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Chapter Thirty
Deanna
Trip preparation moves quickly. We arrange hotel rooms, carpools, rough plans to keep Willa busy.
River’s sisters drive out with him, early, to spend the day at some sort of fancy spa. I stay for a work meeting, a video call with a machine learning expert, someone who understands artificial intelligence a million times better than I do.
It’s strange, to consider ceding control, to consider bringing in outside opinions. But it’s time. I can’t run this on my own. Not if we secure this funding and kick up our advertising enough to take the crown from Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Bumble, or Coffee Meets Bagel.
After the call, I go home, pack, and drive to Palm Springs on my own. The big houses blend into smaller ones, neighborhoods of matching homes and perfectly square four-unit apartment buildings. Then the strip malls and gas stations. Everything spreads out as I move east, through Riverside County. When River was a kid, the county had a reputation as a home of meth houses and crime. It was an inflated one, no doubt—we also called Anaheim Anacrime because it was less safe than Irvine and Tustin—but one with some truth.
Riverside is still expensive, by most people’s standards, but it pales in comparison to our neighborhood. To the entire California coast. The crime might be minimal, but the heat isn’t. And unlike Palm Springs, a cozy resort community, Riverside isn’t all strip malls and concrete. Or maybe everyone has a pool in the backyard.
Did he grow up in an apartment complex with a pool? A little peanut-shaped one, maybe. I can see him there, sketching palm trees instead of swimming, the dorky kid with a scrawny frame and too much interest in his eyes.
He didn’t fit in there.
He doesn’t fit in here.
That doesn’t make sense. Our future. There can’t be a future if he belongs in New York, and I belong here. And I belong wherever Lexi is.
Or maybe I need to take one of those quizzes, to find out the truth. There must be one with a decent algo, but none of them can quantify the love I have for my sister. She’s more important than sunny days, mild winters, beach access, cool bars, great restaurants, low crime.
Maybe that’s the problem with this.
Maybe there is a magic we can’t explain.
But that’s sacrilege, isn’t it?
…
When I get to the hotel, the sky is dark and the space is quiet. River is in our room, on the phone with Ida. I kiss him hello, unpack enough to change into my swimsuit, and head straight to the pool in the courtyard.
It fits perfectly in the quaint hotel. A big, rectangular pool with clear water, surrounded by off-white lounge chairs, palm trees, and the cream hotel rooms behind that.
There’s a strange mix of seventies nostalgia and modern shapes, as if the hotel is trying to marry its history and its future. It doesn’t quite work. Some things don’t go together. Orange County and New York. Love and logic. Starlight and city light.
Even here, with the glow of the pool and the soft streetlights of the quiet town, the stars shine bright. Brighter than they do at our house anyway.
I slip into the empty pool, float on my back, watch the stars move through the sky. Though I guess it’s mostly the Earth moving around them. Everything in the universe is moving, changing position all the time, but it feels so constant. The same way the water in the pool rocks back and forth, with its own mini current.
I move, but I stay in the same place.
It means something, but metaphors aren’t my forte. That’s River’s department.
The cool water envelops me as I dive under the surface. Bit by bit, the day melts away. Then the week. The year.
All those questions running through my mind dissolve, until one thought occupies my brain.
I need to touch him again.
It feels like ages pass as I dive under the water, then surface. Again and again, the cool, safe feeling overwhelms me. It allows my concerns to fade away.
Finally, I surface, and I see him, dropping towels on a lounge chair, turning to watch me.
He’s in that same pair of board shorts, and his strong thighs are easier to ogle from here. He is too hot. It isn’t fair. But then life never is. And I’m not in the mood to curse or question it. I’m in the mood, period.
I move toward the edge of the pool and motioncome here.
