It’s so cold I think I’m going to die. My lips open to yell, “Fuck me!” but my mouth is more intent on chattering my teeth together. Each step stabs stones into the soles of my feet and jagged knives of ice water into my legs until the feeling—all feeling—subsides.
I’m breathless, surrounded by ice blue, a color I’ve created myself when I’ve touched too much eggshell into too little cerulean. The shores are granite, a soft warm gray, peppered by the unimaginable greens and pinks of foxglove and whatever plants happen to spring up in this country. I’m swimming in a painting, numb, and I’m going for her, the bronze mermaid who wants to swim forever.
But she’s not mythical. She’s very real. It seems to take forever and eventually she breaks the surface, shrieking out in surprise and agony from the cold. It doesn’t numb her after all.
Perhaps in this case, the number you are, the closer you are to death.
Though she swam for a while under, it doesn’t take me long to catch up with her. I was an avid swimmer for years.
“What the hell?” I say to her between chattering teeth, spitting out lake water.
She stares at me, wide-eyed, her head above the surface as she treads water. Her wet, dark hair is slicked back from her forehead, an inky wave between her shoulders, her cheekbones highlighted by sun and water.
“I told you I wanted to come here,” she says, as if suddenly abandoning your van and stripping to your underwear in public is the norm.
I can’t help but smile at how blasé she tries to be about it. “A little warning would be nice.”
“Don’t worry about me, Josh,” she says.
I pause because something in my heart has swelled. “But I do.”
Oh god, how I fucking ever.
She holds my gaze and my fingers itch to reach through the water and touch her. A few days ago I wouldn’t have, not in public like this. But I want to see just how numb she is.
My hand glides forward, sluicing through the water in slow motion until it rests on her light and silky waist.
She stares at me, her eyes glowing white against her brown irises, and her brows thread together in contemplation, as if she’s trying to unravel me, uncover some truth. I know something is bothering her and I know it’s about me more than anything else. It should be a good thing that it bothers her because it means she cares.
I want to tell her that she’s all I’ve ever wanted. I want to show her.
She relaxes into my touch for one sweet moment of victory before she slowly ducks her head under the water. I’m not sure what she’s doing so I take in a breath and submerge my head.
The cold shocks my face and when I open my eyes under water they seem to immediately freeze. Gemma is a hazy vision of pale blue, her hair swirling around her. She is so beautiful it makes my chest ache more than the cold does.
Her eyes hold mine and I see that yearning in them again. She reaches forward, grabbing my face, and pulls my head toward her. She kisses me, full on the lips. It’s so warm against the cold and I’m afraid I’m about to drown from happiness. I want this and I want more than this.
I don’t know how long the kiss lasts—we seem to float through time and space—but our bodies foolishly decide oxygen is equally as important. She breaks away and I am left sucking in ice water before I break through the surface.
I gasp in the dry air, fingers touching my lips as if I can’t believe it, but she’s back to the way she was before. Impassive. Immovable. Numb.
“We should go back before Amber freaks out,” she says in a brisk tone, and in that moment I wish to be as numb as she is.
We swim back to shore and Amber comes running out of the van with towels for us. I know they’re the same towels that we put down to cover the parrot poo, but I’m too cold to care.
We run out into them and huddle together briefly, Amber yelling at us for being crazy, then head back into Mr. Orange. We get changed in the back, no one caring about nudity at this point, even though I can feel the girls’ eyes on my body as I strip, then we head into town to get a bowl of hot soup and coffee.
Gemma seems to brighten up a bit after that “swim” but I’m watching her closely and I don’t think it will last.
She’s too comfortable being numb.
Chapter Fourteen
JOSH
“Looks like you have to answer that age-old question, my friend,” Tibald says as he raises his beer. “Can I sleep with a woman that I deem to be fucking crazy?”
I give him a steady look. “Gemma isn’t crazy.”
“Maybe not fucking crazy, but she’s not normal. Then again, neither are most girls and we sleep with them anyway. Some even marry them.” He finishes his thought with a shrug and a long drink of beer.