Page 9 of Coming Around Again

I didn’t know what went wrong then.

I don’t know now. For the last eleven years, I’ve been puzzled. If she’d just tell me what I did wrong…

I tried to put it behind me. I dated. But no one has ever made me feel the way Naya made me feel. Was it just first love? Was the thrill of the forbidden the secret spice making it feel real?

I don’t think so. I don’t generally get off on taboos, or the thought of “taking” a woman’s virginity. For sure, I didn’t take Naya’s. She gave it to me, and I gave mine to her.

Maybe that’s what I like best, that feeling of exploring someone and sharing myself.

I think it was just Naya. I still think it was her and me together.

When I’d tried contacting her on Insta last year, my message showed as read, and I had hope that finally we could reconnect. But instead of responding to my tentative note saying that I wondered if we could catch up sometime, she blocked me there too.

And now…she’s working for GoPlay. Now, we’re going to be working together.

Fuck me backwards. How do I do this?

5

NAYA

I don’t sleep much that night. I keep remembering that summer eleven years ago, dredging up every detail and going over everything again and again in my mind.

I was eighteen, and I’d just started working at the resort hotel. I’d already done two summers of lifeguarding. But my friend Sharra had told me that she made pretty decent tips working in housekeeping at the resort, and frankly, I was sick of looking after people’s snotty-nosed kids. I wanted to do something different the summer before I left for college and a new life.

It’s not that I was ashamed of being from Love Lake, or of my solidly working-class background. Dad was an electrician and Mom ran the office for him, handling the billing and scheduling. My older brothers David and Marc were out on their own. There wasn’t a lot of money for extras that my parents considered frivolous, such as clothes from Forever 21. But we never worried about having a roof over our head, or food on the table, and Mom and Dad made sure we got opportunities like Scouts and music lessons.

And college tuition. David went to Appalachian State, and now he taught middle school in Raleigh. Marc was sick of school, so he got his electrician’s license. He didn’t want to work with Dad (no surprise there, they argued a lot that summer he interned with Miller Electric) so he moved to Greensboro and signed on with the power company. Me, I’d be heading to Wake Forest in the fall, with no idea what I’d want to study.

I just knew I wanted something bigger than the lake. I wanted a faster pace. More excitement.

My evenings were free, to spend with Clover or Sharra or Maddie or to swim in the lake. To go to the Open Mic Night and watch people sing, or twirl batons, or even juggle rubber chickens. To drive to Boone with Clover, to look for cute but inexpensive new clothes. That was a good thing. And Sharra hadn’t lied about the tips. Not all the guests left bills sitting on the dresser for me, but the ones that did tip were generous.

What Sharra hadn’t mentioned was that housekeeping was hard work. Instead of sitting in a tall chair, lazing in the sun and watching swimmers for their safety, I was changing sheets, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, dusting, and replenishing supplies…unless I was on laundry duty and spent the whole day washing sheets and towels with that harsh-smelling industrial detergent.

Worst of all, though, was the way many of the guests at the resort pretended not to see me. Their eyes would skate right over me like I didn’t exist. Weird how that started to get in my head, even by the third week working there.

Not only was I working a physically-demanding job that left me sweaty and tired, feeling invisible was making me borderline cranky all the time. A quiet hello or a smile from a guest in the hall made my day.

I wanted someone to notice me.

Not to hit on me, or to give me a hard time, but just to acknowledge my existence. To treat me as a fellow human.

It wasn’t until the third week that something like that happened, but when it did…

Boom.

It was Desmond, of course.

It was a hot, sweaty Thursday, with the humidity as high as it ever gets in the Smoky Mountains, around 85%, and the heat higher than usual, in the low 90s Fahrenheit. Worse, the staff elevator was on the fritz and I’d had to lug stacks of fresh sheets and towels from the laundry up the back stairs. Each floor had its housekeeping closet, with the cleaning supplies and the vacuum, but the linens had to be carted. I’d spent the whole day dripping with perspiration and I felt like the most invisible, least attractive version of myself there could be. My tips had been lower than usual, too, and my greeting to an older couple wasn’t even acknowledged at all.

At the end of the day, I’d skipped out on going to Clover’s house for American Idol, and texted Mom that I’d be home later. I’d driven to the lake swimming area and pulled the cloth tote bag out of the trunk of my car, changing in the ramshackle wooden restroom and plunged straight into the lake.

Ahhhhhh.

The water was warm at the end of day, and most of the families with little kids had already gone home. I waved to Jeff Sullivan, who was guarding, and dove out to the dropoff where the water depth changed to twelve feet. There in the quieter deep end, I just floated on my back, letting the lake buoy me up.

Something about the water always made me happy. Within minutes, I was feeling more like myself. I swam until the sun started westering, making red light shine on the water. Coming out of the lake, I saw him, and my world changed in a heartbeat.

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