Deeper

by Blue Ashcroft

  Mike moves my shirt out of the way and gets to my belt. He starts to undo it. A frustrated tear leaves one eye as I buck again, trying to unseat him. He grins and gets the belt open and reaches for the button of my jeans. I still can’t say anything, because his hand is over my mouth.

  I hear someone at the door. Relief floods me. Nate? I try to wiggle my head to see past Mike. Please let it be Nate. There’s no one else who would come. My own stupidity ensured that.

  I hear Dan gasp at the same time I feel Mike come off my lap and his hand release my mouth. I take in a deep breath and stare up into Knight’s eyes. So relieved to see him. So happy to see him. He holds Mike under his arm in a much firmer sleeper choke than the one I had, and his eyes move over me, then glare at Dan, daring him to move.

  I slowly roll to my side and sit up on my hands, taking deep breaths to calm down.

  “You okay, Rain?” Knight asks, his voice oddly calm and low.

  I nod, and start to do up my belt. His eyes watch me do it and his face tightens again in anger. He pulls harder on Mike, who grabs at his arms for a moment, before going limp. Dan doesn’t even try to double team him, like he did me. He just scrambles sideways, like a crab, and runs past him to the door, arms flailing. I’d laugh on any other night.

  Knight sets Mike to the side and kneels in front of me. “You sure you’re alright princess?”

  “Yes.”

  He puts a hand up to my face, runs it over my shoulder and examines me with his eyes as if he needs to confirm it for himself.

  I put my hand over his, hold it against my face and enjoy the warmth for a moment. He looks at me with confused eyes, as if it’s the last thing he expected.

  “I thought you’d be mad at me, for interfering. That’s why I didn’t come sooner.” He looks over at Mike, then back to me. “But if I’d known what was going on, I’d have been here in an instant. I promise.”

  “But we broke up.”

  “What does that have to do anything?”

  “You shouldn’t have to be constantly fixing my mistakes anymore.”

  “Rain, I want to fix your mistakes. I want to protect you, even if you’re going to be stupid. Scratch that, especially if you’re going to be stupid. That just means you need me even more.”

  I stare up at him, thinking he’s too wonderful to be real. “Knight, I don’t want to break up.”

  “I don’t either,” he says, pulling me against him. After a moment he pulls back and looks at Amy. “We should get her home and shut down the party though. We can talk after.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” he says, kissing the top of my head. I smile.

  Chapter Ten

  Rain

  An hour later, Amy’s mom has picked her up and the rest of the guards have left.

  Knight grabs his stuff, and we both go into the guardroom bathrooms to change into casual stuff. He’s still in a swimsuit and I just don’t want my sexy stuff on anymore. Not after what happened in it. I hear him moving in the stall over, and blush when I realize we’re both nearly naked and so close. I wonder if he has realized the same thing.

  I finish and come out of the changing room to see him smiling at me and leaning on the doorframe. He leads and we head out to the field behind the center and lay down towels. Knight lays his next to mine, but lays on the grass next to it, leaving both for me. Typical.

  “Don’t want the grass to scratch you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leans up on one elbow, and I love that even in semi-darkness his face is different from anyone else’s. It calms me more than I had realized to be staring into it.

  “Of course, it’s selfish, because I want you to be able to listen to me, rather than being distracted by the grass,” he says.

  “Of course. Monopolizing as always.”

  He grins, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I can’t believe that happened. Boys can be animals. I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”

  “You were there though. Thanks,” I say. “I was worried for a minute there.”

  “Why did you get Nate instead of me?” He puts a hand over one of mine. “Did you not think I’d come?”

  “I didn’t think it was your job. I didn’t want to bother you with the twins.”

  “You would have been saving me from the twins. Besides, Nate came straight to me after all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he gets what you don’t. That I want to be there for you.”

  “I see. If it happens again, I’ll come to you first and save you from the twins. I do owe you a few rescues after all.”

  “No problem, my pleasure.”

  I’m beginning to see that it really is, baffling though that may be.

  There’s a moment of silence between us, and I flop back on the towel to look up at the sky. I need it on nights like tonight. Weeks like this. The stars are so steadying, planted like guiding lights in the darkness around them.

  “I’m sorry I’m so reckless.” My voice sounds foreign to me. Soft. Vulnerable. I hate being vulnerable. “I can’t seem to help it.”

  “I know. That’s what worries me,” he says. “But if you really can’t help it, I’d rather be there to help. I don’t see why we have to break up over it. I don’t want to break up over it.” He flops down on his back next to me, hands behind his head. His elbows brush against mine.

  I look over and see that he’s smiling mildly up at the stars, his eyes twinkling in the night light. His profile is gorgeous, carved in marble. I love his nose, so straight, with just the tiniest point at the tip that almost looks elfin, or would, without his hard cheekbones and straight, squared off jaw.

  “So you did a pretty good job getting Amy free. I think you probably could have taken Mike if it was just him. Right?” he asks, his face serious again. I turn back to the sky.

  “I guess so. But I really do hate hurting people.”

  “More than I hate seeing the person I love hurt?” he asks. I look over, but he’s not looking at me. His mouth is turned down, and I wonder if what he said is really as romantic as it sounds.

  “I guess it’s about equal. So one is not more important than the other.”

  “So what do we do?” he asks.

  I grin at the sky. I don’t know. “I don’t know.”

  “I guess for me, it comes down to tonight. I realized that even though you could hurt me again by being reckless, that I just can’t leave you alone. I’d rather be there for you, even if it hurts me.” He reaches over and puts his hand on mine, covering it with rough warmth. I feel so safe when he does that. Much safer than when he’s yelling and fuming at someone, including me, for risking my safety.

  “You know, I got wrecked once before,” he says. I look over and can tell he doesn’t want me to look at him now, so I turn back to the smoggy sky with its faint stars. “She meant everything to me. I made the same bet with her. I knew it could end up sucky and she could really hurt me, but I still threw everything into trying to help her. It didn’t turn out great.”

  I take in a deep breath and let it out quietly, so I don’t disturb him.

  “She just…” In my peripheral vision I see him raise a hand and put it to his face. “In the end, I wasn’t enough.”

  His voice is hoarse. I don’t know what to do, how to act. I haven’t dealt with my own grief, so I don’t know how to help him deal with his.

  “Knight.”

  “Just, let me get through this.”

  “Okay.”

  “We were friends since we were kids. I loved that girl, I loved her more than my own life. I would have died for her.”

  “I know,” I say, because I can hear it in his voice. The guilt of someone who would rather have died than let someone else die.

  “But I didn’t even get that option. One night, we fought. She went to a party. I went there, she yelled at me, I left. I shouldn’t have left. She said I was stalking her. But it wasn’t a good party.”

  “Oh no.”r />
  “She was raped that night. I picked her up outside the house. Everyone was gone, she was there in the lawn, in the dark. Bleeding. Looking at me. Not even crying. I can hear her voice right now. So broken.”

  “I’m sorry, Knight.” It’s so cold inside me right now, I hurt so badly for him. I can’t believe how much I must have hurt him by putting myself in the same danger with the pedophile. He must have thought it was all happening again. It would be like him purposely breaking rules on the slides even though I begged him not to because it was how I got effed up.

  “Still, I thought I could make it up to her. I didn’t think that much had changed. I thought we’d make it.” His voice goes hoarse, then cracks, and I can hear him popping his knuckles against his own forehead. “We didn’t make it, Rain. We didn’t make it.”

  “So she killed herself?” I ask, remembering the story Amy told me. It’s a hard way of saying it, but it’s a hard fact to face.

  He nods, taking a long gasping breath. “She died. My fault.”

  I want to tell him it’s not his fault, but I have to think it over for a minute. In the silence, I hear a choked noise from deep in his chest. Like he can’t breathe. But I can’t go to him yet. I need to think. “Knight, give me a sec.”

  “I just, when I met you, I wanted to try again. It’s been so long. I wanted to try. I wanted to try. But you’re just so independent. I didn’t know when to be there for you, and when to let go. When you let that man take you, when you put yourself willingly in front of a sex offender…”

  “It’s like I was throwing everything away,” I say, too ashamed to face him.

  He nods and rubs his forehead. It seems to help him recover his masculine coldness and wipe some of the pain away. Back to Knight again. He laughs. “But you weren’t. You just can’t help watching out for other people. I’m realizing that’s one of the things I like about you.”

  I nod, but don’t turn to him. I can’t face him. While trying to protect everyone, I hurt the man that I was closest to in the deepest, most painful way possible. No wonder he dumped me. I feel like crap.

  “So how about you watch out for everyone else, and I’ll watch out for you?” He’s up on his elbow again, closer now, looking down at me.

  “Are you sure you can do that? It’s painful, isn’t it?”

  “Most worthwhile things are painful babe. Most things worth doing have the potential to hurt like hell. We just have to dig in and hope for the best. I wouldn’t have traded a minute with Camille for any less pain. And I’m not going to abandon you just because sometimes you make things hard on me.”

  “Knight…” I trail off because I’m still not sure what to say.

  He comes closer, puts a hand on each side of my head. His eyes are blazing above me, and he looks lighter somehow, like he’s let some baggage go. Maybe he has.

  “So are we good princess?”

  I put a hand up on his arm, pull myself against it. “Yeah, we’re good. And stop calling me that.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” He pulls me close, and being on his warm, big chest feels great. I can’t believe he’s having to comfort me after telling me what he’s just told me. Maybe he’s stronger than me after all.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” I say, because I feel like I need to defend myself when I’m experiencing so much undeserved happiness.

  “I know,” he says, putting a hand in my hair. “I didn’t either.”

  “Yeah but you didn’t. I did. Last summer.”

  He pauses, his hand frozen against my face. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Someday then.”

  “Yeah.” Maybe the day we kiss underwater.

  “Rain, is that why you hate letting anyone get hurt?”

  “No. Maybe. Don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know.” But I do. Damn it.

  Didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

  I didn’t.

  I close my eyes and remember.

  “He’s dead,” Kristy says next to me, clutching my arm.

  Yeah, it looks that way.

  I stare down at William, as Kristy lets go of my arm and slumps on the ground, holding her still bleeding nose.

  The EMTs are still working, still doing what they can against all odds. Despite how things looked, I had hope. Even as the EMTs ran over, and Brandon, our sup, bent over him, trying to figure out how to do CPR on someone so broken.

  It’s my fault. I let go. So why am I the only one who wasn’t hurt?

  The moment where my hand lost his tube, his disappointed face telling me it’s okay, insincerely I think, as his tube leaves mine, keeps flashing through my head. But I’m numb. I’m just so numb. It happened some time between the point where he was purple to the point where he was yellow. Now he’s green.

  I didn’t think it was possible for people to turn green. That can’t be the face that moments ago asked me out.

  For a moment, we belonged to each other.

  The other guards gather round, leaning on his tube, watching, calling his name in no particular direction. Their grief seems to carry on the morning wind around me, but I don’t feel it with them.

  It’s hard to comprehend. Sixteen. A future in swimming. Maybe Olympics. Invincible like the rest of us. Dead at yellow. Yellow is when people start to say “dead”.

  The other girls are crying. Even Brandon is. I don’t know why tears don’t come for me. Maybe they will. Maybe later. I just wish there was something I could do for him. I can’t even tell if he’s in pain, because his face is so frozen.

  His mouth is stretched open in a grotesque parody of the smile he made when I said I’d go out with him. He must have been happy right up until he hit the ground. I wonder if he felt terror.

  A pulse of pain penetrates the shell around my heart, like someone is using a defibrillator on me. Then quiet again. The sobbing comes back into focus.

  It’s a sunny day, beautifully bright, and the trees are rustling merrily around us as cars start to pull into the lot in the distance. No one is aware someone has died here.

  The EMT sobs as he works on William. He was William’s friend. Not a single person here wasn’t. We’re a tight crew, and all of us have memories of switching posts with him, or training with him. I have a few more than most. He wanted me so much.

  Still, even though I should be the most devastated, everyone seems more distraught than me. It’s like I’m watching a video game and wondering what my next move is. Why aren’t I crying like everyone else? It’s so wrong, so wrong that I’m not crying for him. The same calmness that has made me a good lifeguard is making me hate myself right now. It feels disrespectful to William, that I can’t feel anything for him.

  The day is sort of frozen for me. Everyone is moving around me, but my mind is trying to deny any of it is happening. They aren’t gingerly loading William onto a stretcher. His face doesn’t grin at me one last time. His chest doesn’t make an awful creaking noise as they nearly drop him while lowering him onto the stretcher.

  Ten minutes later he’s gone. Nothing is left but the crying guards and a small pool of blood, clean and dark against the white cement. Reflecting the sun.

  It beats down on us as morning turns to afternoon. The supervisor for rec swim is here.

  “Are any of you working today?”

  They look up in shock, as if they can’t believe she’s even asking such a thing. Except for me. I meet her eyes warily, weighing my response.

  “No,” Brandon says harshly. “None of them are. They’re just in for training. You know that’d be too long a day. Even if this hadn’t happened.”

  She meets his eyes and nods, but her jaw is tight with stress. The water park still has to run, even when tragedy hits. Otherwise one tragedy will turn into another.

  “But, William wasn’t supposed to train today,” she says, her hands clutching her clipboard. “He traded with someone. He was scheduled. I can’t get anyone in last minute. Pete’s determined t
o open. People won’t be safe.”

  “No Cynthia, there’s no way. Get anyone else.”

  “They won’t be here in time.”

  “I’ll work it.” My voice croaks up somehow from my rigid chest. It’s my fault he came in today. He must have wanted to be in training with me. It’s a small step towards making up for what I’ve done, but it’s all I can think of right now.

  “Rain, are you sure?”

  “Someone has to work it. Give me a minute to call my mom and tell her not to pick me up.”

  I walk away from them to the front office, feeling like a robot, not sure what’s moving my body so efficiently when everyone else is still collapsed on the ground. When I get there I ask calmly to use the phone. My mom picks up.

  “Rain?”

  “Yeah. I’m working today. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Extra shifts are always good. Are you okay?”

  My voice starts to break, which is odd, because I’m fine. I’m not sad. I feel nothing. Nothing. “Yeah. No mom, there was an accident.” My voice cuts off. I can’t say any more because just acknowledging it with those few words allows grief to hit in a monstrous wave. It’s everywhere, like water, deep and dark and fast moving in a suffocating way, and I can’t breathe. “Bye mom.” I drop the phone and run to the bathroom where no one can see me lose it.

  If they do, they won’t let me work.

  People won’t be safe.

  The thought forces a shriek out, but I cut it off with the back of my hand against my mouth, pressing hard. I sob into my hand. Tears fall all around me, but seem inconsequential to the wave that’s still crushing me within it. Suddenly William’s a person again to me, not that grotesque thing on the ground. I’m thinking about his family, about the future he had, seeing his face in my mind, seeing his hand reaching out to me. Letting him go. If only I could have held on a little longer. I’d give anything to go back. Anything if I could wake up and this could be a dream.