Free Drowning in You by Rebecca Berto

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everywhere. I can’t ask now. I feel silly here. I am silly.
    I swivel, then
stop myself. I can’t leave or else Rosa will hate me. Once, I
promised her I’d kiss a guy at a school party and she spent the
whole night ignoring me until I kissed him. It was a pitiful peck
of a thing, barely on the lips, but after I told her she clapped
her hands and whispered, “I read you liked him in your diary so I
was not going to
let you get away with not doing this.”
    She was right. We dated a few
times, though things didn’t work out for reasons I can’t
remember.
    The garage shrinks as I walk
around it. The corrugated roof is shorter, smaller and I’m speeding
up, clearing another corner when—
    I see Dexter.
    This girl—is her name Raych?
Why do I remember that name?—is in his lap. He’s sitting on a ledge
and she’s mounted him, legs dangling over each side. When his hands
grab her waist and pull her closer, my heart fla-flomps. The
feeling is a sharp pain, as if it skipped a beat. So cliché, but my
head is pulsing and my stomach is churning seeing him. Seeing him
want her. His lips at her ear.
    She slaps his chest with the
heel of her palm and his face twists. Guess in my jealousy I
misread the signals. This isn’t an intimate moment at all. A moment
later—even from here I can hear him—he shouts, “What the fuck was
that!” and shrugs her off when she tries to pull him in, his bright
eyes now on me, me, me.
    She tugs at his T-shirt,
exposing crafted muscles, flat, hard, and a line of script above
his waistband. He pulls down his shirt and tells her to “fuck off”
again.
    She stomps
behind him but pulls up short. She’s seen me. Wow, I’m dead . Her lips are pressed
in a thin line, her tread louder than I thought possible. She seems
like the type to prove a lot of my beliefs wrong. She’s screaming
her head off, but Dexter doesn’t flinch. His arms are tensed and as
he stops by my side, those arms focus in my vision, his skin
tightly wrapped over taut muscles. Oh, wow, he’s tall.
    She stares me up. Down. Turns
to Dexter, saying, “Who’s this slut, huh? You fuck her last night?
That why you didn’t come to my place?” She juts her head out, in
his space. It’s awkward to be in this; this confrontation is the
last place I should be.
    She throws me a disgusted look,
mutters something I’m glad I didn’t hear and storms off. Finger up,
hair blowing in the wind, she doesn’t turn as she calls, “You’ll
pay for this, you asshole!”
    Dexter stares at the ground for
a moment and then we both look up at the same time. His jaw is
rigid, his hair messed up, his eyes big and demanding.
    He breaks away, elbows forming
triangles when he clasps the back of his head. “Charz…”
    What do I say? Why’s he still
calling me by a nickname? We’re not that close.
    He doesn’t know what to say,
either. He stands in front of me, hands behind his head for a
while, perhaps saying something, but it’s too low to hear.
    “ Can we…?” He
leaves the question hanging there. Giving me the power to take this
conversation away. So I can make the decision to say no thanks, I’d
rather not get involved in this mess. But he steps in and catches
my breath before I suck it in.
    How do I turn off my feelings
after all these years? I’ve seen him at school, at the store, at
parties. Everywhere but lying with me and now that I know I can’t
do this, I want him more.
    You’re sick, Charlee. Sick.
    He licks his lips, all the
while staring at mine. A rush plays over my skin.
    I think no, and almost say no,
almost pump up my willpower to cuss at him, but then I sigh, my
breath escaping, my body deflating.
    He sees this. For a moment I
think he can read my mind.
    “ Hey,” he has
my elbows resting in his palms. We lock stares for the umpteenth
time. He asks, “Is it okay if I talk to you, Charz?”
    I nod.
    This isn’t the type of thing I
do, confronting a guy I’ve been in love with, confronting rumors of
how