Page 53 of Director's Cut

I plunge us both into the pool.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Yeah, it’s cold. It’s really fucking cold. Cold enough that I have to release Maeve to regain circulation.

“Oh, fuck!” I say as I dart across the water.

When I surface, Maeve’s hair is wet, plastered to her neck, and she’s hanging on to the side of the pool.

“How are you not reacting to this?” I ask, my voice quite a bit higher than usual.

Maeve laughs. “I’m from Ohio, remember? This water doesn’t even have ice!”

She’s gotta be kidding me. And yet the idea of having someone in my pool who’s eons tougher than me is, uh, appealing. I push the stray pieces of my hair off my face. Once I can see, I swim over to Maeve.

“Is ice swimming your only vice or are you a more complicated rural daredevil?”

“You say that as if there are things to do in rural Ohio that are dangerous for a white person.” She turns her body toward me. Her leg brushes against mine as she treads water. “But my first kiss with a girl was in this secluded little swimming hole about an hour outside of town. It felt like I was in a queer coming-of-age film—a quiet build-up of anticipation sitting alone in the car with a girl for the first time, just chatting about school and the movies we liked—nothing important.” She puts her fingers on my tricep. “I looked away as we stripped down, but I glanced back a couple of times, and certain images seared their way into my mind—the curve of her calf, the shape of her hip bone, a mole on her back.”

“The way skin feels slicker in the water,” I say. I lean in. Just a hair. One of her eyebrows got a little messy during our swim, and I have to stop myself from smoothing it out.

“Yeah,” she says. Then she pulls back. “I miss the seasons and Midwestern kindness, sometimes, despite how wrong the Midwest was for me in general.”

As much as I’m tempted to veer back to flirtation, curiosity overtakes me.

“Are you close with your family?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. She pulls a bra strap that’s fallen down her shoulder back up. “It’s just a huge hassle to go home. It’s one of those airport, airport, long drive on either end type places. All my siblings stayed in Ohio but moved to major cities, so they prefer having family reunions back there.”

“Do they…?” I don’t know how to ask if they’re Republicans. I doubt it considering her professor parents, but…“Mesh well with you?”

She nods. “Oh, yeah, I mean, they’re all liberal and feminist and well educated, but I’m definitely at the extreme end, being queer and in academia, y’know?”

Oh boy do I. “Yeah, for sure.”

“You have a sister, right?” she asks. It occurs to me that I don’t know if she knows that from reading about me or if I told her and forgot.

“Yeah. She’s a gastroenterologist and married to a guy who works admin at Cedars, so they’re very…bougie. A little less Pasadena-white-people version of left-of-center than my parents, but I definitely had to convert her.”

Maeve’s shoulders seem to relax. “So she’s a good ally?”

“Gwyn? Oh, yeah, the best. She’s been advocating against my parents’ microaggressions and reading books and going to ally support groups for years. She’s the only reason I’m not up at night sweating over my little nephew who wants long hair.” I give her a weak smile. “Always worried we share the gay gene, you know?”

Maeve nods. “I think my brothers would step up to the plate, but yeah. It’s hard being in a family if there’s only one other queer person and the straight people just want to play ‘I accept you but please don’t make me live and breathe gay issues.’ ”

“Any of your siblings have kids yet?”

“Yeah, my older brother has a preschooler and an infant. My other two siblings are under twenty-six and barely have their lives together.”

Barely have their lives together. Such a weird phrase. On paper, I seem like someone who does have their life together. Financially, career-wise, maybe in the eyes of my niblings. But for me, it feels like my life is this whirlpool of mental health cycles and aching for companionship and stability in a chaotic career. I tell people I thrive on that shit, but being in the moment with Maeve right now, learning about her family and her own niblings—I’m yearning for a future where I get to be present when one of her younger brothers gets married and has kids. The feeling settles warmly and gently under my skin.

“Do you feel like you have your life together?” I ask, my voice quieter than before.

She shrugs. “I don’t think I’ll be able to say I do until long after I’m granted tenure, and I’m grateful to even potentially have that opportunity.”

I hold eye contact with her, despite how difficult it is. “What about when it comes to love?”

There’s a searing moment where I realize I said the l-word on the first official fucking date.

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