Charz’s head is also peeking above the water’s surface when I rub the water away. Her wide eyes survey me like a security camera, just taking me in, the only sign that I’ve scared the shit out of her. Seeing her trying to mask her fear jolts something inside me.
Why am I in her pool? Why am I here? Is she okay?
“Charz,” I breathe, wading through the chest-deep end and pushing handfuls out of the way. “How—how are you?”
She glides through the water to me. Her body slices through the pressure, making my body appear more like a football player in a ballet class.
“You’re in my pool!” she shrieks.
We both stop at this point, a body-length between us. Her eyebrows arch upward as she stares at me, expectantly demanding answers for this craziness.
“I don’t know why,” I manage, sure that this verbal answer to the questions in my mind can’t make any sense to her. “I mean…I want to talk to you about something.”
Her shoulders relax and she moves forward, wiping droplets from her face. She’s beautiful like this. A natural in the water. The way her body looks like a feather, not a lump of weight trying to move through this pool. I’m just glad I’m crouched in the water and with the ripples from our movements she can’t, surely, notice my boxers stuck to my hips, and another bodily appendage.
Suddenly her features twist. “Get out! Get out of my pool. This room. My house. Out! What were you thinking, Dex?”
I love when she calls me Dex. She’d call me Dexter if she really hated me. This is my cue. I risk pulling her to me and when she doesn’t force me back, I’m glad I chanced the move.
Her hair is slick, hotter than any babe on the cover of a mag. Her skin is soaking, the straps of her suit the only material visible above the water line. We look at each other for a moment, and I feel her eyes take me in, like she knows I’m imagining everything her body could do while wet.
“I’m really, very sorry, Charz.”
“That’s not my name!”
“It’s my name for you,” I say, and she smiles but it’s an angry smile, and it disappears in a split second. The expression on her face tells me the responsible side of her has reminded her this creep has snuck in her pool.
Which isn’t how this looks. Is it?
“Can I explain?”
“Please.”
I run my fingers through my hair again and push it back out of my face. Need to think.
“And stop doing that!” she demands, though the look on her face seems more interested than annoyed.
“Okay. Um. Here goes. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about us and the accident, but I had a moment before—” I sort of almost fainted and woke up to your scowling face a moment ago “—and I really can’t explain why I walked in your house and dunked myself in your pool.” I can, but I’m lying. “Here goes. I didn’t plan for the wires to snap on the ski lift at Mason’s and I certainly didn’t plan to hurt your parents that day. But I can’t stop thinking about you and it’s driving me nuts and I had to tell you that.”
Charz’s face reddens quickly, including her eyes and she turns from me. White heat shoots through my chest, so I pull her into me, holding her tight. For a moment, there’s a hint of pressure between her palms and my chest but her strength falters and she submits. Wrapping our bodies together, the water around us feels warm and I stop shivering. The heat feels so good and I rest my chin on her head, feeling the quivering in her body diminish. She pushes her hands against my chest, still trapped between us. When I let her go she takes the warmth and even more. This water is colder than ever, a reminder her body is gone from my hands.
“I’m sorry this happened. You mean everything to me, Charlee May.”
Her jaw drops, her mouth into the shape of a letter, but that’s as far as she gets for a verbal response. Are all kind words that shocking coming from my mouth? She wades back to me, sending my heart leaping with every step she takes.
Then she’s in my lap. She floats on top of me, warm water between her legs and mine. Her heels are pressing into the back of my leg, clamping her to me. Her wet arms make a splash when they come out of the water and drape around my neck.
I’ve had about zero breaths in this time, but my heart’s hammering away under my skin. She must feel it through the water because her breasts are close and her fingertips rest on my back.
“Charz—” I half mouth, half whisper.
She ignores my protest and almost lets her head rest against my forehead. Instead, she stares straight into my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she says.
My heart bangs again, sending a rush directly to my dick this time. I lower myself into the water hoping she won’t suddenly sit on me. “I had to make you see I couldn’t hurt you.”
“I realized that you had nothing to do with what happened at Mason’s.” She pulls her face down to meet mine, not moving back so our noses graze each other’s. Since she’s been soaking, her skin is softer than the last time we touched. I want to lay her down and drink in every part of her body.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say electricity shocked the daylights out of me when we touched, and I’m nothing but a soul floating on clouds. But I do, and I know Charz is my drug, and this is my personal high.
“I’m still the reason your family’s torn, Charz.”
If she’s as confused as I am about me telling her to come back but back off, I don’t see it. Charz closes her eyes, breathing in and dipping her head back at the same time. Without thinking, I kiss the front part of her neck and it’s more than the ecstasy I expected to feel. She starts to slip so my hands fly to her waist and grip on tight. She resists, and although I could make her body do anything I wanted to stop her sliding down, I begin imagining what her bare waist would feel like through her suit. Her very, very thin suit touches the material of my shorts on my upper thigh. Two layers of material separate me from her and this feeling hardens me more. She opens her eyes as if I’ve said it out loud and thrusts against me.
I suck in a heavy breath and start to protest again but she’s nose to nose and so I breathe into her mouth, “I’m not good for you,” which makes it harder to pull her cheek, her tightly wrapped legs, and her breasts, plastered to my chest, from my body. But I do.
The rush of water unfuzzes my thoughts.
Charz leans in again and I say something horrible that I know will keep her from me. “I might know who killed your mom. Who organized what happened at Mason’s.”
“Now I think you should leave,” Charz says wading past me to the steps.
What’s up with her? Wouldn’t she be dying to know the answer to this? Then again, who’d believe those words? She’s looking for proof.
She catches her hair in a bunch and squeezes out the water, body twisting, her breasts and hips creating a tongue-wagging hourglass shape. The water drips from the bends at her elbows, her legs, her ass.
Get it together.
“I have proof!” I choke out, trying to run after her, but my efforts result in slow-motion lunges that ultimately trip me up and bowl me back into the water. I get up, flip my hair as though it’ll make me as sexy as she is when she does it, and jog up the stairs.
“Here.” She thrusts a towel at my chest. “Where are your…” She sees my path of clothes trailing to the pool. The sneakers, shorts, white tank. Then her gaze whips around to my crotch. She gulps, and her cheeks redden.
“Just—” She fixes her arms in a bunch over her chest. “Get your stuff and get out of here when you’re dry.”
“Charz. Wait,” I say catching her wrist as she turns again. She stops the second I touch her, staring at my hand on her wrist. Is she remembering the watch point at the reservoir like I am?
She finally meets my eyes.
“I have…something to show you. I thought you’d like—”
She slips from my hand when I’m unaware and says, “Towel. Shower. Clothes. Out.”
As I fumble to pick though my pockets
for my cell, Charz disappears inside a bathroom attached to the pool house. Something clicks when the door shuts. Great! She’s going to call the cops on my ass.
I pull on my clothes without drying off, and run through the files on my cell as I approach the door. When I find it, I press play and slip it in the crack between the door and the bathroom’s tile floor.
“…I’d love some of that cash. Get my grandson some proper equipment, my wife a nice weekend away and a car. But I’m not stupid. What do you think Lisa will say? She’ll ask where I happened to pluck out that five- or six-figure sum. Tahny and Dexter will be clueless for a while. I could hide it from them. But not Lisa. Not her.” Again, Dad goes on to talk about how this is exactly stealing money and it doesn’t seem “fair”. Then he moves on to other details. “Maybe I was entitled to the money. Back then, yeah, but not after all that’s happened—all I’ve done.”
Time lapses. Everything is quiet, except for the buzz of the recording and distant noises from the restaurant. Two shadows spill under the door, against the bright light, where I can imagine her head pressed against the wood, her body crouched on her haunches and her forearms pressed against the frame.
Dad returns, saying, “You’re still planning to do it? That’s a cruel way to—”
Like before, the recording cuts out the moment before we wait to hear “die”. My calves still aching from crouching behind the bush outside Charz’s place earlier, I stand and wait a few minutes but it’s silent behind the door. No shuffles, no whimpers, no breathing, even.
Damn. I count down the seconds from sixty to one, tell myself I’ll leave it at that if I can’t convince Charz by then. At “two”, the door swings open and the whoosh pulls me forward—that or the shock—and I catch myself against the doorjamb.
Charz looks me in the eyes and says, “My dad started Roycroft Engines in the eighties and has controlled quite a bit of the car manufacturing industry in Australia since the late nineties, but…” Her eyes light up and she rushes past me. She still has her suit on, with a loose, see-through shirt, one shoulder poking out, on top. All I see are long, long legs pumping to the door, then she leaps inside the house and continues running.
“Wait!” I chase after her, hoping to God she isn’t hiding in her panic room or something. I check in the kitchen because I feel familiar with that room—although the psycho rummaging through that food was someone other than me—but she isn’t there. I run down the hallway, back up to the front of the house when I hear a sound. I go up to the room.
Charz is flicking through a filing drawer, flying past markers until she mumbles, “A-ha,” and pulls out a file.
“He’s worth…” Charz starts, flicking through sheets. “I had no idea.” She goes on, flicking mindlessly, her jaw slackening. “Billions.”
She drops the papers and points to my face. “I mean, I knew we had millions, many, but… How did you know?” She steps in and tries her best to keep her finger firmly pointed in my direction, but the accusatory look in her eyes is conflicted with fear. “How did that man know?”
“That man is…” I gulp and say “my dad” but she’s still staring at me, which means I only said it in my head, not out loud. I look at the ceiling, my fingers woven together behind my head.
Focusing on a tiny mark up near the corner, I try again, saying, “That man is my dad.”
The shock buckles her knees and she wobbles. I lurch forward and catch her waist, but the action is far removed from our moment in the pool.
“Mmm,” she mumbles. I know she wants me off her. We haven’t been close for long, but there are things I know and don’t know about her. I don’t know if this is too close but I know she hates being the center of attention, that she doesn’t dress or act like other girls who think they’re hot, and she absolutely will not say the most important things on her mind if they’re rude or even just a little bit out there.
That’s what’s happening now. She won’t even push me away because she’s afraid of…what? My feelings?
I don’t step back, but open my fingers so she has to step away from me. She walks away so easily it hurts.
I walk out of the room and head to the front door, ready to get away from this when I try to swallow and my tongue comes away feeling like sandpaper. I also have a massive urge to pee. And drink four bottles of water.
This is my body paying me back for bingeing on all the food I could find.
“Why do you do that?” a voice asks.
It takes me a moment but I tighten my thighs, hoping to stop the urge to pee. Charz’s question replays in my head and now I see she’s standing there, hands on her hips, watching me.
“Do what?”
She comes to me and pulls my hand from my pocket, sandwiching her fingers over mine. “You’re shaking.”
Her face softens. I could swear the brown of her eyes lightens into the color of melted chocolate. Her lashes are so long, so beautiful, and just like every other feature on her face they drive me crazy. I want her so bad but becoming “us” would make me happy and I’m not done feeling like the worst person in the world about fucking up her happy life yet.
Weeks ago, I would have stayed away, but like an addiction, she’s becoming my normal and I don’t have the perspective to notice if I’m doing anything I wouldn’t have before she became my world.
And at this point, everything about us feels fine when we’re alone. I just don’t know how that will translate with the rest of the world.
She cups my cheek, causing me to involuntarily lean in.
“Oh, wow. You’re burning up!” She squeezes the hand she’s still holding and gestures inside. “Come with me.”
I don’t object. I follow her into the kitchen. She walks over to the pantry, shakes her head then goes to the fridge and pulls out two bottles. One of water, one of Coke.
“Water. Please.” My voice sounds desperate and my mouth salivates just from seeing the cold, clear liquid.
Charz sets an empty glass down in front of me, emptying the contents of the bottle into it. In five seconds the glass is empty. She stares at the glass for a second before refilling it. I empty that just as quickly, which prompts the urge to pee again.
“Another?” she asks incredulously.
“No, but, um, can I use your toilet?”
She chuckles and points out the room. When I come back she’s leaning over the counter, and I see that she slipped on a pair of short shorts while I was otherwise occupied, but that doesn’t do much to stop me from wanting to tangle myself into those legs.
“Thanks.”
“Well, it was expected.” When she notices my expression, she adds, “After you finished all that water.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“You didn’t by chance, um, eat some rum balls? And cookies? And like, half my pantry, did you?”
“No,” I lie.
“Because I always put the lids back on and tell Darcy to do the same, so I don’t know why they look like that,” she says, pointing to the row of glass containers, one spilled to the side, all with the lids scattered around them.
“So maybe I did?”
“You’re the first guy to choose water over Coke, yet you break into people’s houses only to eat from their junk food, yet you, er, are in totally buff shape. You never fail to surprise me.”
“I don’t?”
“Well, you with your rep—” She cuts herself off, and starts picking at the edge of the marble counter.
What? I have something? “Oh shit. Not like that.” It didn’t take long for my “reputation” to wedge itself between us. I have to fix this. “It’s not what you think.”
“Dex…” she sweeps her gaze over me and back to the counter. “It doesn’t matter. When you’re better you can leave. I don’t care what you do.”
I move around the counter to her side and lean into her, resting my hand on the edge. “I don’t use drugs, Charz.” I gulp. “It sorta looks that way though?” She nods, the movement almost imper
ceptible. That shyness has crept up on her again, making her tuck her chin into her neck and look away from the side I’m leaning into her.
Sucking in a breath, I prepare myself to tell the third person in my life outside those closest to me about my condition. My girlfriend, Lily, was the second person outside of my family to know, beside Elliot, and once I lost her and my brother, Jack, part of me shut down. If I had to lose Charz, before even getting her… No, I can’t.
“I get hypos because I’m diabetic.” Realizing I’m speaking in jargon, I add, “I get faint and need food with high sugar content right away.” She’s staring into my eyes. I could get lost in your eyes, is what I want to tell her. “And your pantry saved my life. Essentially.”
“Uh…you’re welcome?” she says warily.
“You saved me from a coma.”
She covers her mouth with the palms of her hands, her eyes like saucers.
I grab her hands and peel them away, revealing an open jaw. I gently close that with a fingertip. “Relax. I was kidding. I’ve never fallen into a coma before.”
She studies my face and then says, “But you could?”
“Yes.” I take a small step back, shaking myself out of the drug that is Charlee May. “If you won’t try to kick me out again, I’d like to tell you something I’ve figured out about what happened to your mom and dad and the others at Mason’s.”
She does that thing again where her body cowers and she tries to get away from me without moving an inch.
“And why do you do that?” I ask, throwing back her earlier question. “I thought you’d want to know what happened.”
“I don’t, actually.”
What’s up with her? Besides the fact that she’s infinitely different from any other girl I’ve ever known, Charz has a side to her that doesn’t compare to anyone. Everyone in my family is answers now and fight-until-you-get-what-you-need.
Drowning in You Page 12