around balcony that
overlooks the reservoir in the distance.

Darcy falls into his favorite
chair, the one where the wood has actually been sanded away by his
butt over the years. “Just not diet,” he says, calling out to
me.

“
Then you can
guess what I’ll be bringing you,” I say, as Darcy incessantly begs
for me to pleasepleaseplease
not
bring him a diet Coke.

I step outside the doors and I
can’t believe it. The tease of a beach ball is back there, and this
time I go ass over head. My hands (more like the Cokes) manage to
catch my weight, but the rough surface of the pool house floor
grazes my hands and sets off a roar of laughter from my
brother.

“
Here,” I say,
handing Darcy his can, dusting my throbbing hands against my
thighs. “It’ll be a bit flat ‘cause of…” and I trail off, as he
doesn’t need a reminder about my fall to laugh at.

He inspects it 360 degrees
before popping the tab, waiting for the limited hiss of bubbles and
taking a swig.

“
Oh, give it
up,” I say, ignoring his face, which hasn’t lost its look of
elation since before my epic fall.

“
You’re Mom
now,” Darcy says.

Shaking my head at his sudden
topic change, I say, “I’m too angry at that ball to use my energy
to decipher what you’re saying.”

“
What’s
decipher?” he says.

We both give each other’s stare
another few seconds before turning away. I do want to explain to
him what decipher means, but some larger part of me is glad he’s
the one who doesn’t know what I mean, or that he’s kidding with me,
because I get him. One hundred per cent.

That ball is Dad and I’m Mom
now, the one who’s at the butt of the joke. Except I don’t know
when this joke will start being funny.

I’m trying. My, oh my, am I
trying to be Darcy’s cool sister and Darcy’s responsible parent and
Dexter’s non-girlfriend. Sometimes, like before, I think I’ll be
okay. Sometimes, when Dex is inches from my lips I lose all sense
of right and wrong and just know I can’t live without that guy.
Other times, I want to give up, throw it all away, and disappear.
Because I really don’t know if I can handle it all.

And then at times like now I’m
on a fence, and I have to make a choice. Do I go for what seems
right or what I want?

29. Uncover Us

Dexter

I ring Charz’s doorbell and
stand back in line with the bricks so she’ll have no excuse not to
answer. She’s been ignoring my calls so I’m coming to her.

But when the
door swings open, I’m whacked in the head by a plastic beach ball.
Darcy sniggers behind his hand, calls out behind him, “Looks like
it’s not you after all. Dex didn’t catch it. He’s going to be
forever
doomed
.”
He comes over to shake my hand then leaves me there.

Charz comes around the corner
wearing a tank-top and leggings that hug every inch of her, saying,
“No, he won’t because that means he’ll have to—”

That’s when she notices me. I
have the ability to shock her silent, and by the scowl on her
beautiful face, it’s not a good thing.

I trap my hands on either side
inside the doorjamb. “Okay, okay. Whoa. Slow down.” Nope, she keeps
stomping towards me. “No? Okay, let’s agree to disagree.”

I step in and
shut the door behind me. Charz crashes into my body and I catch her
by the waist. Guess she didn’t expect me to do
that
.

“
You’ll need
to go. Darcy and I are busy.”

Still clutching her waist,
hoping she doesn’t realize I’m testing how she reacts to my fingers
moving along her tank, I sneak a look past her shoulders, up the
stairs. “Looks like he couldn’t have been happier for me to come
and pull him away from your company, actually.”

She gets this look on her face
as though she’s tasted alcohol for the first time and I’m the
alcohol. “You wish. Please, I’m busy.”

“
I’ll be
quick. I swear.”

“
Dex…” she
mumbles.

It’s too late. I’m jogging to
their massive entertainment room. The one with the grizzly bear rug
whose frozen growl greets me as I enter. I notice the bookshelf at
the back and head there, Charz’s footsteps catching up behind.

“
What are you
doing?”

“
I need to
check something.”

“
This isn’t
your house, Dex.”

I stop at the bookshelf,
feeling exactly four feet tall compared to this mammoth of a thing.
“Which is exactly why I came here.”

She stares me down, walking up
cautiously, slowly. I turn and start scanning the shelves. There’s
everything from a collection of encyclopedias to Charles Dickens
all lined up in a row, and other authors who seem old alongside
modern people like Dan Brown and Michael Connelly, but I don’t know
the others either, given my boredom for novels. But there are tons.
That, I can appreciate.

“
What are you
looking for?” she asks.

“
Our
yearbooks. You kept them, right?” All girls keep that shit. Every
girl I know thinks their school diaries with scribbles and pictures
shoved on top of each other—many try to tell me it’s “art”—are
“sentimental”.

“
What else was
I going to do with them? Throw them away?”

In response I shrug. “You could
have. Where are they?”

She smiles and heat fills my
belly, and far below that, too. It just so happens that Dexter
Hollingworth gets horny over everything Charlee May does.

Everything except when she
doesn’t call or answer.

She tugs on my shirt, sort of
grabbing the top half of my arm since the sleeves are bunched at my
elbows.

“
Where are we
going?”

She takes me back to the
stairs, throwing me a quick look, tongue tracing her lips. She does
it coolly, which makes her look hotter. I decide to shut up and
appreciate the curve of her ass, those stripy undies, and her long
legs from behind.

“
Here. Not
there, Dex.”

We step in her room. I’m not
even over the threshold when a shiver buzzes down my spine. I shake
out my shoulders, the pressure loosening, yet it spikes again when
I notice Charz has been staring the whole time. Her room is still
huge. Her bed is still a mile long, her wardrobe takes up several
feet over two walls, and her desk sits a mile away against a far
wall.

But standing here, just Charz
and me, the room is tiny. With all the tension, it’s close and
dense, and everything has been shoved in here as a tight fit.

“
You don’t
actually think I’d keep my school yearbooks with Dad’s intelligent
stuff, do you?”

I laugh. “Good point.”

She crouches and leans forward
into her bookshelf. My eyes are magnetized to those stripy undies
barely covering her ass through the material when it turns
semi-transparent as she bends down. I look away to save myself
grief, only to have my attention land on her bed, which sends
passion spreading through me, like alcohol burning in my veins.

“
Here,” she
says. “Which year?”