“You don’t owe me sex. You don’t owe me anything. I’m with you because I want to be. And if 38
we’re together, it’ll be because we both want to be. And we are going to London together because we want to. And it’s going to be a disaster. But that’s all right, because we’ll have each other. We’ll be disastrous together.”
I tip my head onto his shoulder, and he leans against mine, and we look out over the ocean.
Neither of us says anything for a while. I’m not sure how to believe any of that. How to break from the grooves I’ve worn down inside myself thinking I’d never be anything more than a last resort.
But here is Percy. Here we are.
One of his hands is still on my knee, so when he stands up, I feel his fingers press into me.
He steps out of his slippers and is fumbling with the cuffs of his shirt when I ask, “Oh, are we going to try this again right now?”
“Not quite what I had in mind.” He holds out a hand to pull me up. “Come here.”
I do not take it. “Tell me what you’re doing first.”
“You trust me, remember?”
“This is a trick question.”
“Maybe. Is it a question?”
“It’s definitely a trick.”
“Come on, stand up.” He peers over the edge of the cliff we’re sitting on, which is when I realize what it is he is about to bully me into.
“Oh no. Absolutely not.” I grab onto the edge of the rock I’m sitting on, like that will provide an anchor to prevent me being dragged to the edge of the cliff and then inevitably over. “I’m not swimming, and I’m certainly not jumping into a swim. Do you know what’s down there?” I point to the ledge he’s standing on. “Water. Water, Percy. Also possibly rocks.”
39
“I dive here with Ebrahim and Georgie all the time. There are no rocks.”
“Still, the best I can hope for is water, which there is nothing best about.” He keeps that damn hand extended. I still don’t take it. “You’re actually going to force me to jump off a cliff to make a point about trusting you? That’s a terrible abuse of that lovely chat we just had.”
“No, it’s hot, and I want to swim, and I like seeing you squirm.” He wiggles his fingers. “It’s adorable.”
And then he smiles. That full, bright smile that crinkles his nose just a bit. And what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
I take his hand.
He pulls me up, but I go no farther than that, even though we’re far enough apart that our fingers are barely linked. “Got to get a bit closer to the edge or you’ll hit the rocks you’re standing upon when you jump,” he says.
I take one step forward—still not close enough to get a clean leap into the ocean, but enough to peer farther over the edge. And then reel backward in panic. “Son of a bitch, that’s a long way down.”
“It is not.” He creeps closer to the edge of the cliff until his toes are nearly hanging over, then tugs at my hand. “Take your shoes off.”
“If I leave them on, I can’t jump, can I?” He pulls harder, defying gravity for a moment with my weight as a counter to his so that he leans over the cliff and I say, “Fine!” before he can drag me over with him. I kick off my slippers, then take two tentative steps up so my toes are aligned with his. I peer over once more and fight the urge to wrench backward. My heart is beating much faster than I think is healthy, and I’m starting to feel light-headed. “I can’t do this.”
40
“Yes, you can. Come on.” He pulls me forward again, and I follow so slowly that it seems likely my heart will explode before I’m close enough to jump. “Are you going to let go of my hand?” he asks, and I realize I’m strangling his fingers.
“Absolutely not. Are you going to laugh at me if I hold my nose?”
“Only a little. Ready?”
“Could you give me a count—?”
And then Percy jumps, and I jump too, or rather, am forced to jump too, and it turns out the only thing worse than hitting the water is the painful eternity before hitting the water as my brain screams all the way down, THIS IS TOO FAR TO FALL AND LIVE.
And then we hit the water, and no, this is far worse. I hate water. I hate swimming. It fills up my ears—ear—and my nose and burns the back of my throat. And I don’t know which way is up and which is down; everything is white bubbles raised by our impact, and I can’t open my eyes because the ocean is enormous and mean and it’s hurting me.
And then I feel Percy’s hand, which I am still clamped onto, tugging me upward. I can feel the light on my face.
My head breaks the surface, and I take a few gasping grateful burning lungfuls of air as I splash around, trying to swim for a moment before I realize that I am mostly afloat due to the fact that Percy is holding on to me. He’s also laughing at me. “Stand up,” he says.
A wave strikes me in the face and I spit it all over Percy. He flinches with a laugh. “Too deep.”
“It is not, there’s a shelf here. Stand up.”
I try to put my feet down, and my head goes under again. Percy pulls me back up to the surface, laughing harder. “Fine, you’re too short.”
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“You’re too . . . mean!”
He’s standing up, a little wobbly with the current, but he pulls me in to him, lets me wrap my legs around him to keep my head above the water. The jump tugged his hair out of its knot, and it hangs heavy around his face. His wet skin shimmers where the sun strikes it. Beneath the waves, I can see the fine line of his collarbone bowing into his throat like the curve of a violin. There’s a single drop of water perched upon the tip of his nose, and when it falls, trickling down to his lips, I kiss him so that I catch it between our mouths.
It’s like I’ve never kissed anyone before, like this is the first time I’ve ever been touched. His hands on my skin beneath the waves curl in, fingers digging into my spine. I wrap my arms around his neck, pressing us together with such strength my back arches, and I am suddenly overwhelmed with how much I want him. It floods me and overflows. It feels like I made the ocean.
“Do you know what I would like to do?” I ask, my mouth still mostly against his so that his tongue swoops against my teeth. “Right now.”
“I hope it’s unspeakable things to me.”
“That exactly.”
“Right here?”
“Absolutely not. Get me out of all this goddamn water.” I want to be the only thing touching him. I want to be the only thing that ever touches him again. I will be envious of every shirt he ever wears, the cuffs of his coats, the trousers going soft with wear where they rub his inner thighs. Every snowflake that ever falls upon his lips, every piece of bread upon his tongue. I want to breathe him, feel him fill up my chest until my ribs strain and I break open like ripe fruit beneath a paring knife. I would be raw. I would freckle and blister in the sun. I would teach my 42
body to regrow my heart each time I gave it to him, over and over and over again. Heart after heart after heart—every one of them his.
We can’t get back to the flat fast enough. We drag ourselves from the ocean like kelp washed up on the shore, our bare feet leaving pulsing halos in the sand, and I can’t stop looking at the way his wet trousers cling to the lines of his legs. I could write a goddamn opera in honor of his ass draped in thin cotton and the ocean.