In Deep (20 page)

He can push me away, but I know I can still do anything to him.

I can do anything I want.

•  •  •

When dinner's over and Gavin's refused Mom's second attempt to make him a cup of coffee, I walk him out to his car.

“So when am I going to finally get you on my own?” he wants to know. He's draped in the driver's seat but facing me with his knees open. The hungry eyes he had at the dinner table take over. I thought, after his little you're-actually-interesting bit
in the den, that he might be turning all pussy on me but apparently not.

“You have to wait until after Saturday. I've got to conserve my energy.” I'm facing him with my back against the open car door, but as I say this, I rock my hips forward a little, just to tease him. Just to keep it going.

“That'll be a long wait.” He reaches out, grabs the belt loop on my shorts, and pulls me closer. He slips the tips of his fingers down between the waistband and my skin, sending a shiver up my abs. “You aren't going to give me something to hold me over?”

I lock my knees and squeeze my quads tight.

“What? Hand job out here in my driveway? Much as Louis likes you, I don't think he'd go for that.”

He makes a low growl and lifts my hand to his lips. I watch as his tongue flicks gently between my fingers and then as he engulfs one of them in his mouth. His eyes stay on mine as the wet tip of his tongue tickles along the bottom of my finger. Against my will, even my elbows swirl with heat.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I find myself murmuring.

“Tomorrow?” he asks, still nibbling.

“You can come over. After Mom and Louis are in bed.”

•  •  •

I sleep fine that night.

And there aren't any dreams.

MAYBE IN RESPONSE TO DINNER
with Gavin, or maybe because of it, but on Thursday morning I'm back to full-on normal. Nothing fazes me, not even that I don't have my flash cards finished for Spanish. I just make my excuses to Señora Gupta about the meet this Saturday and how important it is, and say that I'll have everything by Monday. She smiles her tired smile and says okay, as long as I do ten extra.

Not even Kate and her steady silence across the room in Enviro can bother me. Not her tall, solid, uninterested back in Conflicts, either. Today I don't have to sleep through lunch, and I don't need any caffeine, either. So bring it, everyone. Just bring it the fuck on.

•  •  •

Practice, though, is a little weirder. Grier's still not there, and enough of the team seems worried about her that they break their vows of silence to ask me if I've heard anything. Like she and the whole rest of them weren't totally cold-shouldering me just a couple of days ago.

“She's fine,” I tell them, cool. “She just needs a break. Hard as Van's been driving us toward Saturday, we could all use it, right? Let's make sure we don't make her even more sorry by fucking up ourselves.”

It's bullshit, and I could care less about Grier anymore. That it took them only three practices to give up on hating me is the important part. If it were me, I would've held out for much, much longer.

What makes things even stranger though is that Gavin isn't there either. And neither is Linus or Troy. That Van doesn't say anything about it—that he acts like everything is perfectly normal—makes us all shoot questioning looks at one another through pep talk. Something is going on, but Van's not telling. Not even when I ask him point-blank, before we get into the pool, where the three guys are.

“Just adjusting their schedules” is all he says, terse. “Worry about yourself, not them.” And then sends me on a 200 free, descending times.

•  •  •

what happened?
I text Gavin after practice.

But I don't get anything back.

•  •  •

I don't get anything back at 9:30, either, when I send:
getting ready for bed. you still coming?
I lay in bed last night picturing how tonight would go: He'd come over, I'd sneak out, and we'd make out a bit in his car down the road. I haven't had any action since that catastrophe on Saturday night, and I won't lie that I miss it, especially now that I can't have Charlie, either. I know it's partly why I haven't been able to sleep. But with Gavin, it'll be even better, because unlike Charlie, I know I can count on Gavin not to want to talk, no matter what he said last night. I can get what I need and then send him away, easy. Even though I felt basically all right today, I still need at least a decent eight hours tonight and another eight tomorrow for sure. Ten would be better. Getting off a bit will definitely do the trick. Tending to myself is all right, but it's not the same. Still, I'm also not dumb. I need to maintain the upper hand. So we'll fool around in his car for a while and then I'll say something about how tired I am, how I need to get to bed. If he protests, I'll promise—and I'll be convincing—to make it up to him after the meet. Fingers crossed behind my back, of course.

But now it's 10:12, 10:26, and there's still not a beep from him, not even after I send three more texts. Stupidly, I even try trolling through Grier's pages for a while just to see if he's been on any of them. But they've both been silent for days. I picture Grier having to go back to those shopping bitches. It makes me wonder for a few seconds how she's doing without anyone to
talk to. But then, of course, I realize Gavin's also not showing up anywhere because Grier's disconnected herself from him since Monday, and besides, I don't care about her anymore, after what she did.

Disconnecting from Gavin doesn't sound like a bad idea for me, either, except now it seems as if he's leaving me hanging, and I can't have that. He laid on that cheese about wanting to get to know me, I offered to sneak out for him on a school night, and now he can't even text back? I lie in my bed in the dark with my knees up, balancing my phone between them, waiting. If he had late practice, as Van suggested today, maybe it's taken him this long to finish, eat, get showered, and head over.
Maybe,
I tell myself lamely,
he forgot to charge his phone.
But I know that's beyond pathetic. It makes me wish I could take all those stupid texts back.

It's 11:09. I shouldn't be up, but I am. Part because maybe he's still coming over, part because I'm mad, part because I'm trying to think how I'm going to get him back for standing me up. I get out of bed and pace. Now, instead of being rested and calm tomorrow, that edgy feeling will creep back over me all day, and what if I can't shake it? Being off at practice only screws me up in the head more. So I really need to get some sleep. It's dumb that I haven't been able to for the last several nights. I think about my routine tomorrow, how I'm supposed to float through the day to relax myself before the race Saturday. And
look at me right now—pacing around like a crazy animal, working myself up too tight.

A car outside on the street makes me stop and go to the window. I watch the headlights approach slow, and then keep watching as a car that's not Gavin's goes past our house and down the road. My mind jumps around, wondering was he in some accident, wondering did he get in trouble about Grier, then chastising myself for wasting any thought on him at all, when the only person I need to worry about is me.

“You can't worry though, is the thing,” I remind myself out loud. Because fixating on a thing—swimming or winning or not crying or some noncommunicative college cockhead—is exactly the way to fuck it all up.

Your mind has to be completely blank. It has to be.

Which makes me pause and turn to the door.

Alcohol is stupid, because it dehydrates you and makes you all groggy. Besides, Mom and Louis don't keep anything around except her cheap gross wine and his beer, which they'd notice was gone. It'd be better if I could somehow get some pot. The next best thing is Mom's Ambien or whatever is down there in her medicine cabinet. She started taking it after Dad's accident and then kept going, thanks to her work and Louis's snoring problem. It'll be tricky, and I'll have to be deadly silent, but I know it will work.

I go to my door and turn the knob slow. Out in the dark
hallway, I pause, listening, but I wouldn't be able to hear anything from their bedroom at the back of the house anyway. I move down the hall, heel to toe like I read somewhere the Indians used to do. At the top of the stairs, I pause again. I don't have to do this. With the right breathing, I could probably fall asleep. Eventually. But then I picture myself on the couch the other night, eyes unable to close. I picture the dreams I can't afford to have.

I lower my foot to the first step. I will be silent, and I will master this.

I can do absolutely anything.

LOUIS'S VOICE COMING FROM MY
doorway is the only thing that wakes me up.

“Brynn? Time to get a move-on, kiddo. You feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” I manage to tell him, hauling myself out of a dark tunnel. Once I can register my body, the inside of my mouth feels like snakeskin, and it's like someone's been pressing their heels into my eyeballs all night. I pull them open, looking at my alarm clock in betrayal. But it's beeping away, faithful as ever. “Just gimme a minute.”

I pull myself to a sitting position. My whole body feels heavy and soft like a damp down pillow. This is not the way today is supposed to start.

I can't panic though. Today I have to be in control. So as
soon as Louis leaves, I work to remember my visualizations. Day before a huge race, it's important to do things as easily and gently as possible. Though it's clouded and slow, I clear my mind of any clinging thoughts, including the picture of my own hand, popping that pill into my mouth last night. Instead I have to visualize myself floating through the day, like I'm on feathers the whole time. Which maybe won't be so hard, weird as I feel. I picture myself gliding through school, not bumping into anyone or getting stressed or jostled by anything my teachers say, whatever happens in class. I follow myself in my mind to the end of school and then practice, which will be nothing but a few warm-up drills, mostly. Gentle. Easy. After that, I picture me and mom and Louis sitting together at Maggiano's for a huge dinner. Pasta. Meatballs. Maybe shrimp scampi. Then home and some light stretching and into bed. Drinking nothing but water the whole time and always breathing calm and slow—drifting through the day. Nothing will stress me out. Nothing will shake me.

Not even the fact that it's hard to stand up.

•  •  •

When I get to school, I'm tempted to go straight to the Coke machine again, just to shake off this groggy cloud, but the discipline in me knows I need water instead. Flush this shit out and rehydrate my muscles. Normalize. So between every class, while I'm trying to float, I make sure to stop at every single water fountain I pass and take a sip. By third period it becomes part
of the ritual, and at lunchtime I'm only slightly fuzzy. At least my mouth doesn't feel like death. When I get to Enviro, I'm clearheaded enough to register that Kate keeps twitching and scowling at me from across the room, instead of playing the ice queen role she has been all week.

But I can't think about it.

Nothing can faze me.

I think about floating, and that is all.

•  •  •

It's harder when she's sitting in front of me in Conflicts, and I can feel the frustration coming off her in waves. Harder to ignore the way her knee jerks up and down in nervous agitation all through class, but I make myself do it. I don't know what her problem is all of a sudden—why today she's fidgety and pissed, when the whole week it's like I haven't existed—but I can't let it be my problem. While she jiggles and huffs, I close my eyes, picture myself floating in the middle of a great expanse of blue: too deep to hear or see anything. Too deep for anyone to touch.

Even when Woodham reminds us that the first drafts of our papers are due Monday and he reviews the expectations, I pull my breath, gentle and slow, in through my nose and out through my mouth. I visualize myself on the block tomorrow, ready to race. That's what matters right now. It's all that matters. The rest I will figure out how to make happen, because everything else this whole week—my whole life—I have more than figured
out on my own, I've aced. I picture bubbles floating, floating through my veins. I pretend I'm gliding smoothly through a vast and empty plane of water. I am a swimmer, and that's all I am.

•  •  •

Practice solidifies this feeling even more. Van has us do some breathing exercises and a little yoga to stretch us out before we even get into the pool. During pep talk he stresses personal victories, and confidence, and trusting ourselves and the work we've done to succeed tomorrow. And, cheesy as it may be, tense as he's been the last couple of days, Van's encouraging, confident voice always centers me.

I don't have to pull or push or do anything through the drills. I'm in the water, and that's all I am. Nothing fazes me. Everything is mastered.

•  •  •

When Mom, Louis, and I get home from our huge Italian feast, it's 8:30, which is plenty of time to prep my stuff for tomorrow, take my pre-meet bath (and supershave), and then have a last bit of protein before bed. While I'm checking my suits for any wear and making sure I have a clean towel, my phone buzzes on my dresser.

Suddenly the calm, easy, floating feeling is gone. It's startling, actually, how fast it leaps away from me, how quickly I'm back on edge. I stare at my phone, not moving. Gavin messing with me. Or apologizing. Or maybe Kate sending me some
poison she's been thinking of all week and didn't have the nerve to say to my face. Grier, maybe, trying to fuck with my head before tomorrow. Or maybe even someone else from the team. I shouldn't go to it—I shouldn't even pick the phone up. It's taken a lot of work to hit this even-keeled place, and the way my brain is snapping all around now, apparently it may take more to get it back.