Nate quickly looks down, as if he’s forgotten what he was wearing too. “You’re lucky I decided to forego the banana hammock for you today.”
I laugh. “I appreciate that.” Although I’m sure if anyone can make that look good, it’s him.
The water in the pool is very warm, and Nate and I are standing together in the shallow end, the water close to our knees. I take a few steps forward and he follows suit, until we’re waist-deep. I skim my fingers across the surface of the water, enjoying the soft feel of it on my fingertips. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a pool, and this memory of my father and me swimming pops into my mind. Unlike most of the other memories I have of him, this one makes me smile.
“What are you thinking about?” Nate asks.
“My dad,” I tell him, not even stopping to think about whether sharing this would be a good idea. About whether I even want to. It seems my mouth has made up my mind for me. I want him to know, although I’m not sure why. “We used to go swimming a lot when I was a kid,” I say. Nate’s looking at me like I’m telling the most interesting story he’s ever heard, which encourages me to continue. “He used to do this thing where he’d crouch down in the water and I’d put my feet on his shoulders. He’d grip my ankles and then he’d pop up and throw me across the pool. It was fun.”
Nate smiles. I get the feeling that he’s glad I shared with him, but I can also tell he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Madeline likes to do that too.”
“A girl after my own heart.”
A few seconds later, Nate dives into the water and swims into the deep end, about ten feet away from me. When he comes up, he treads water.
“You should come down this way,” he says. “The water’s clear, so you can see we don’t have an eel infestation.”
I bring my hand up to rub the back of my neck. It’s so difficult for me to stay away from him, especially with the promise of his wet skin just waiting for me at the other end of the pool. I want to put my hands all over him, it’s almost like a sickness how badly I want it.
“Are you afraid of getting your hair wet?”
“No!” I yell, half laughing. Just to show him how not afraid to get my hair wet I am, I dive under the water and swim over, giving his foot a gentle tug before I surface right in front of him, so we’re facing each other.
“You look good,” he says, giving me one of those smiles that makes me feel like my heart tripped and flipped and fell on its ass.
“You are so smooth.”
“I’m not trying to be smooth. I mean it.”
I roll my eyes.
“Why can’t I just give you a compliment?” he asks.
I look at him for a long while, and I don’t know that I have an answer for him. I swim over to the side of the pool, because suddenly my heart feels so heavy that I’m not sure I can stay afloat anymore. Nate follows.
“Callie,” he says, very softly.
My back is pressed against the shiny blue tiles that line the perimeter, and I’m looking down at my hands, all distorted by the water. He grips the concrete edge of the pool, one hand on either side of my head. He’s got me boxed in, but I don’t feel threatened by it. He’s close, but I could swim away if I wanted to.
The thing is, I don’t want to.
“He really did a number on you, didn’t he?” Nate says, not even trying to hide his anger. “You’re still torn up over it.” And the way the words come out, they’re a statement of fact. I have to set the record straight.
“I’m not torn up over it,” I tell him, looking him right in the eyes. And that’s the truth. I mean, it’s part of the truth, but things aren’t that simple.
“Callie-”
“I’m not. See, the thing is that I thought this would be us, you know? Me and Ethan getting married. Having a wedding, spending the rest of our lives together. I thought that’s where we were headed. I let myself believe I had forever with him, and then I came home and found him in bed with another woman. In our bed. And I just…I couldn’t believe it.”
“Cheating isn’t usually about the sex,” he says, like that matters at all.
“That doesn’t make it any better, Nate. That makes it worse.”
He nods, looking down, and I’m not sure if he doesn’t say anything because he wants me to keep going or because he just doesn’t know what else to say. There’s a part of me that’s ready to say this, to admit it out loud, and I want to admit it to him.
“Six months later, it’s not the sex that bothers me. Well, not really. It’s that I never thought he could do something like that to me. I didn’t think he was even capable of it. I was supposed to be the person who knew him better than anyone else, and I wonder how deep would I have gotten before I found out? Would we have gotten married? Would we have had children? How long would it have taken me to figure out that I didn’t know him at all? That’s what scares the hell out of me. So it’s not about him, you know? It’s about me. I don’t trust myself to know who it’s safe to give my heart to.”
Nate takes a deep breath, and his face is so full of understanding that I could cry. He reaches up and pushes a strand of hair behind my ear, and his expression is so tender that I can’t help but press my cheek into the palm of his hand and close my eyes. He makes me feel safe, and I don’t know if it’s right, but I want to allow myself the comfort that he offers, even though that’s so dangerous. It would be so easy for me to let myself fall in love with him. So easy to let him in. So easy for him to break my heart.
Nate’s hand slides down the side of my neck, and he traces the strap of my swimsuit with his fingertip. I can feel the trail of heat his touch leaves all the way down in my toes. “You won’t ever know who it’s safe to give your heart to. Falling in love is a risk.”
I laugh bitterly. “I think it’s well documented that I’m not much of a risk taker.”
He smiles, putting his hand back on the edge of the pool. “Not every guy is like Ethan.”
I know he’s dying to tell me that he isn’t like Ethan, but he doesn’t do that. I don’t know why his silence makes me believe him more than his words ever could, but everything in my brain is just a big swirl of confusion right now.
“But some guys are, Nate. How will I know the difference?”
He waits for me to look into his eyes before he speaks. “You’ll feel it.”
He says the words with conviction, and I want to believe him. I do know that I feel something when I’m with him, and I’m not sure whether it’s something I can’t name or something I just don’t want to name. Whatever it is though, it’s driving me crazy; it’s making me want to run in ten directions at once.
Nate’s leg brushes against mine, and all of a sudden I can feel his chest pressing against me. I’m not sure if he moved closer or if I did, but that doesn’t really matter anyway. I move my leg so that my foot presses up against the wall behind me because I need some leverage, and as I’m moving my thigh brushes up against his erection. He inhales a sharp, quick breath at the contact, looking at me with intensity behind his eyes that sends a nervous rush through me. And the truth is that I’m so tired of trying to sort out these feelings. I want Nate to feel; I want to be taken out of the equation, just for a little while.
Before I can talk myself out of all the reasons why this is a very bad idea, I wrap my legs around the backs of Nate’s thighs in order to hold myself up. I slide my hand across his shoulder and wrap my arm around his neck, then slide my other hand down his chest, gently grazing his skin with my fingernails. The contact makes his eyelids flutter. He reaches up to touch my face, but when I look at him, he knows that I need him to let me drive this. He knows that I need him to just put his hand back on the side of the pool. So, he does.
I want to kiss him so badly, but if I do I know I’ll never stop. I’ll get so lost that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find my way back again. I’m not sure that I’d want to, and that scares the hell out of me.