Hold My Breath

by Ginger Scott

  She stops, leaning forward and turning to face me more.

  “I kinda can’t think of anyone more perfect to teach someone how to fight than Will,” she says.

  My eyes drop to my knees, and my cheeks push high with my smile. She’s right.

  “Just when I think he can’t be more amazing,” I chuckle, twisting my head to look at her sideways. I raise my eyebrows, no need to finish my words.

  “I know,” she agrees.

  I look down again, considering the gaps she’s filled in—the ones I owe her. I turn as she moves closer, pulling one leg up to tuck under her body. I face her, feeling more at ease and wanting to show her respect. She props one elbow on the back of the couch, resting her cheek against her fist, and she studies me with her kind, tired eyes.

  “You love him,” she says.

  I smile at the mere mention of the word.

  “I do,” I say. My lips pucker with my smile and my cheeks flush.

  “He deserves that…so do you,” she says.

  I glance up and quirk a brow.

  “Thanks?” I say it like a question, a tiny nervous laugh leaking out.

  She continues to stare, and my mouth starts to tingle from the effort to maintain my expression. My eyebrows pull in, and suddenly my mouth relaxes. My breath escapes and my shoulders sink.

  She knows.

  “How long were you with Evan?”

  Tanya’s eyes lock to mine the moment she speaks. I hold her gaze, blinking when she does, speaking with my eyes. After several seconds, she looks down.

  “Oh,” she says.

  Her chest shakes once, and she reaches up to run her wrist under her right eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she laughs nervously, barely a whisper. “I’m not sure why I’m reacting like this. It’s not…it’s not really a surprise. I knew for sure when I saw you. Evan…he had your pictures on his phone. He said you were friends, but a girl can tell.”

  She rests her face on her arm along the sofa back, and she blinks away the remnants of tears.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say, grabbing her hand in mine on instinct. We’re both sisters in this twisted, tragic circumstance.

  “It’s not yours either,” she says, her gaze flitting up to me briefly. Her eyes are red, and I feel gravity pulling me down hard, guilt like a weight tied to my insides. My own eyes begin to sting. I run my thumbs under them, pausing when I look up to see Tanya doing the same. We both start to laugh, quietly.

  “Boy, Evan Hollister was a real prick,” she says through a mix of mad laughter and tears.

  “It’s starting to seem so, yes,” I agree.

  Tanya’s right hand forms a fist, and she presses it against her mouth as she glances away.

  “How did you find out about me? From Will?” she asks, glancing at me sideways.

  I nod yes.

  “You must have thought I was awful,” she says, her eyelids sweeping closed, her knuckles still flush against her lips.

  “For a little while, yes,” I admit. “But Will told me everything. I didn’t hate you after that, and when I met you…and Dylan.”

  She sucks in her bottom lip, her eyes opening on me before she turns to look over her shoulder, down the hallway.

  “He’s an amazing kid,” she says. “He’s hard…oh god, is he hard. And there are days,” she pauses, shifting her posture and moving her hand open, pressing the palm against her chin. Her eyes stare back out into the room, and I see her slip away to someplace else, the corner of her mouth drawing down, her chin denting—as if she’s going to be sick.

  She is going to be sick.

  “Come on,” I say quickly, sliding my arm behind her back, carrying her weight and moving with her quickly into the kitchen. I turn on the faucet while she leans on me, and I start to cup water in my open hand, splashing it on her neck and forehead. She’s breaking out in a sweat, her normal pale skin is growing paler.

  “I’m going to throw up,” she coughs, not able to move herself quickly enough as yellow, acidic bile drips from her lips.

  “Tanya, that doesn’t look good. You might have the flu, or food poisoning,” I say, switching into my nursing mode.

  “No, I’m okay,” she says, coughing again and spitting out more vomit.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I ask, turning the water on higher before bending down to open up the cabinet in search of a switch for the disposal.

  I stand back up and put my hand on her back, rubbing in circles while she rests her chin on her folded palms, the water running in front of her and her eyes squeezed shut.

  “I’d feel better if we at least saw your doctor, or maybe urgent care…I don’t want Dylan to catch something if you’re contagious,” I say.

  Tanya’s body starts to shake, and I press my hand to her harder, kneeling down to look her in the eyes. I rest my head on my hands next to her, both of us bent over the edge of the sink, and her eyes flit open to mine.

  “You can’t catch cancer,” she says.

  Her words sink in quickly, followed by the crashing train they carry along with them. I lift my head just as she does, and we both stand.

  “You being so tired…it wasn’t just you being tired…was it?”

  She breathes in slowly through her nose, then exhales swiftly. She doesn’t answer or shake her head. I don’t ask any more questions. We simply stare at one another, understanding how cruel fate can be.

  After nearly a minute, Tanya breaks our gaze, her hand wrapped around the edge of the counter to steady herself while she cleans the sink and runs a towel along the counter surface with her other. I reach to help, but her hand stops the instant I move to take the towel from her.

  “I know you want to help, but I need to do what I can do on my own, Maddy. While I can,” she says.

  “While…” I repeat that key word, my eyes glued on Tanya’s profile. Her eyes close again, then open on me.

  “This is my second fight. Ovarian. I had a hysterectomy. De-bulking surgeries. Chemotherapy,” she says. I don’t blink. I’ve been around this—I’ve seen this. I know what she’s saying before she says it. She isn’t giving up, but she’s going to lose anyway.

  “When did you find out?” I ask.

  “A few months ago,” she says. “It’s…it’s everywhere.”

  We both pause when we hear laughing mixed with a loud, happy groan echo from the hallway. Her eyes begin to tear and she covers her mouth while she shakes in front of me. I pull her into my arms and hold her frail body—one that I previously thought was small from not eating, from exhaustion.

  “Does Will know?” I ask, feeling her shake her head against me.

  “I can’t do this to him again,” she says.

  “He’d want to know. You’re his family,” I say.

  She steps back from my hold, her mouth pinched tight, her eyes again blinking away tears.

  “The stress of it all last year almost killed him,” she says.

  I freeze on that thought, my focus blurring out. The car accident—Will’s bottom. It was her cancer.

  “He’s still going to want to know, Tanya,” I say, refocusing on her face. “All of the hidden things have been killing him, too.”

  “After trials. I just…I just want him to have this,” she says, and I can tell she loves him when she speaks. I don’t even really care if she loves him the same way I do. It’s nice seeing people love him. He needs more of that.

  “After the trials,” I agree.

  Tanya looks down to my hands, limp and lifeless at my sides, and she pulls the one closest to her in her own. I look at how similar we are—our skin, our size, the small wrinkles—mine from hours in the water, hers from life.

  “Please love him, Maddy. Will…please love him,” she says.

  I remain quiet, eyes on our rigid yet tenuous hold on one another.

  “He deserves someone to love him, Maddy. Give that boy a reason,” she says.

  I look up and into her waiting stare, the red gone, re
placed by a clear green and white, her mask in place for just a little while longer, and I lift my chin slightly. She shakes my hand in her grasp, her lips pulling into a tight smile as she nods with satisfaction.

  “I will say this about Evan Hollister,” I say the moment I see her eyes begin to slant again, sadness trying to take over. She raises a brow in question at me. “He had excellent taste in women,” I say, biting my lip until her mouth curves into a grin, her lips part, and a laugh of madness escapes.

  “That he did,” she says. “Impeccable, if I dare say so myself.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Will

  She never left.

  Maddy…she stayed.

  I blew her dad’s interview. My temper, it’s been in check for way too long, and I just couldn’t handle being the doormat any longer. Maddy was my line—the trigger.

  She insisted on staying with me. I know it’s because if she goes home, to her parents’ place, she has to deal with the aftermath of me walking out. It isn’t fair to her, and before she has to, I’ll make amends with her dad. Or I’ll quit before I sink his chances. Maddy’s peace of mind is what’s important to me.

  She’s peaceful when she sleeps. We got back to the club at around seven, and Duncan had made spaghetti. Maddy crashed on the sofa with her bowl half eaten. I took a photo with my phone because I want to remember her forever, just like that. I’m making up for all of those moments I missed, that Evan got and wasted. I bet Maddy fell asleep in their dorm studying sometimes. I bet she got drunk at parties, and wore sexy little costumes on Halloween. And I bet she spent many nights in his bed, or he in hers, curled up with his arm around her. The envy guts me. It always has, but somehow it feels even worse now.

  That’s how I win over it, though. I make my own memories—better ones that erase the ones I’ve imagined and grown jealous of, and ones that have been tarnished and ruined for her. I will treat her like the queen she was meant to be.

  “Will,” my uncle whispers, twisting the dimmer on the small light in our kitchenette. He’s been sitting at the table for the last hour, tinkering, while I’ve been sitting on the floor across from Maddy, staring at her.

  I nod to him and climb to my feet, pausing to click off the TV before moving to the darkened kitchen.

  “I can’t wake her,” I whisper.

  “It’s fine,” he smiles, glancing past me to where she rests. “You take the bedroom, and I can go sleep in the office across the way.”

  “No, no,” I shake my head. “I doubt I’ll sleep anyway, and if I get tired, I’m fine on the floor.”

  His eyes crinkle at the corners as he looks at me, and his mouth pinches, suppressing a laugh.

  “What?” I whisper.

  He keeps quiet, picking up the day’s paper that he has yet to read from the table and folding it under his arm before reaching up to pat my shoulder as he passes.

  “Welcome to the world of smitten, my boy,” he teases, the chuckle rumbling from his chest.

  “I think I’ve been smitten for quite some time, old man,” I say.

  “Ah, yes…indeed you have,” he winks, nodding for me to look over my shoulder. I turn around to find the most beautiful pair of brown eyes staring at me over the back of a tattered sofa.

  “You smitten with me, Will Hollister?” Maddy asks, her voice crackling with sleepiness.

  The bedroom door shuts behind me, and I glance back to where my uncle just was, and I smirk before turning my head sideways to look at her.

  “Yeah, Maddy. I’m pretty smitten,” I say.

  She stretches her arms out so I walk toward her, the greatest feeling in the world the one that comes with her arms wrapping around my waist. She rests her cheek against my stomach and holds me quietly for several seconds, and I’d be content to stand here like this for days.

  “What time is it?” She twists her head, her chin in my belly while her wide eyes blink open at me. I slide my hands up her cheek then bend down to brush my lips against hers.

  “Not quite ten,” I whisper.

  She smiles against me. I feel it.

  “Midnight swim,” she says, stretching her arms out to her sides.

  “At ten?” I quirk my brow, and she giggles, twisting back around on the sofa and getting to her feet.

  “No, at midnight. That gives us time to make a few phone calls,” she says, her eyes squinting while her lip curls on one side.

  I hold her stare for a second, but give in to her crazy idea quickly, shrugging my shoulder and raising my brow. “Okay,” I say. I think that’s part of being so smitten—no idea of hers is ever going to be too crazy for me to do again.

  Midnight swim was Maddy’s invention. It started the first year we all met, when she insisted that Evan and I stay with her in the clubhouse for a sleepover. Her mother stayed, too, and we all snuck downstairs at midnight to swim without her knowing. The rules were you had to whisper, and no clothes were allowed. That summer, we had maybe a dozen sleepovers and midnight swims, sometimes with the other kids from the club. The midnight swims stopped the next year—when bodies began to change.

  I don’t think the whisper rule still needs to be in effect, but I’m curious how Maddy plans on handling that second one. I’m kind of rooting to keep it in play.

  “Who are you texting?” I ask, sliding my hands around her hips and resting my chin on her shoulder to watch her thumbs move rapidly.

  “Holly,” she says, “and Amber, and that sweet boy she’s been hanging out with at practice. Maybe she can ask some of the other swimmers, too.”

  “Another boy, huh?” I tease, and she twists to face me quickly, glaring with one brow higher than the other.

  “I’m not surrounding you with a bunch of hot women, Will Hollister,” she says.

  My eyes dance around hers, and I hold my smirk at bay.

  “Because of the second rule?” My eyebrow ticks up to match hers.

  She never responds, but her eyes haze over the brief seconds she stares at me before returning her attention back to her phone.

  For the next hour and a half, I think of nothing but how erect I am and how I’m going to handle skinny dipping in front of others with Maddy Woodsen pressed against my side.

  In my shit life, there have been a handful of major things that I have been, and continue to be, thankful for. Beyond surviving—twice—I’m thankful for my talent. I’m among a few elite swimmers, and given my personal circumstances, I know that innate talent is maybe the only reason I’m in the position I am today. Second, I’m thankful for my hair. It sounds vain, but that’s not my reasoning. I’m grateful because it’s just the right length, texture and thickness to require absolutely no effort on my part to look decent at all times. Evan used to spend minutes, sometimes nearly thirty, sculpting with gel and product. I put on a hat, and like magic, my hair dries and I’m done.

  There are maybe a dozen other things—some big, some small—that make up this list, but tonight I add a new one. I think maybe it goes on top.

  I am thankful that the Shore Club pool is dark enough on the far end that if a man were to tread water in it, anyone standing farther away than ten feet can’t tell if he’s naked. This wins because I am naked. Maddy? Not so much. Amber? Nope. Holly? She has her phone camera rolling video.

  “Will, come on…you have to laugh. It’s kinda funny?”

  “Nope, still not funny,” I yell toward the deck where the girl I love stands, perfectly dressed in a suit and perfectly dry with our guests.

  Maddy pranked me, letting me strip down to nothing just before everyone arrived by daring me to cannonball into the center of the pool. There are a few things that make even the most mature man turn into a teenager again, doing dumb shit because his cock tells him to. Naked in a pool with Maddy Woodsen? That’s one of those things.

  “Come on, Will. So far my viral video is hella boring,” Holly shouts, following it up with a whistle and a cat call. I give her the finger, and she tells me to fuck off.

&nb
sp; “You saw that?” I lower my hands to camouflage my parts, my legs treading furiously, and my muscles growing tired.

  “Yeah, well your middle finger must be bigger than…other things,” she deadpans.

  I flip her off again.

  “I never said we were all skinny dipping, Will,” Maddy giggles.

  “You kinda alluded to it,” I say, resting my limbs and sinking under the water.

  “Come on, everyone will turn around, and I’ll hand you a towel. I’m starting to feel bad,” she says, but the laughter still sneaks through her words.

  She can’t tell, but I’m smiling, too. I was embarrassed for about fifteen seconds, but then I started to realize how much fun I was having. I haven’t had fun in years, and I haven’t felt weightless in forever. No obligations dragging me down, or a running list of things I can and can’t say to people. And honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been treading water for several minutes, I’d be fine with walking around, balls out and dick hard for everyone to see.

  “Here’s the deal, Maddy,” I say, swimming a little closer while my girl kneels down near the water’s edge with a towel held in her hands. I glance over to Holly, who is still holding her phone out hoping to capture the million-dollar shot. She leans her head to the side and makes eye contact with me, and I wink. Her mouth raises sinisterly on one side, and she shifts her phone camera to Maddy. She gets where I’m going with this.

  “I’m not coming out of the pool, like…at all…until you take that bikini off and come in to get me,” I say, swaying my arms and legs and pushing back a few feet to where I started.

  Maddy’s hands drop and the towel falls to the deck.

  “Will, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m sorry…just come out,” she says, standing and crossing her arms over her bare belly. She’s blushing—I can tell, even in the dark, by the way her hands slide over her skin and try to guard her.