Deep End(60)

“Even if it’s just sex, it’s not a good idea for me to be with someone who resents wanting me.”

It’s just for a blip, a gaping, voracious, rioting moment, that I can see a hint of how he really feels about this. But it lasts so little, I’m not even sure. Whether he cares. Whether he’s happy to be free of me. Whether he heard what I’m saying.

I swallow around the off-kilter heartbeat in my throat, and then I reach out to squeeze his hand one last time. The marks of my teeth, I notice, are still there. Like those, too, weren’t allowed to fade.

“Bye, Lukas,” I say.

He doesn’t try to stop me, and I never look back.





CHAPTER 33


AS I ONCE EXPLAINED TO BARB, DUAL MEETS ARE OFFICIAL and regulated by the NCAA, but “not, like, too much.”

“What you just said makes absolutely no sense,” she pointed out, and she was right.

The most important swimming and diving competitions are clustered in the spring. That’s when our regional conference, the Pac-12, happens, when the NCAA trials and finals happen, and, in a year like this one, when we fight it out to see who’ll get to go to the Olympic Games. Preseason meets are much smaller in size, and it’s understood that no athlete is expected to be in tip-top shape yet. Records or personal bests are unlikely, they are not televised, and the atmosphere more convivial. If we win, good. If we lose: See you in March.

“No synchro for you on this meet. You’re just not good enough yet,” Coach tells Pen and me on Friday night, sounding ready to combat our counterarguments.

Pen and I, though, both slump in relief. “You’re right,” she says. “No need for public humiliation.”

I nod. “We should definitely spare the Texans our shame. ”

“Someone could even TiVo us and post us somewhere.”

I scrunch my nose, Pen faux shudders, and we leave a perplexed Coach Sima behind.

Basically, this meet is no big deal. It might even be a small deal—if not for two reasons.

One: this is my first time competing since my injury, and the thought has been making every cell in my body want to puke since I woke up.

Two is, of course: The. Inward. Issue.

“It’s normal to be nervous,” Pen says, holding my eyes in the mirror as I part my hair to French braid it.

I half exhale a laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

“Just to me.” She smiles. “Because I know you.”

She does. Maybe our relationship started as circumstantial, but lately we’ve been together so often, it’d be hard not to describe what we have as friendship—even for someone like me, who strives to avoid overestimating her emotional significance in other people’s lives. “I just need to get through the first dive, I think. Then I’ll calm down.”

She lays her head on my shoulder. “I’ll be there, Vandy. If you need anything.”

We march out of the locker room with the women’s swimming team, and there’s so many of them, all so powerfully upbeat, it’s hard not to be infected with their enthusiasm. Last night, in preparation for UT’s arrival, someone put up a bunch of MEET THE ATHLETE posters. They’re plastered on the hallway leading out to the exhibition pool, and I pass by a few familiar faces. Kyle, Niko, Rachel, Cherry, Hasan. Lukas.

He’s the only unsmiling swimmer, and boy, is it fitting.

I stare at his picture, unsurprised by the stomach squeeze that hits me, an odd mix of wistfulness, anger, sadness—and irritation at myself .

In the last few days, he tried to call me. Twice. Then texted me. Once.

“I forgot that Lukas is trying two hundred freestyle, too,” Bree says, tapping at his poster.

Pen nods. “Sweden’s head coach told him that they don’t have anyone fast at it on the Olympic team.”

“Is he just, you know.” Bella shrugs. “Against anyone else medaling?”

“Oh, shit.” Pen winces. “I forgot that two hundred freestyle is Devin’s and Dale’s main, too! But don’t worry—it’s not going to be one of Lukas’s NCAA events.”

“Oh, yeah.” Bree snorts. “’Cause otherwise Devin and Dale were totally gonna win that race.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just trying to be realistic about who we’re dating, Bella.” Bree sighs. “See, the difference between me and you? That’s how you know that clear-sightedness is not genetic.”

“Then basic human decency must not be, either.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re so scary when they argue,” I whisper at Pen, hurrying outside ahead of them.

“They grew up together and are basically the same person. They know how to strike the chakra that’ll hurt the most.”

“You make an excellent argument for lifelong solitude.”

One of UT’s most recent recruits is Sunny, a girl I trained with back in St. Louis. “I can’t believe I’m in my first college competition!” she tells me on the deck, hugging me once and then again. “And you’re in it, too! You’ve always been goals for me.”

You sure about that? I don’t let myself say. I smile, pretending to be excited and not full of worms crawling over my internal organs, and go sit next to Pen to begin the time-consuming process of putting on wrist guards and taping my joints. In the pool across the diving well, the swimmers are warming up. Lukas is there, speaking with his coach and Rachel as he stretches, and I recall his text.