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He looks like he wants to say something, but I cut him off. “Zach?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m scared.”
His frown gets even bigger. “Of what?”
Of you.
I grab the hem of my t-shirt and pull it off my body, leaving me in a navy-blue bra. “Of the water.”
“Why?”
Because you make my heart bleed.
My hands go to the buttons of my shorts. “Because I don’t know how to swim. I never learned. My dad tried to teach me when I was a kid but I just got so scared. I thought I’d drown. I couldn’t stop crying so he brought me back home.”
Zach’s all alert now. He looks like he’s going to come out of the pool. “Blue. Stop whatever fucked up, crazy thing you’re thinking.”
Bending, I shove down my shorts and step out of them. His eyes run up and down my barely-clothed body and I say, “My dad’s dead, Zach. My mom too.” At this, he comes to a pause, watching me carefully. “They’re not here anymore. I don’t have anyone in my life that I could turn to.”
“Blue –”
“If I jumped into this water, they won’t come and save me. They can’t. Because I’m alone.”
I probably look insane to him. Suicidal.
I’m not.
I’m just in love with him. And I know that if I tell him that, he’ll break up with me. He’ll probably call me pathetic or something and this secret affair will be over.
I know it in my stupid, fucking heart.
“You’re not jumping in the water. I swear to fucking God, Blue –”
I cut him off again. “Will you save me?”
“Don’t –”
“Tell me. If I jump in the water, will you save me?”
If I fall in love with you, will you catch me?
Again, a little too late to ask questions, right?
I’ve already fallen.
His shoulders move up and down in jerky breaths. His eyes are burning, scorching my body with his intensity, attention. It feels like he knows what I’m asking. The real question. Not the bullshit one I just made up.
It feels like he’s going to say no.
“Yes.”
Relief spreads through my limbs. Relief that I can do this. I can jump and he won’t let anything happen to me.
Maybe this is my way of falling in love. Literally. Maybe this is my way of telling him. And by asking him to save me, I’m pretending that he’d say I love you too.
He calls out my name again but I don’t heed it.
I just run and jump.
The splash that echoes, sounds like it’s coming from inside a tunnel. The water punches me right in the chest and I feel a second of panic before his strong arms wrap around me. His big, strong, life-saving body collides with mine and I hold on to him, gasping for breath.
I don’t think I was submerged for more than two seconds. Still, it feels like my lungs are full of water and starving.
Zach hugs me to him, smashes me, his arms wrapped around me like tight steel bands. Actually, his embrace is making it harder for me to breathe than what I felt when I jumped into the pool.
“Can’t… b-breathe,” I gasp, hanging on to him like a spider monkey.
At my warbled request, he loosens his hold, but then his hand is free to get tangled up in my wet hair and he pulls my head back.
I burn with his fury as he looks down at me. “Are you fucking crazy? What the fuck are you doing?”
His growled words settle in the vicinity of my heart and curl themselves like fingers around my lovesick organ.
“I wanted to find out.”
He almost shakes my head by my hair. “Find out what?”
“What it feels like. Falling, I mean.”
My answer doesn’t please him. Not in the least. He squeezes my waist roughly. “You will never – not ever – do this again. Do you understand?”
I want to ask him how he will ever know if I take another plunge. He’s leaving soon.
But I’m not that cruel.
I lick my lips, bobbing in the water even though I’m plastered to him. “I promise.” Then, a tear leaks out and I whisper, “I just miss my mom and dad a lot.”
Agony washes over his features and he hugs me again. I tuck my face in his salty and yet sweet-smelling neck and cry.
That’s all I need.
A shoulder to cry on. I don’t need any platitudes or any false consolations. Just him and his strong chest.
Sniffling, I turn my face and talk to the vein on his neck. “You know my house? The one I’m trying to get back?”
He hums, telling me that he’s listening.
“I don’t think I want it back for the right reasons.” I finger the droplets on his collarbone as I continue, “I think I’m just afraid that if I don’t have it, all the traces of my parents will be gone.”
