Page 60 of Teach Me To Sin

“Gray said it was just a four minute walk down a trail behind the house. We can look tomorrow.”

Alek opens the back of the car to get the suitcases, and the red and black dogs come bounding out across the lawn. Hamlet comes over and presses against my legs like he wants to make sure I’m safe. “Thank you, buddy.” I scratch his silky head, then let him lead me toward the house. As long as I go slow and pay attention, I can tell when gravel turns into paving stones, and paving stones become a small, wooden porch. Then the air gets close and a little stale as I step over the threshold into the house. I would open up some windows if I could find them, but by the time I bump into a couch in the main room I already need to sit down and rest again. Once I start coughing, it’s almost impossible to stop. Both dogs come nosing around my legs as I hack and gasp for air, and Triss climbs onto the couch so she can put her head in my lap. I’m not sure the owner wants dogs on the furniture, but I’m not interested in kicking her off.

Once I recover, I cross my legs on the slouchy cushions and play with the hem of the blue running shorts Colson picked out for me, along with a soft, green t-shirt. Eventually, Alek and Colson stop carrying things around and opening windows and drift back to this central room. The quietness in the car was one thing, but the silence here feels almost oppressive. When there’s nothing going on to talk about, we don’t even know how to make conversation with each other.

“There’s a pool out here,” Alek observes as he studies the backyard through the window. There’s a slight edge to his voice, somewhere between genuine interest and a bitter incredulity that, even here, he can’t get away from swimming pools.

My skin prickles all over with longing at the thought of diving into the refreshing water. Even before I trained with Alek, I swam in our pool at home every single day. “Do you think I could use it?”

His voice gets louder, like he turned around to look at me. “Not with the state of you,” he comments wryly.

I roll my head back and groan. “Crap. Maybe the doctors can give me one of those waterproof casts?”

“Good luck convincing them that’s essential to your recovery.” His snark sounds more friendly than annoyed, and when he walks past me, he rests his hand on my shoulder for a second.

“What shall we do for dinner?” Colson asks, glancing up from his phone. “Or any meal, for that matter. Which one of us knows how to cook?”

We all stare at each other expectantly, waiting for someone else to pipe up. “Oh boy,” I comment when it becomes clear that’s not going to happen. “This will be fun.”

“You don’t know how to cook at all?” Colson asks Alek with a hint of accusation, like it’s a personal offense.

“When would I have time to cook?” Alek retorts. “Besides, you’re like sixty years old. Why haven’t you learned?”

“Because it’s boring and inconvenient? God, every couple has at least one person who can cook. How did we end up with three duds?”

No one even bothers to ask me for my excuse. I just sit back and pet Triss while I listen to them bicker until they conclude that all we have for tonight are three packets of microwave noodles. We really are a sorry bunch.

I stumble after them into the small, cozy kitchen and sit in the breakfast nook while two fully grown men argue over how to use a microwave. On the way up here, when I drifted out of sleep for a second and watched the two blurry, black-haired shapes in the front seats, I wondered what we’re even doing. The bonds between us are so desperate but so thin. I can’t tell if there’s anything worth saving besides a few good memories.

But then I see it for a quick second, so easy to miss. The two of them are trying to work out why the controls are different from the microwaves they have at home. Colson is just poking everything and seeing what happens, while Alek insists they should think it through and stare at it until he magically deduces the answer. When they bend over together, studying the buttons, a blurry Colson slings his arm around Alek’s shoulders and Alek leans into him, just a little. In that fleeting moment, I’m glad we came.

Alek

Benji spendsthe night on the huge, cushy couch in the living room, while Colson sleeps in the master bedroom with the door open so he can hear if Benji cries out. I don’t know where I should be, or where I want to be, so I awkwardly take one of the guest bedrooms down the hall. It doesn’t matter what bed I use in the end, because I sleep so deeply I wouldn’t have cared if I was lying in the middle of the street. At one point I jerk awake to what might have been a faint scream, but I slip right back under because Colson promised me he’d be there, and I believe him.

My room gets too hot in the early morning. I end up sweaty and tangled in sheets, my back aching. I’m stuck half-asleep with a suffocating weight in my chest, dreaming of fire and water and losing someone you didn’t know you needed until they were gone. Jolting awake would have been a relief, but I have to claw myself out of the nightmare one sluggish breath at a time. And once I make it back to the real world, I realize the relentless pressure of grief has followed me here, too.

A peek between the slats of my blinds shows a warm, gentle sun hanging in a cloudless sky. The few vacation homes scattered along this road looked deserted when we arrived, so I don’t bother to put on anything besides briefs and a t-shirt before I head toward the back deck. On my way through the living room, I peek over the back of the couch. Benji’s sprawled on his back, clothes rumpled, with one dog between his knees and the other curled up near his head with its chin on his shoulder. They both shoot me warning looks that aren’t scary at all on their long, cartoonish faces, but I back off so I don’t wake him up.

Easing open the sliding door, I step out onto chilly stone paving that hasn’t soaked up the heat of the sun yet. The pale blue, silky-smooth surface of the pool calls to me with an urgency I haven’t felt for a long time. I walk over to the edge and stretch my bare toes toward the water, willing myself to touch it even for a second. My therapist is right—every time I do this to myself, I just reinforce the fear. Finally, I pull my foot back and sit cross-legged next to the pool, looking out over the scrubby brown seagrass and low pines that block our view of the sea.

I’ve been banned from texting Victor or Tate for at least forty-eight hours. According to them, there’s nothing more I can do and I deserve a break. That’s clearly working well, because I pull out my phone on reflex and just stare at it, waiting for messages that aren’t going to come. I don’t know how to function when I’m not being pulled in ten directions at once, and I hate how hollow and pointless I feel when I’m forced to stop moving.

Once the stillness becomes too much, I search the Lang Aquatic Center and start scrolling through articles, photos, and horrible comment threads. Some of the reports include information I haven’t even heard, like the police taking samples from the wreckage to analyze for signs of arson. When I type in the name Atwood, all that comes up is an article about how their new consumer accounting software can help single moms work from home. It’s a sickening deja vu to six years ago, when Victor had to testify against men who were so powerful it felt like they controlled the world.

I switch to the image search and study photos of the half-collapsed swim center, then colorful pictures of family days and fundraisers. Every kid in every photo looks familiar–I can remember all their arguments and struggles, their victories, the weird gifts they brought me. Near the bottom, I find a couple of snapshots of Victor and me on opening day. I’m laughing and trying to look professional at the same time, while he’s squatting down like a dork, pointing over his shoulder at the building as if someone might miss it.

I put my phone down and rest my aching head in my hands, trying to keep my breathing steady. I’m not sure I have it in me to try again. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I do or don’t, because the rumors will eventually drive everyone away. The back door rattles open, and I jump as two hairy creatures catapult past me and frolic around the yard. “Sorry,” Colson says behind me, pushing the door closed. I just grunt, still lost in my head.

When a patio chair scrapes the deck, I watch out of the corner of my eye as he lowers himself a little painfully onto the cushions. I’ve noticed him moving gingerly–maybe since the fire, but for sure since he had to carry a 180 lb. man around like a baby. If my body feels like shit, I can’t imagine being ten years older helps.

He’s holding a steaming mug of coffee, but he didn’t bring one for me. It’s a strange relief, a reminder that he isn’t some perfect, unfamiliar new being–just the self-centered, impatient Colson who tries so hard to care for us in spite of himself.

My ass is getting cold, and the sound of the water is starting to bother me, so I unfold myself and join him at the crooked, glass-topped table crusted in dirt and fine grains of salt. When I set my phone down, he notices the picture of Victor and I before my screen turns off. His eyes flick up to mine and linger there, like he’s searching for something.

“What?” I say with unnecessary aggression.

“Two things.” The breeze stirs his unkempt morning hair as he stares at his coffee. He has just as much stubble as I do, which means he hasn’t fared well the last four days either. “One, and this is going to sound revoltingly cheesy, but I feel like we should ditch our phones today.”

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