Breathe Me (12 page)

“What’s this?”

“A Shirley Temple. You like those, don’t you?” He winked and downed his drink. From the smell of it, his was hard liquor. I wrinkled my nose at the realization that he’d given me a virgin drink, knowing how bad drinking was for me. It was a tough pill to swallow, but he was in the right. I was not a good drunk person.

“So why’d you get such a big house made
, then? Seems like you’d get a smaller one if you really thought that.”

Sasha laughed, his smile revealing a small dimple in his right cheek. “It was more of the future I was looking at. I always wanted a bunch of family and friends at my house. But it’s just me and Cam for now. Doesn’t seem to be th
e way things are going so far.”

I finished off my drink and he promptly took it from me and
hurried away. I followed and found myself at a bar next to an indoor swimming pool.

“Good golly, you have swimming pool?” My eyes widened at the expanse of blue before me.
“You like swimming, I see.” God, I felt so dumb. Who’d have a swimming pool inside their house if they didn’t?
Geez.

“Yeah, but I don’t get to
jump in nearly as much as I’d like.” He handed me a fresh Shirley Temple and turned to stare at the glistening surface of the water.

“
Honestly, Sasha, I didn’t peg you for a rich boy.” I leaned across the bar and watched him in my periphery. He was lost in his thoughts.

“I’m not a rich boy. I grew up poor, you know that. Lots of hard work and luck got me here.” He turned and studied my face, looking like he was search
ing for something. “I didn’t peg you as someone to settle for a job you don’t really like and give up on your dreams of traveling the world and having a family.”

I flinch
ed at his accusation, though his eyes remained calm and studious. “You don’t know anything about me.” I slipped the second empty glass toward him on the counter, feeling glum at his observation. Maybe he was right, but I sure as heck didn’t want to admit it.

“I know more than you think I do. I know you don’t really care for dealin
g with sick people all the time. I know you used to tell me you dreamed you’d have a huge family one day, and I know you haven’t seen the world like you said you would, just part of the US. We dated, remember? You had dreams, you had aspirations. How’s that for knowing you or not? Why haven’t you seen the world, Piper? You don’t have any responsibilities or family to anchor you down. What’ve you been doing all this time?” He sipped his Scotch, watching me as I squirmed at the edge of the bar.

I hated to admit it, but he was so right
about it all that it made me want to vomit. “I—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Dreams don’t come true for me. That’s all. I just try not to get disappointed.”

He shook his head, a
tsk, tsk
sound slipping out from between his teeth. My own rage was starting to rise, but all I wanted to do was change the subject.

“Where’s Cam?”
I interjected.

“He’s at his grandmother’s house for the week.”

“Oh. His mother’s mom, I assume.”

“Yep. S
he loves having him over, gives her something to do besides think about how things are. My ex was her only child, so now Cam is the focus of all her smothering. It’s good though, gives me some time to breathe.” He handed me another drink, but this time the smell of alcohol hit my nostrils as I sipped it. “That’s to calm your nerves,” he said. “Why are you wound up so tight?”

I glare
d back at him as I downed the rest of it so fast, the burn in my stomach made me regret it immediately. “Maybe if you wouldn’t point out things about me that I clearly haven’t figured out, I wouldn’t be.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to.” He clinked his glass
against mine before lifting it up to salute. “Here’s to the future, whatever it may be.” Winking, he chugged it, his eyes never leaving mine. The ice swirled in my glass as I watched it sweat. The water of the pool looked awfully refreshing; the heat outside was close to unbearable. Heat exhaustion was quite common in Vegas. It took but a little time to zap the energy right out of you in this obnoxious heat.

“Want to go for a swim?” Sasha ask
ed. Before I could respond, he’d stripped off his shirt and tossed it to the side. He was already wearing board shorts, so he just dove right on in. I gripped my glass, knowing full well I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit underneath my outfit, but I could at least dip my legs in. Clothes would dry quickly in the Vegas sun, but that wasn’t what stopped me. I just didn’t want to swim… couldn’t do it.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, come on. What have you got to lose?”

Cranking my head as I watch
ed him paddle near me, I make the fatal mistake of inching too close to the edge. I should’ve known better than to let him pull up, sit on the side of the pool, disarm me with his chiseled shoulders and rippling stomach muscles. He then ever-so-suavely grabbed me and catapulted me into the pool.

The shock of the cold water made me kick furiously to find which way was up. The mass
of bubbles disorientated me, but I finally popped up and over the surface, sputtering like an old engine. My feet barely touched the bottom, and I tiptoed toward the shallow end, my heart hammering in my ears.

Sasha was chuckling a bit
, but the moment I caught sight of his smirk, I jolted toward him and pummeled his chest with my fists. “That wasn’t funny!” Coughing, I shoved him and headed toward the edge of the pool, where it was shallower, and I could sit on the steps. I continued to cough and attempted to shove back the matted mess that had been my smooth hair moments before.

Sasha waded in behind me and watched me as I sat there and regained my composure. My lips quivered from the shock of the water
, and it made me wonder why the heck he didn’t heat it up, even just a bit. It was downright frigid.

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t swim.”

“You did fine, you know.”

I huffed, but didn’t move from my step. The water flowed over my chest, where my tank hung heavily over my breasts, exposing my cleavage a bit more as the water pulled at the material. I was sure I looked like a drowned rat.

“No
, I didn’t. I think I swallowed half your pool water.” I coughed some more and hugged my arms around myself. There was no point in completely getting out, the air conditioner would just add to the cold. “Do you have a towel?”

He approached and sat back on his knees, the water barely reaching his chest.
The way it left droplets which clung to his skin as his gaze burned into me was too much to bear, and I had to glance away, back toward the bar, where the multitude of liquor bottles glistened in the soft streaming sunlight. I couldn’t look back at him because I’d drown. Maybe not in the literal sense, but metaphorically, it was a certainty.

“Piper,
I wasn’t aware you didn’t know how to swim. I’m really sorry.”

I shrugged, not looking at him so I wouldn’t lose control of my feelings. I was torn between pummeling him again
with my fists and crying. He never knew why I didn’t know how to swim. In the short time we’d spent together, it had never come up, and I’d never told him.

“My sister drowned, when I was six. She was only three.”

His hands encircled my thighs and he rubbed his thumbs back and forth over my goosebumps. Stifling the cold with his warmth. It felt nice but cautious.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe one day.” I shook my head, still shaking off the dread of that long ago tragedy. My family never spoke of it afterwards. It’d become a silent horror that clung to us no matter what, best left covered up in the dusty backrooms of our hearts.

“I can teach you how to swim, I’m very patient.
” He inched forward again, his hand reaching up through the rippling surface as he touched my cheek. I had to look at him now; his fingers blocked the view of the bar enough to make me shift my gaze back to his eyes, looking almost green against blue water.

“I don’t want to learn.”

“Why?”

“Why do I need to learn to swim? I’ll never swim in a pool
, especially yours—we’ll break up before I get to learn how. I don’t ever fly in airplanes, so crashing into an ocean won’t ever happen to me, so don’t even think that’s a risk. I don’t ride on boats or yachts. There isn’t a lake nearby worth treading into, and I don’t count Lake Mead as one. It’s disgusting and full of putrid nastiness.” I sighed and closed my eyes. The chlorine was already beginning to sting them. “No reason to learn to swim.”

“Learning something doesn’t mean you’ll
necessarily use it, but that doesn’t mean you’ll never use it either.” The soft caress of his fingers made me shiver even more. “Just like you can’t predict the future of us.”

I watch
ed the waves lap against his chest and wanted him to pull me toward him, wanted to melt into him. He was right about predicting the future, but did he know how badly I wanted to also stand straight up, turn and run out of the house, into the sun and away from here? One way or the other, I needed some warmth.

Sasha ma
de the choice for me as he circled his arms around my waist and pulled me toward him. I realized too late that he was taking me deeper into the water, and I ended up straddling his waist as he continued to move. Grasping his shoulders, my eyes widened as I scanned the expanse of the water.

“Don’
t be afraid, I won’t let you go,” he whispered, sending another shiver down my spine as he turned and moved farther into the water. I only gripped onto him more tightly, hoping he wasn’t joking this time. The water felt like a weight pushing and tugging at me as I let him carry me farther and farther into the pool. Relieved it wasn’t some body of water out in the wild where the currents could be unpredictable, I cherished the controlled calm of this place, where only his heart beating against my chest filled the atmosphere, and the heat radiating off him kept the chill at bay.

He stopped
when the water reached the top of his shoulders. He balanced me precariously in his arms and smiled. Water dripped off the dangling ends of his dark blond strands and some droplets clung to the edges of his eyelashes. It was mesmerizing, and the blue of the pool amplified the color in his irises as they morphed from blue to green to turquoise in one blink. I couldn’t look away. Even if I had wanted to, I was afraid I wouldn’t be brave enough to do so. The water reminded me where I was, but the look on his face made me forget how terrifying it was to be neck deep in water.

I’d never wanted to learn to swim,
not after my sister had drowned. We’d been so small and I’d been the one to watch her little head sink under the surface of the water at a neighbor’s party. It had gotten late, and half the adults were stumbling drunk. No one saw her but me, still so small, without an idea of what it meant when she slipped into the inky pool water and didn’t bob back up. Minutes had gone by as I waited for her to surface. Finally, snapping out of my frozen trance, I had begun having what would end up being the first of many anxiety attacks. If I hadn’t screamed and hyperventilated, no one would’ve noticed until several minutes later that Lindsey was missing, swallowed by the mass of water before me.

Even though
I couldn’t muster words to express what was happening, so small and unable to speak as my lungs burned and my heart pounded, I was able to point in terror at the water just as I was on the brink of passing out after screaming over and over. I remember the shrieks when the realization that my sister was in the pool came over the adults. I remember my father’s frantic plunge into the cold pool water, for it was February and no one was swimming in the cold waters yet.

Watching my father emerge from the dark,
black waters under the moonless night with my sister folded in his arms finally calmed me. But it had been a disturbing calm, like watching a silent film, as I watched them place her on the deck and pump on her chest, screaming for her to wake up. Her long dark hair snaked about her head like a crown of seaweed while her lips remained the grey-blue of a winter sky at dusk. Her brown eyes were staring off into space, fixed on some faraway, celestial body, never to look at us with happy, bright eyes again. She was gone, and no matter how much chaos had ensued afterward, she had never come back.

All those memories crashed into me, like something I had hidden
so deep inside that I had almost forgotten her face and her voice. I had nearly forgotten the way she laughed and giggled when we played hide and seek. I’d almost let my memories slip away when I had built my wall to protect myself from things like the fear of swimming and loving those who never stayed, attempting to live a life half way.

Maybe that’s why I was so afraid of Sasha’s love. With him c
ame the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.

“You okay?” I c
ould hear him breathing harder as he worked to tread water and hold me up at the same time.

“Yes.” I like
d the feel of him, my legs wrapped tightly around his waist and my fingers locked around his neck and shoulders. I let him take me where he wanted, knowing I’d be safe, trusting him more than anyone except for Joss. He finally motioned for me to loosen my legs and let them float out underneath. I did, knowing he wouldn’t let me go. The feel of the cold where the heat of his body had once been made me shiver again, and my lips began to quiver from the drop in temperature. Sasha pulled me closer again, and the return of his warmth made me smile. “Thank you.”