Not that I'm considering it. I haven't even mentioned him to Aanya, so that says something.
“What about the guy from that party?” she says.
Ugh.
“Which guy,” I say, pulling up a few blades of grass.
“Stop that, my dad spent a fortune on this lawn,” she says.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Jake steals a bite of Aanya's strawberry shortcake, and she smiles at him like it's the sweetest thing anyone's ever done.
They're just so in love, these two. And you could try to pass it off as them being in some puppy-love early stage of ignorant bliss, except they've been together for four years without a hitch. When they argue, they work out their issues like adults and then go back to feeling each other up like horny preteens. And I know we're only sixteen, but there's always that freak high school couple that ends up going the distance. And if it's going to be anyone, it's going to be them.
Maybe this is what it's supposed to be like. This whole-hearted devotion and rapture and...fidelity. Maybe this is the only way it really works. It's not as if my mother and Dominic are dating other people on the side. It's not as if anyone else I know is doing it. When Kyle did it, it was cheating. If Jake did it, maybe he and Aanya would break up. How does a polyamorous relationship even work when the actual premise of it is the number-one deal breaker for everyone else?
You just have to be a brave and certain kind of person, and I don't think that I am. I'm sarcastic and loyal and a little shy. I'm quietly and slightly Catholic. I'm a daughter trying to learn how to be a sister. I'm a virgin. I'm a butterflier.
I've never been in love.
6
Tuesday afternoons I have swim practice until five-thirty, so I can't take the regular bus home. My mother gets off work at five, but she works about an hour in the other direction, at a satellite version of her tech company from Miami, until she finds something closer and less soul-sucking. Dominic owns his own store and Monday through Wednesday has to stay late to do inventory. Elisha's started giving me rides home after late practices, usually, because she lives nearby, even though Mike is always volunteering to do it “so Elisha doesn't have to go to the trouble.” She insists she doesn't mind, and I don't have much of a choice but to thank her profusely and pay for gas.
Except today I get out of the water after my last set of 100s and there's Theo.
Hi.
He hands me a milkshake. It's strawberry. Last week I had a chocolate one in the cafeteria and I mentioned offhand that I loved chocolate but strawberry was my favorite.
Twitterpated.
“You are a seriously fantastic swimmer,” he says. “And I should know, because I can't swim. At all.”
“Like, at all?” I towel my hair back into its usual mess and then swaddle myself up. I'm fine with my body, but a one-piece racing bathing suit does exactly nobody any favors.
“Nope. I probably wouldn't drown if thrown in water. Probably.”
“Should we test it?”
“It's a good thing we're not dating, actually,” he says. “Because the climax of our love story would most likely take place on stormy seas and you would have to rescue me from the depths.”
“Oh, that's why we're not dating.”
“Because of the stormy seas. Exactly.”
I take a sip of my milkshake. “I'm not afraid of stormy seas,” I say.
I can't help it. Not to mention there's some unfortunately obvious irony here about him being the one scared of drowning and me being the one way in over her head.
He's smiling at me. “Well,” he says. “Now I know that I'd trust you to save me.”
“Where's Josey?” I say. Again, I can't help it.
“Piano.”
“That's cool.”
“Yep. Do you need a ride?”
“Taylor!”
Not now. Whoever that is calling me, how about not now.
I turn around. It's Lucas. Ever since he woke up hungover on my couch, I haven't seen much of him. We've exchanged nods in the hallway, and one time I lent him a few dollars because he forgot his lunch money and tracked me down. I have seen him lip-to-lip with that girl he was chasing down at the party, though, so things seem to be going pretty well for him.
“Hi?” I say.
“You have to go pick up Alexis.”
“What?”
“Her mom says she's being a nightmare and that she's screaming about how she wants her dad and I guess she wants to make you guys deal with it.”
Great. “My mom and Dominic are at work,” I say.
“Which is why I said you have to do it?”
“I don't have a car. Why can't you go get her and bring her to my house?”
“I don't have a carseat,” he says, like I'm stupid.
“So go to your house, get Alexis and a carseat, and then drive her to my house. Me not having either a car or a carseat kind of trumps you, here.”
“Kind of whats me?”
“I have a carseat,” Theo says.
We look at him.
“My brother's spare car seat is in my trunk right now,” Theo says. “How old's Alexis?”
“Five.”
“Louis is four,” Theo says. “It'll work.”
“You mean it?” I say.
“Sure. Get changed, Cipriano, let's go get your sister.”
I head into the locker room. It's not as if I have a lot of choice for what to wear; it's whatever smells the least in my gym bag, and they're all various iterations of huge t-shirts and baggy shorts. “She's not my sister,” I say once I'm out, and we're walking to his car, my flip-flops smacking the ground in time with
