She moves her hand a little higher, and a sharp snap of pain has me bending in two as she charges ahead of me.She pulled my leg hair!
I recover quickly and start swimming again, but it’s too late.
Olivia reaches the raft before me, crowing triumphantly. “I beat you!”
I arrive at the raft and rest my elbows and forearms on the platform. “Only because you cheated.”
Olivia smirks. “I didn’t cheat! That’s called resourcefulness.”
“Seemed an awful lot like cheating,” I mutter.
She reaches over and tickles my chin with her fingers. “Aw, don’t be mad.”
She runs her knuckles up and down the scruff on my cheeks, looking damn near perfect, mostly submerged in the water with moonlight shining around her. How could I be mad?
I flash her a smile. “I don’t get mad, babe. I get even.”
She snorts. “Ooh, I’m so scared.”
“Okay, fine. But when you least expect it, I’ll strike.”
She laughs softly, folding her arms on the top of the platform and resting her head against them. I lean my head in, too, and we hang there facing each other like that in silence for a few minutes, kicking our legs gently to stay afloat.
Olivia speaks first. “I realized you never answered my question about why you’re working here this summer. I know you said that Maggie went to camp here, but you were probably making more money working at your dad’s office.”
I don’t respond right away. Instead, I weigh my need to protect my heart against my intense desire to share everything with Olivia. I want so badly to have as strong an emotional connection as we do a physical one. Despite agreeing to this whole “summer fling” thing, I want so much more of Olivia than her kisses, amazing as they are.
But she’s hurt me before, and it took me a really long time to get over her desertion.
I’m close enough to Olivia that even in the dark, I can see her pinch her eyes closed. “Never mind,” she backtracks. “You don’t have to answer that.”
But if she wants me to, I will. She could ask me for so much more than this, and I would give it to her happily. She could ask for everything, if only she wanted it from me.
I clear my throat. “No, it’s fine. Um, working at Camp Prairie Star has nothing to do with the money for me. I wanted to be in this place. Maggie did come here when she was a kid. It’s kind of a tradition in her family. They’ve been going to camp here for generations.”
Olivia nods. “You want to feel like you’re part of that tradition.”
I bobble my head. “Yes, but there’s more to it than that. You know, right, that Maggie got pregnant with us when she was fifteen and she was sixteen when we were born?” I look at her for confirmation.
“Mm-hmm. Annie told me.”
“Well, her last summer at camp was the summer before she started high school. She was fourteen. She told me and Annie that this place, Camp Prairie Star, was the last place she remembers still feeling like a kid, feeling like the world was open to her with endless possibilities and promise. She had to grow up quickly after that.”
Olivia reaches one of her hands over to cover mine. “She was so young.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “She was, which is why I understand logically why she felt giving us up was her best option. But …” I trail off, trying to gather my thoughts and the best way to express them.
Another part of my hesitation is that the only other person I’ve ever shared these thoughts with is my therapist, Dr. Francine. I tried to talk to Annie, but it was a conversation she didn’t want to have. I feel awkward and ungrateful at the thought of talking to my parents about it.
Olivia shifts closer to me, aligning our bodies as we hang on the raft side by side. Her hip fits perfectly in the space above mine.
It would be a relief to air my conflicting emotions about my adoption to Olivia, for someone else in my life to see that part of me. At the same time, trusting her with my deepest feelings is terrifying, especially because she’s left me before.
I blow out a breath of air and take a leap of faith. “But I can’t stop obsessing about the unfairness of it all. It’s not right that she had to hand her newborn babies off to a stranger. It’s not fair that Annie and I … that I had to be separated from the mother that grew me and nurtured me before I was even born.”
Olivia’s forehead wrinkles. “You were only a few days old, though. You can’t possibly remember.”
I shift slightly away. “No, I don’t remember, exactly. But I still feel it, and that feeling’s always been in me. A feeling like … it’s hard to explain, but a feeling like I was left to fend for myself, that the one person who was supposed to be there to protect me was gone. Ifshecould disappear, what would stop everybody else from doing the same?”
