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My climb down the rock is less graceful than hers; I scrape my foot in one spot and hiss as pain radiates up my calf. It makes the first step into the water feel good—feel like a relief.
Then, it really registers.
The lake is cold. More like freezing, actually. The few warm days we’ve had haven’t infiltrated the depths of the lake.
“Fuck!” I can’t turn back, not while Sutton is treading water and grinning at me, so I keep moving. Submerging myself deeper and deeper into the water until there’s nothing left above it except my head. “What were you thinking?”
It feels like my teeth should be chattering too hard to speak. But I’m adjusting. Or all the warmth has been leeched from my body.
At least I’m no longer hard.
“I wasn’t,” Sutton replies. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to get hypothermia.”
She laughs. I’d go skinny-dipping in the Arctic Ocean if it meant hearing that laugh. Loose.Happy. Relaxed.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d follow.”
“You should have been sure.”
Her nose wrinkles before she flips onto her back, so she’s floating. Blonde hair fans out around her like a halo. “I told you to stop doing that.”
“I ended it with her, Sutton.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Twenty minutes ago, right?”
I wince. “Probably more like thirty now.”
Her only answer is a snort.
“When did you write that song?”
“A while ago.”
“Do you sing or just write?”
“Both.”
“I associate guitar with my dad.”
Most people assume that my father is dead, and in many ways, it’s like he is. Sutton knows he’s in prison for a host of drug-related offenses. My mother and I would go visit him, but I haven’t been back to Arkansas since I left the state nearly four years ago.
“All the good memories I have of him, when he was home and present, they’re wrapped up in playing.”
Her voice is so quiet that it barely carries across the surface of the lake. “My mom sang.”
That’s all she says, and all she has to.I get it, is what she’s telling me. And she doesn’t even have to tell me that.
“It feels like I’m all alone now,” I whisper.
My father is in prison. My mom is dead. My Grams is gone. And I just broke up with my girlfriend of three years.
“You’re not.” Her head turns, so she’s looking at me instead of the sky. The motion forms ripples that eventually reach me. “You have me, Johnny. Always.”
“Do I?”
“We’re complicated. We’ve always been complicated. We always will be complicated. You know that, and you know why.” She draws in a deep breath that exhales with a slight whistle. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t care. Doesn’t mean I won’talwayscare.”
