Fall Guy

by Liz Reinhardt

  There’s no sound but the lapping of the pool water. And I feel like an idiot. Here I am, naked with this girl who I love, but who doesn’t love me back, and I feel like I should get the hell out of this pool, get my damn clothes on, go home where I know my place, and stop going along with all my crazy feelings.

  Maybe there’s a damn good reason I’ve always done what I was supposed to do.

  Maybe the reason is that it was always the right thing to do.

  Maybe everyone in my family thinks this thing with Evan is all wrong because it’s all wrong.

  Because I felt changed. I let go and opened up and dove headfirst into every gut-wrenching, confusing-as-hell thing I was afraid of, and what did I get for it?

  This awkward uncertainty.

  I roll my neck on my shoulders, pissed that this night, this chance I wanted to take so badly, wound up being such an ultimate disappointment. I swim over to the ladder with slow, sure strokes.

  “Where are you doing?” Evan’s voice is hedged with nervous fear.

  I turn back and pull myself out. “Checking my phone.”

  “Winch?” Her voice echoes in the water. I stop, but don’t turn to look at her. Her words are quick and tight. “Your family, your future, me?”

  I’m naked. I’m chilled. I miss her before I’m even out of her sight. I don’t want to know if my phone rang while we swam. I want to have sex with her again, fall asleep tangled around her, and wake up with her at my side. I want this swim to have been all about her and me doing crazy shit with no one or nothing worrying us.

  I want her to tell me she loves me back.

  The last thing I want is games. Especially the kind she’s playing.

  “I can’t answer for those.” I tighten my hand into a fist at my side.

  She ducks low in the water, so quiet, I figure that’s the end, and start to walk back.

  “Answer,” she orders, the beginning of the word bubbled from under the water.

  “I can’t.” My brain is frozen on those three choices.

  “Why?” She swims over to the concrete edge, her arms and legs cutting smooth in the pool’s icy blue water.

  “Because I can’t.” I shake my head slowly. “I could have, a while ago. But now things aren’t what I thought. They’re…things aren’t the way they…It’s compli—”

  I stop stuttering and look right at her, her face damp and anxious. “You.” She grips the edge of the cement hard. My voice is low, just for her. I have to tell her the truth, even if it kills me. She needs to know how I feel, even if it isn’t mutual. “Always.” She presses her lips together. “My family? Sometimes. My future?” That one gets a laugh that isn’t remotely funny and the word that’s final as a gavel on the judge’s bench. “Never.”

  I’m ready to leave. It’s done, out there, and it feels like hell, but what else was I supposed to do? I can’t fake anything anymore. She changed everything about the way I think about life and love and what I want.

  “Winch!” I turn to look at her. She pushes the hair off both sides of her face and chews on her lip. “Don’t go. I can’t let you go. Until you hear me out. Hear me out?”

  I haven’t moved or made a single sound. I stand still and wait.

  She swallows hard and looks up. “I, uh, I…love you, Winch. I love you.”

  Evan 12

  I love him.

  Of course I love him.

  Even when I’m playing stupid games, of course I love him.

  I want him to get back in the pool. I want him to take me into his arms. I want him to tell me he loves me again, and I swear on all that’s holy, I won’t be a coward this time.

  But he only nods and walks back inside. It’s inappropriate for me to feel such total lust mixed in with the heart-squeezing sadness while I watch him walk away, but I do.

  But the lust is fast overpowered by howling, black, ceaselessly pricking regret.

  I’m such a coward. I pull myself out of the pool and shiver and feel embarrassingly exposed, but there’s no towel to cover myself with, and I don’t feel like going inside to get one. I sit on the edge of the pool and dip my feet in, the water only slightly cooler than the air, but it makes vicious goosebumps prickle stiffly up my legs.

  I wonder if they called him. If he’ll go. If he’ll come back and say goodbye first. If he does come back, will he tell me he loves me again? He doesn’t have to. This weirdness, this badness is all my fault. I’m to blame. For every stupid turn the night took, I’m to blame.

  I never expected him to be so honest, so fearless. I didn’t think he’d strip down and make me blush and have sex with me like he was born knowing exactly how to make my body race, then jump headfirst into the pool and my games and professing his love.

  I never, ever expected him to put me in the ‘always’ category.

  Even if it is only a game.

  Even if it isn’t real.

  But isn’t every game somewhat real?

  I hold my head in my hands and feel miserable, chilled, slow, low, lonely, used, a million and one empty, clanking adjectives that don’t quite put a finger on my loss and sadness.

  The sliding door opens, and I grip the pool edge, waiting. His footsteps come close, and a towel covers my shoulders. “Come in. You look cold.”

  “No one called?” I clutch the towel to my chest and crane my neck to look at him.

  “I have no idea. I didn’t check.” He’s dressed, but barefoot, his hair still wet and shiny from the pool water, but lying neatly on his head. “Come in. We can watch TV.”

  “I don’t want to watch TV,” I say, the petulance in my voice immature but unstoppable.

  He’s silent. I can see his shadow, cast from the porch light. I can see he’s stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “What do you want to do?”

  His voice is calm and even, Winch all buttoned-up again. I had him loose and free, and now I’ve pushed him back to buttoned-up and unattainable.

  I kick my feet under the water and hold my leg out, stiff and hip-high in front of my body.

  “I think it was that water, that cold water. I think it froze my heart a little. I think that’s why I was such a raging bitch.”

  “You weren’t a bitch.”

  Winch always says the right thing, the polite thing. Like a diplomat or something. I wish he’d argue. Growl. Grab me and kiss me hard, because I’d messed up so badly but he loves me. He does. He said it.

  I let the towel slide down off my shoulders and hear the intake of his breath. I know it’s just Winch appreciating my skin, but it makes me feel better. I close my eyes and wish he’d yell at me for being so awful before. But I know that when Winch is really hurt, he goes cold.

  And it’s feeling pretty frosty out here.

  “I was a bitch. And I’m sorry. And I’m sad.” I tilt my head back and look up at him.

  He looks down at me, and his smile is indulgent, but guarded. He steps forward so his feet are on either side of my body. “Why are you sad?”

  “Because you’re dressed.” When his smile turns into a chuckle, I push my luck. “But if you got undressed and got in the hot-tub, I’d be warm, so less bitchy, and happy, since naked is kind of a requirement for hot-tubbing.”

  “You’re that desperate to see me naked?” He moves closer to my side, then sits next to me on the damp cement.

  I walk my fingers to his hand and squeeze. “I may have played down just how spectacular you look. Naked. And otherwise.”

  “You freak me out a little when you’re being nice, you know that?” He leans forward, and I half-pucker, sure I’m about to be kissed, but he swipes a fingertip gently under my eye and holds it up for my examination. “Eyelash.”

  I nod and choke back my raging disappointment. My fault, my fault, my fault. I asked him to open up, he did, I smashed him where he was most delicate.

  “Or, you know, TV would be okay.”

  “Blow it.” I raise both eyebrows into my hair, and his puzzled look twists
into a chuckle. “Uh, not that. The eyelash.”

  It’s a little embarrassing that I’m half disappointed.

  “Blow it?” I repeat.

  He holds his finger closer. “Off the tip of my finger. And make a wish.”

  I level that little poke of black hair a dubious glance. “You want me to wish on a fallen eyelash? I never would have pegged you for such a romantic.”

  “You should stop trying to peg me at all.” He gestures with his finger again. “And it’s more superstition than romance. Blow and wish.”

  My dirty literal interpretation of his suggestion makes the blood run hot and fast all through me. I clutch the towel tighter to my chest, lean forward and pucker for the second time in these last few minutes. I close my eyes and wish, with everything in me, that this night will weave some kind of lasting magic. That we’ll wake up with everything figured out, and we’ll survive as a couple. That our relationship won’t be a tug-of-war or bumper cars or a roller coaster or any other kind of fairground/theme-park analogy my brain can concoct. I blow, but before I can open my eyes, Winch’s hand is covering them and his voice softly instructs me to blow again.

  The second time, I blow harder, and, when he uncovers my eyes, his smile is just over the line of bashful.

  “I can’t walk under ladders, either. I avoid black cats like the fucking plague. And I never put new shoes on the table.”

  “What?” That one makes me giggle. “New shoes? Where else would you put them? I always put them on the table.”

  “If you have any feelings for me whatsoever, you won’t freak me out by doing that. Ever. Even if you and I…” His words trail off and his eyes dart over to the softly lapping waves of the pool.

  “You and I won’t.”

  I don’t go any further with my statement, because imagining life devoid of Winch is a specifically breathtaking kind of pain, and I don’t have the courage to speak that possibility out loud.

  “Shall we?” He puts a hand out and I stare at his inviting gesture while I untangle what he’s asking.

  “Go in the house?” I ask. He shakes his head. “Watch TV?” He pulls his hand back and takes his shirt off in one slow tug, gripping behind his neck and letting the cloth slide over his bruised skin and tight muscles. “Hot-tub?”

  My voice is paper-thin, his zipper is a flash and whine diving down in the night, and I pull myself to my feet without waiting for his assistance.

  Everything with Winch and me seems to take to be the double side of a coin flipping through the air, with no one sure which side it’s going to land on. When we’re on heads, it seems like life is going in the right direction; it’s all stolen kisses and that kind of deep and complete understand that you only ever get with a few people who truly know and…love you. But when the coin lands on tails, it’s all freezing, shut-down, hopeless resignation.

  Winch walks to the hot-tub, his shorts hanging half off his hips, and pries the cover off. I turn it on and he helps me climb into the bubbling, warm water before shedding his shorts and following.

  In the cozy, warm rush of this soothing water, I wonder what the answer to our flipping coin relationship conundrum might be. Hope the coin always lands on heads? Stop flipping it? Melt it down and make a whole new coin, smooth with no sides?

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

  In the shadows, it’s hard to make out his features, but my legs float slightly, and one foot lands on his thigh. He moves closer to me.

  “Us. Coins. Us.” I smile at his frown.

  “I’m trying to make this work, Evan. You have to know how hard I’m trying.”

  His body goes from mirroring mine to paralleling it, and the heat of his skin on mine is identical to the heat of the water. We’re all hot, warmed up, that frigid distance between us melting like I hoped it would.

  “I feel like I’m balancing too much. More than I can hold up all at once,” he explains.

  “I get it.” I lean forward and kiss the side of his mouth. “I don’t want to make things harder for you.”

  He kisses back, his tongue pressing into my mouth in a slow, steady slide.

  “I know that. But you do.” I stiffen and try to pull back, but he pulls me forward. “Maybe that’s exactly what I’ve been needing all this time. Things have been…my life has been on the same course since I was too young to remember. And my parents and family dictated a lot of it. I’m not very good at questioning the way they want things to be. But I’ve known I wasn’t happy for a long time. It used to be just this pull…like this misery I got dragged along with. When I met you…things changed when I met you. Good changes. But things also got harder.”

  “So what do we do?”

  We’re side by side, and it feels good. But I’m not satisfied with just good, so I half-float, half-slide onto his lap, looking over his dark blue eyes, squinted in serious thought, bordered with the wet spread of inky lashes.

  I wish one was loose under his eye, so I could offer him the chance to put his faith in a wish. “How do we balance all this?”

  His hand moves over my face, pushing the wet hair back. And when it’s all pushed away, he just keeps rubbing my skin. “I don’t know if there is a balance.”

  I weave my arms around his neck and press against his chest, all the soft, needy places on me matched to his hard, bruised body. “Why?”

  His hands grasp either side of my face. “Because you’re young enough that you haven’t fucked things up with your life. And I’m old enough that I should have started to think about these things a while ago.”

  I laugh softly. “Winch, we’re four years apart. You act like you’re in a nursing home and I’m graduating eighth grade.”

  I rub my nose along the bristly stubble on the side of his face.

  “Four years can make a hell of a difference if you use your time wisely.” He’s so serious, it’s almost funny. I kiss his frown. I kiss his jaw. I kiss his chin before I lay my head on his chest and listen to the jumping pace of his heart. “I’m willing to let you go if it means you get a chance to avoid everything I did wrong. I want better for you.”

  “The best I can possibly have is all right here.” I lay both hands over his heart. “With you.”

  He sits up and pulls me closer, sloshing water over the sides of the tub.

  “How did I get so damn lucky?” he asks, his mouth blanketing mine.

  We kiss and touch and tangle until things are back where they were before the pool and the games and his question. And when my head is pillowed on his shoulder and all I can think about is him, forever, and never going back to real life, whatever that means, I say to him, “You’re the best I’ve ever had. I don’t like talking about the guys before you. Because, honestly, there were a lot. A whole lot. But it’s never been like this, Winch. And I guess that messed me up.”

  I’m looking right at his hand twined with mine, half under the water, when I tell him this. Because I don’t want him to see me blush and wince while I confess.

  He strokes down from the crown of my head to between my shoulder blades with his free hand. “Shh. That was stupid of me to ask. It’s none of my business.”

  “Well, it is.” I would never, ever have said this to any guy I dated or had sex with before. That was the thing, the thing that kept everything else in line. My secrets, my feelings, my interests, were all mine. All mine. No sharing whatsoever. But, because I know Winch would never take from me without giving back, I want to share. “I want to be your business.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but he crushes me close and we sit still and listen to the steady hum of the hot-tub, bubbling and insulating us from the clear, cool sounds of the night.

  “Winch?”

  “Mmm?”

  I love how relaxed he feels and sounds. But I have to ask, no matter how it might tense up all those lax muscles.

  “Is it really only going to be tonight?”

  He doesn’t stressed, exactly. But he does gather me tighter.
r />   “I’m willing to do whatever it takes for this. For us.”

  I know he means it. I know he does. And, nervous as I was, I never really doubted that he’d say anything else.

  But life has a funny way of conspiring to keep us from doing what we mean to do, despite our best intentions. And I never want to hold the attempt to do the right thing against him. Even if it blows up in our faces.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, his lips at my ear.

  “I’m thinking about you and me,” I whisper back.

  He nuzzles my neck. “All good stuff, right?”

  “Of course. What could be bad?”

  We lose ourselves in the slow, sweet tumble of a kiss that ignites our passion, but also, mostly, runs away from the question I just asked that neither one of us wants to answer.

  Winch 12

  The phone rings. I let it. The moon rises. Evan sleeps soundly in my arms, and the weight of her in them marks the first time I’ve held my responsibility close and didn’t feel crushed by it. The weight of taking care of her is the kind of weight that will make me stronger. I know it.

  Remy’s ringtone only breaks the silence once, in the dead of the night. I watch the screen glow bright while the song plays out, and wait for a second or third or twentieth call, but no more come through, which means one of two things; Remy is dead or he was calling because he knows I said not to and wanted to find some way to tell me to fuck off.

  I would bet everything I own on the latter.

  Douchebag.

  In the early, breaking dawn, my phone rings again, and this time, I’m surprised to see the ringtone is Ithaca’s. I almost don’t recognize the soulful croon of some emo or goth or whatever the hell she’s listening to nowadays. It’s crazy how much older she’s getting all the time. Seems like she was just toddling around the other day, her tiny fist clamped hard around my finger for support.

  I manage to slide Evan onto the pillow without waking her and grab the phone, pulling my pants on with one hand while I answer.

  “What’s up, kid?”

  “Winch?” Ithaca’s voice is trembly and upset. Dread coats my entire stomach like thick ice. “Um, where are you?”