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The mattress creaks when Victor flops face-down into his pillow.
I scan the rest of the email. “Hey, someone from my mom’s church gave her and Peyton Mariners tickets, right behind home base.”
I brace myself for a disgusting comment, but he doesn’t say anything. Opening the attachment, I chuckle at the photo of the two most important women of my life hugging each other, laughing. Peyton has a pint of beer and Mom is waving a blue foam finger. I set it as my lock screen.
He rolls his head sideways and his hard fingers pry my phone from my hands, a blue glow highlighting his face as he squints at the picture. His thumb smooths across the screen, unconsciously, like he’s trying to touch them, their smiles, the salt-tang wind in their hair. He stares for so long, perfectly still, his breathing slow and deep, that I think he’s fallen asleep. Then he buries his face in his pillow again and shoves the phone at me.
I can barely hear his muffled voice. “Did they win?”
“The Mariners?” I could have sworn I misheard him. “Yeah, I guess they did. For once.”
“How much?”
“What, you’re a baseball fan now?” Sliding my phone into my pocket, I stare at the back of his head, waiting for him to twist my words, the knife in my gut. He doesn’t say anything. “Four to two,” I concede, as a siren passing below the window breaks the dense silence.
I trace the faint ridge of his spine with my eyes. His skin is like poured honey. Shifting a little, he clears his throat painfully, and I notice one of his hands is fisting the duvet, like he did with my shirt last night.
For some reason, I keep talking. “The food sucks at the stadium, but it’s fun to go. Once it gets dark they turn on all the lights, but the roof is still open to the night sky.” The tension in his knuckles relaxes just a little, so I ramble, saying whatever comes to mind. “The breeze comes through, right off the water. By the sixth inning everyone’s stuffed with garlic fries and kind of quiet, content. And when the ball pops up into the stands, way faster than you’d think, you always wonder if it’s going to brain someone.”
When I run out of things to say, he just lies there, motionless, until I give up and climb under the covers and wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
About thirty minutes later, he sits up. He thinks I’m asleep. I watch carefully, ready to get up if he heads for the balcony. Instead, he gathers his pillow and all the remaining blankets from the cupboard. He carries them into the small, empty closet and drops them on the floor. The door slides shut, and I hear a sound like he’s wedging something against it and in that moment, I remember a door in his house, the bolts. My stomach curdles.
You had everything. How could you do this to yourself?
Suddenly, I don’t feel well. I roll over and curl up in a ball, pretending I’m at home. Even mowing lawns with Scooter sounds like heaven right now. Anything but this sinking realization that I’m in over my head and I’ve just remembered I can’t swim.
