Lucas studies me, unreadable. “Why are we like this?” he says after a moment. “You and me?”
“Like what?”
The chlorine has made my throat ache; I swallow. His eyes are on mine now.
“Always fighting.”
He pauses, taking a small breath, as if he’s hesitating over what to say. His eyes slide away from me, and I breathe out, as if he’s let me go.
“Well,” he says. “Since last Christmas.”
And there it is. I turn my head aside. I don’t want to look at him now, not while we’re talking about this.
“I think you just answered your own question,” I say. “You know why I hate you.”
He flinches slightly when I say hate, and I almost wish I could take it back, though I don’t know why—he knows it, I know it. I take another breath, steadier now, and meet his eyes again.
“I’ve always figured you hate me because I’m everything you don’t like all wrapped up in one human being,” I go on. “And you know you were a dick last Christmas and don’t like that I’m right about it. How’d I do? Is that it?”
Lucas lifts a hand off the side of the pool to wipe his eyes. That tension between us is sluicing away, replaced by something much more familiar.
“You think you are everything I don’t like? All wrapped up . . . in one human being?”
“Aren’t I?”
He looks back at me. “No,” he says eventually. “Not at all.”
I shift, discomposed. “You find me strange, though.”
“A little.”
That hurts more than it should. I thought I was past Lucas’s insults getting to me—but then, I did just hand him the very one that could do the most damage.
Lucas shifts to the side so he can rest his back against the pool. “Is strange that bad?” he asks.
Clearly that whole thought played out right across my face, then.
“No. I’m proud of being a bit strange now.”
“Now?”
“Let’s just say, at school I was the weird kid.” I shrug, swallowing. “It wasn’t that great. Kids weren’t always super nice to me. Strange isn’t cool when you’re thirteen.”
“You were bullied?” he asks.
I stare out at the gardens, fogged and hazy through the pool windows. I thought I could tell him about this without feeling pathetic—to justify why I’d reacted that way when he called me strange, so he knows it’s not really him that’s got to me, it’s old stuff. But this is harder than I thought it would be, especially when my body is still tingling. I’m on edge, exposed; I hate this feeling. I hope he didn’t realise how close I came to kissing him.
“A bit, yeah,” I say, kicking my legs slowly through the water. “It probably sounds stupid to you, but these things do stay with you.”
“Did anyone help? Your parents? Teachers?”
I shake my head. “They didn’t know.”
“Not even your parents?”
“Nope. I’m very good at looking cheerful when I feel like crap.” I’ve not got the tone quite right—he side-glances me, and I’m too afraid to look at him in case I see pity on his face.
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” he says quietly. “Do they know now? Your parents?”
Ugh. Not this conversation, too. I’m starting to feel worryingly emotional—this has been a lot.
“My parents both died when I was twenty-one, so no! We didn’t get the chance to have that chat,” I say as I drag myself up on my arms and out of the pool.
“Your parents died?” Lucas says.
“Yep.” I’m swinging my legs around, yanking off my dark, soaked trainers and peeling off my socks. I want to get out of here. The pool room is too warm, and my wet clothes feel suffocating.
“I’m very sorry.”
He sounds so formal. I wish I’d not told him. People always change when they know. If he starts being nice to me just because I’m an orphan, I will not be able to handle it.
“How did they die?”
I blink.
“I’m sorry. That was a bit . . .”
“Yeah. It was,” I say, shooting him a look over my shoulder as I tuck my wet socks into my equally wet shoes.
The pool water slops and slooshes. I’m just getting up to leave when he says, “My dad died when I was still too small to remember him. My mum didn’t tell me what happened to him until I was a teenager. So I always used to make up how he died. Tiger bite. Skydive gone wrong. Or—if I was feeling anxious—then I’d imagine it was some hereditary disease, and my mum knew I had it, too, and that’s why she wouldn’t tell me.”