AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I can’t reply; the emotions are stuck in my throat. I don’t know if he understands how big of a moment this is for me, but by the way he’s holding me right now, I gather that he gets it.
After a minute, I let go of him, wipe my eyes again, and grab on to the side of the pool, gearing up to swim back to the other side.
“Ready?” I ask him.
“Are we racing?”
“Of course,” I say, taking off as soon as the words leave my mouth.
Before I go under, I hear him yell out, “Cheater!”
We swim laps for the next half hour. I do the breaststroke, the butterfly, and the backstroke, all of it coming back to me with ease. Like riding a bicycle. I love every second of it.
“This is quite the workout,” Graham says, through labored breaths, when we both surface by the edge of the pool after another lap.
“I’m pretty exhausted myself,” I say, winded and feeling the burn in my lungs and in muscles I haven’t used in a while. We’re both holding onto the ledge of the pool so we don’t have to rely on our tired legs to keep us afloat in the deep end.
“I’m going to be exhausted at work.” He looks up at the giant wall clock. It’s only six thirty in the morning.
“Which one of your many jobs are you working today?”
He wipes a hand down his face to get rid of the water, and droplets cling onto his cropped beard. “I’m at the clinic today.”
“So ... what are you going to do that scares you?”
He looks at me, his eyes on mine. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. “I thought I’d admit something to you, something no one else knows.”
“Really?” I ask, feeling warmth spread through my body and all the way to my toes. The fact that he wants to tell me, and just me, something makes little pinpricks move up my arm. I give him a head nod, telling him to go ahead.
“Right now?” He looks around the pool.
“Why not? I just swam laps after eleven years. Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m turning into a prune,” he says, holding up a hand to show me his wrinkled fingers.
“Me too,” I say. “Better make it snappy.”
He looks at the clock again, and then his eyes move to me. “I have some time, since you made me get up at a ridiculous hour. Want to get breakfast?”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, MY HAIR damp and my skin feeling tight from the chlorine even though I rinsed off quickly after I got out of the pool, Graham and I are sitting across from each other in a booth, each with a glass full of water at Jenny’s Pancake House, a local favorite off Aspen Lake Boulevard that’s been here longer than I’ve been alive. Maybe even longer than my parents have been around.
Through the windows of the old building, I can see snow flurries have started to fall. With the large mountains in the backdrop, it looks like something out of a magazine. Aspen Lake is a beautiful place that I’m pretty sure I’ve taken for granted my whole life. There’s no way to know for sure since, with the exception of college, I’ve never lived anywhere else.
We place our order with a woman coincidentally named Jenny. Not the owner, since I’m pretty sure she passed away a long time ago and this woman looks like she’s in her forties. She’s got red hair and a welcoming smile.
“Okay,” I say, settling into the booth. “Let’s hear this admission of yours.”
Graham reaches up and rubs his jaw, his fingers running over his beard.
“Fine,” he says. “I’m in therapy.”
Of all the things Graham could have said, I wasn’t expecting that.
“Therapy?”
“Yeah,” he says, with a nod. “I’ve been going for eight months now, I think.”
“That’s a good thing, right? We all need therapy.”
