The Rom-Commers(42)

Why not? I didn’t have any better ideas.

By the time I’d hung up with Sylvie, it was six A.M. I put on my swimsuit and tied up my hair—and then I switched into teacher mode, strode confidently toward Charlie’s bedroom, and knocked loudly on his door.

Charlie opened it a few minutes later with one elastic cuff of his sweatpants up above his calf, his T-shirt on backward, his hair pointing up and out every direction, and one eye closed like a sea captain.

“What the hell are you wearing?” were the first words out of his mouth as he looked me up and down. “You’re practically naked.”

Teacher voice. Teacher voice. “I am not naked. I’m wearing a swimsuit. To go swimming.”

“Under it, I mean. You’re naked.”

“That’s not news. Everyone is naked under everything.”

“I’m not complaining,” Charlie said. “That’s just—a lot of arms and legs.”

“What am I supposed to wear? An eighteenth-century bathing costume?”

“Maybe just go back to bed? Problem solved.”

“You can’t be this skittish about a one-piece Speedo.”

“I haven’t been around a live woman in a long time.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“But it is your fault that you’re standing here right now.”

“It’s time to get up.”

“Why?”

Confidence! Teacher voice! Sylvie him! “Because that’s the schedule. I swim first thing in the morning.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what that has to do with me.”

“You’re coming with me.”

At that, Charlie made a break for the bed. But I caught him by the arm and dragged him out—through the living room, out the French doors, to the edge of the pool.

“What are we doing, again?” Charlie asked, like I might’ve already explained it.

“Exposure therapy.”

Charlie eyed the pool. “I’m not getting in there,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. “I am. You’re just going to keep me company and make a note of the fact that I am not drowning.”

“What if you are drowning?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” I said. Then I patted the lip of the pool at the top of the steps. “Sit right here and put your feet on the top step.”

Charlie looked at me, then the pool, then me, then the pool. “Just the feet?”

“Just the feet.”

“And I’m doing this why?”

“Because you can’t spend your whole life afraid of swimming pools.”

“Afraid of water,” Charlie corrected. “Not swimming pools.”

“And also because you agreed to. When we negotiated our terms.”

“I did?”

Teacher voice. “You did.”

Charlie sighed. And then, to my utter surprise, he just … did it. Pulled up his sweatpants, then stepped in. Maybe he was too sleepy to fight me.

“Sheesh, that’s cold,” he said, sitting down anyway.

“You’ll get used to it,” I said.

“I haven’t even had coffee yet,” Charlie said. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth.”

“After,” I said, not wanting to give him a chance to escape.

“I haven’t even peed!”

“Permission to pee in the bushes,” I said—and then I dove in before he could muster more objections.

Here’s the thing: it worked. He stayed. He sat there the whole time, feet in the water, while I did sixty laps freestyle.

By the time I was done, he had two eyes open—but not much else had changed.

When I got out, I said, “How was it?”

There was that nonchalant face again. “How was what?”

Must’ve been stressful. “Spending time in the pool.”

“I wouldn’t call that ‘in the pool.’”

“I bet your feet would disagree.”

Charlie looked at me like I was totally insane.

“Anyway,” I said, clapping the shoulder of his T-shirt with my wet hand. “Good job.”





Sixteen

AND SO, THAT first week, we settled into a routine: swimming first thing, then showering, then coffee, then sitting across from each other at Charlie’s dining table with our laptops back to back, surrounded by our various favorite writing accoutrements and good-luck charms—trying to ignore each other but not entirely succeeding. We found a sharing feature in Final Draft, which neither of us had ever used, and we forced ourselves to get acquainted with it.

My hope at the start was that we could just work quietly, like we were both used to, and send changes and questions back and forth via the internet without ever having to adjust our normal way of doing things. But of course that’s not how it happened.

I mean, there was a guinea pig on the dining table.

Every morning, like a ritual, Charlie brought Cuthbert out of his cage and loaded him into the barn, where he’d settle in and spend the day alternating between lounging and napping.

“I think I’m going to find the rodent distracting,” I said, the first time it happened.