“You’ve never had a healthy relationship,” Nev said. “I haven’t had one that lasted longer than three months. We don’t have the skills to date each other. Maybe someday we will.”
“It’s not rocket science. We’d figure it out,” Ronnie said. “People do this all the time.”
“People break up all the time. I can’t break up with you. I would rather...”
“Don’t be melodramatic.” Ronnie sighed, exasperated.Come here and stop talking.The idea of never touching Nev again felt like a tragedy.
Nev looked sympathetic.
“Don’t get in your head about it,” Ronnie said.
Nev chuckled, out of breath in the dark lake. “I live in my head. It would be more mental work for me.”
“Live a little.”
Nev treaded water. “You’re bigger than me on the outside. I can’t lift you. Along those same lines I wouldn’t ask you to lift what I have going on up here.” Nev touched her head. “I’m bigger on the inside.”
“That’s insulting,” Ronnie said, “and frankly not true.”
“I have twenty years more life than you do. What do you think life is? That’s twice as much shite to process. Twice as much stuff going on up here.”
“I’ll text you my therapist’s number.”
“Are we good?” Nev asked, reaching out and touching the side of Ronnie’s neck where the tattoo from juvie had been.
It wasn’t what Ronnie wanted, but maybe it was what she needed.
“You don’t have to be in control all the time,” Ronnie said.
“Feelings are the one thing I can control.”
“You’re repressed.”
“Good talk.” Nev disappeared under the surface and reappeared a few meters away. “Pain and pleasure have always been linked for me. I don’t know if that’s other people’s experience. The way I feel about you is better than sex. Feelings are the only thing you own at the end of the day, the only thingthat belongs to you,” Nev said. “You can’t keep anything else. You can’t take anything else with you.”
Back on the boat ramp, they dried off and shrugged into comfy clothes. Ronnie lifted her bike into the bed of Nev’s silver truck and snapped up the tailgate with a satisfying thud. Nev drove with one hand on the wheel. Ronnie resisted the urge to touch her.
They rode uphill past a local family that was hauling a motorboat full of inner tubes. “Is the possibility that you might be a carrier of that gene the reason you don’t have kids?”
Nev watched the back of the car in front of them. “No.” At the intersection she signaled and looked both ways before turning onto the Gillies Range Road.
They didn’t know if Nev had it. Maybe she didn’t. “How old was your mum’s mum when she died?”
“Fifty-one.”
“Was it…?”
Nev nodded.
Ronnie swallowed. “Right.” So it ran in the family. That didn’t mean Nev had it or that she would get breast cancer. “Has Taylor been tested?”
Nev nodded. “She’s negative.”
Ronnie sighed. “Thank god. That’s a good sign, right?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’m going to worry about it.”
