At my warbled request, he loosens his hold, but then his hand is free to get tangled up in my wet hair and he pulls my head back.
I burn with his fury as he looks down at me. “Are you fucking crazy? What the fuck are you doing?”
His growled words settle in the vicinity of my heart and curl themselves like fingers around my lovesick organ.
“I wanted to find out.”
He almost shakes my head by my hair. “Find out what?”
“What it feels like. Falling, I mean.”
My answer doesn’t please him. Not in the least. He squeezes my waist roughly. “You will never – not ever – do this again. Do you understand?”
I want to ask him how he will ever know if I take another plunge. He’s leaving soon.
But I’m not that cruel.
I lick my lips, bobbing in the water even though I’m plastered to him. “I promise.” Then, a tear leaks out and I whisper, “I just miss my mom and dad a lot.”
Agony washes over his features and he hugs me again. I tuck my face in his salty and yet sweet-smelling neck and cry.
That’s all I need.
A shoulder to cry on. I don’t need any platitudes or any false consolations. Just him and his strong chest.
Sniffling, I turn my face and talk to the vein on his neck. “You know my house? The one I’m trying to get back?”
He hums, telling me that he’s listening.
“I don’t think I want it back for the right reasons.” I finger the droplets on his collarbone as I continue, “I think I’m just afraid that if I don’t have it, all the traces of my parents will be gone.”
Zach squeezes me to him again and kisses my forehead.
“And there’s another thing, I think,” I continue.
“What?”
“I think if I don’t want it back, then I have no reason to stay here,” I confess. “Before my parents died, I wanted to leave town and go on a cross-country trip in my blue car. But when the time of it got closer, I started to feel panicked. I felt like, if I left this place, then no one in this entire world would know who I was. You know what I mean? Like, no one in this world would know what my name was. I’d be so, so alone. And then, they died and I was like, I can’t go now. If something happened to me, they wouldn’t know who to call.”
I nod as if confirming my own words. “Yeah, so this is it. Maggie told me to quit my job and leave. Even Tina. But I’ve been using it as an excuse to just hide out here because no one in the world would know my name outside of this town, if I left.”
His Adam’s apple bobs with his swallow. I watch it happen and for some reason, it’s so fascinating to me. It’s so fascinating that the water is cool but the heat of his body is so thick that I’m sweating with it.
“I would know,” he says gruffly.
“What?”
“I’d know your name. I’d be out there and I’d know who you were.”
I smile, even though another tear leaks out. And something flashes across my brain.
A thought.
Such a fanciful thought: what if we’re together? Him and me?
What if when he leaves, I leave with him?
What if he puts me on the back of his bike and we ride out into the sunset?