Drowning in You (27 page)

“
He?” I
say.

“
Yes. This is
good ol’ Freddie.”

We watch Freddie flip through
his work email, through an Excel spreadsheet with data about sales
figures for a company I don’t recognize, Facebook, pictures of
girls.

As seconds turn to minutes, I
see this moment unraveling on a movie screen. It’s the climactic
moment when a husband arrives home early from work, taking his
shoes off so as to not make any noise on the floorboards, his ears
perked, listening for any unusual noises coming from his bedroom,
turning the doorknob and sliding the door open to find…

To find his wife asleep with no
other guy making love to her.

Perfectly anticlimactic.

We wait and watch some more,
feeling neither like heroes for finding a clue nor failures for
finding nothing. But we watch for another half hour, and next thing
I know, someone is patting my shoulder.

“
Charz,” the
voice says again.

“
Mmm, huh?” I
mumble, wiping the edge of my mouth. Oh God, I fell asleep.
Again?

“
Elliot wants
to say bye to you.”

Dex leaves us in my room, and
the silence is sharper than before.

“
I suppose
I’ll be going,” Elliot says, as if I hadn’t heard the first
time.

“
I know but,
but why now? Aren’t we…”

“
Dex and I
have been waiting for an hour. We’ve run through this Freddie’s
computer. He’s some sad, middle-aged guy addicted to naked photos
of girls, slaving away at a desk job and there isn’t anything else
to find.”

“
So…?”

Elliot shrugs and shakes his
head. It’s obvious at this point that the weight in his eyes
weighing him down isn’t exhaustion. There is no evidence of a hack
or illegal activity. It’s just Elliot third-wheeling Dex and I in
my bedroom.

“
I don’t know
what to say, Elliot.”

“
We tried,” he
answers for me.

“
We did,” I
agree.

My mind stirs fast and alert,
far from a minute or two ago when I’d been sleeping. I don’t want
Elliot to leave me, because he’s such an awesome guy. Dexter is
great, but, really, it’s too complicated between us, and I’m still
figuring out if I can handle that.

Elliot turns to leave but I
throw my arms around him, bear hugging him from behind.

“
Charlee?” he
says in a high, surprised tone.

“
We’ll chat
soon,” I say, pecking him on the cheek. “Promise.”

“
It’s fine,”
he says, peeling off my hands. I think he knows I said goodbye to
the idea of him and I together a while ago though I haven’t so much
as said, “this non-existent thing between us is over.”

He lets our twined hands drop
to hang between us. “It’s just—fine. I can see there wasn’t a
chance in the world here anyway.”

25. Romeo and Juliet

Dexter

“
No?
No?”
I growl at Elliot.
As if it weren’t enough I walked in here a minute ago with him
holding Charz’s hands.

“
Man. Shit.”
He taps my shoulder, which is pointless, so he presses down on me
harder until I shake him off with my shoulder. “You don’t get
it.”

“
I get that
these lowlife pieces of crap are planning to steal Walter’s money.
Then what? Who’s to say they don’t have a scheme to rip off more
from Charz?” My eyes dart to her when I say her name. My tongue is
pierced at that front middle spot where I make that “ch” sound. Her
name is fuel. Something I need to protect from scum like my Dad
who’ll set her alight.

“
This’ll ruin
me, Dexter,” Elliot says.

I can’t
believe
that
is
what he’s thinking.

“
Look,” Elliot
starts. He rolls his eyes like he’s fed up and has to say what’s on
his mind. “You usually trust what I say and think, so I’ve realized
tonight’s been less about this hacking shit and more about you not
pulling your thumb out of your butt and getting it on with Charlee
already. Personally. We’re not here for heartfelt stories. You’re
just a wimp.”

Actually,
I
do
feel like a
wimp. I need to stop feeling guilty for the accident since Charlee
won’t even hate me for it, and I need to grab onto Charlee—my
personal lotto win—before it’s too late and I make the biggest fuck
up of my life.

Why does the most important
shit in life have to take the longest to work out? Relationships.
Education. Career.

“
That shit I
pulled?” Elliot stabs a finger in the air back toward the monitor.
“Well, it’s illegal if you didn’t notice. If caught, I’ll never get
to finish my IT degree and if I do, I won’t be employed for well
over a decade, if ever.”

“
It’s back to
you, huh?” I step in to him challenging him to come closer. I
fucking dare him to.

But inside, I have to wonder
why I’m so defensive when Elliot’s right.

“
Screw your
head on, bro. We just spent an hour watching a guy pretending to
fill out a spreadsheet full of data, while shamelessly searching
through hundreds of photos of naked chicks. It’s hardly a national
crime. What do you think the cops will do? They’re going to open up
a pretty pink file for you and your girlfriend and hire twenty of
their men from the top division to work on this case?”

“
Yes,
my
girl,” I hiss, pushing
into his chest with the heels of my palm.

“
And what have
you been doing with her, then?” Elliot says,
challenging.

Little shit can’t fight me with
anything but words. He’s putting up a good argument, but if I stop
defending my case, I have to consider the alternative and that
confuses me more.

“
You knew,” I
say, ramming the heels of my hands into his chest. He wobbles, and
grabs at the desk chair to keep from toppling over. “You knew I’ve
had a crush on her,” I repeat, heaving at him again.

He pushes back but I duck to
the side. I pull my hand into a fist and jab a low, quick blow into
his gut. Like I practice at the gym. He tries to do the same back.
Fed up with his efforts, I grab his wrist and twist it
one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and the law of physics works. He
collapses under me hunched over.

“
Enough!” A
voice—broken like glass on the verge of shattering into a million
pieces.

We both turn, my grip on Elliot
loosened, but we’re both too shocked to move, really.

Charz is between us, holding us
apart. One of her hands is pressed to the middle of my chest, the
other holding onto Elliot’s bicep. I can feel the pressure from her
palm through my shirt.

But on Elliot…her hand is on
his skin, her fingertips disappearing under the edge of his T-shirt
sleeve.

I wince and push away like I’ve
just realized I’m holding something disgusting. I pace the room
with my fingers laced at the back of my head.

“
Please,” she
whispers.

I stop and see Elliot standing,
holding her to him with that arm she touched. Her hand’s there,
curved up around his bicep in a way that flashes red anger through
to my knuckles.

I flex my hands by my sides
instead. “Let her go.”

“
What the—?”
Elliot gives me a “get real” look.

Useless. That’s what I am.
Elliot’s her savior, of course. He’s the one who saved this joyous
day, proving to her that her daddy’s fortune is fine, and it’s all
‘cause he found the answers I’ve been trying to find out for
weeks.

I haven’t spent every moment
burning over Dad’s plans to steal Walter’s money to do the “right”
thing. That much is clear from the endless pit in my stomach
folding me inside out, so full of pain that I wonder how much a
person can take until body parts start cracking.

I’ve done this for her. Because
I’ve watched her grow from a gangly girl into this woman I secretly
love. Because I’m doing this to spare her any more pain. My Charz
is drowning in hurt, and no amount of swimming records or money
will save her. And I’ll do anything to stop her from hurting.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing,
trying to save her from drowning in her misplaced guilt and
feelings. I killed her family, after all. Not her.

“
Dex?”

Elliot’s voice. But when I open
my eyes, it’s Charz’s eyes—deer in a spotlight—that catch me.

I take her face, grabbing two
of her fingers in mine, and pressing our foreheads together, noses
touching. I take in a rough breath, not able to do much in my own
state, but I have some sort of effect on her because she gasps in
air more slowly, followed by even slower breaths. Her sweet candy
smell is my drug. Sometimes when Dad gets into me with his fists,
or I’m writing lyrics, it’s what calms me. She’s what calms me.

“
How’d you do
that?”

Elliot’s wide-eyed and goggling
at us. Looking down, I realize I have one hand cupping her neck,
and a finger dipping her chin to me, where our foreheads and nose
were once touching.

“
Do you have a
code to get in my father’s computer or files?” I reply.

“
Sure,” Elliot
shrugs, confused. “I got it all.”

“
Show me,” I
say,
I’ll do it myself
, is how I finish the thought.

Elliot exhales loudly and then
lets out a quiet chuckle. “Dex, come on.”

“
Notes,” I
say, flat and emotionless.

He sighs and points to a square
that looks like a notepad, but it’s almost unrecognizable,
graffitied in scrawls and messes of jotted notes and markings.

Elliot leaves, and I know it
the moment he’s gone—because Charz’s glare becomes full of
tension.

* * *

Charz says she’s going for a
swim. Only she knows why. I don’t say it out loud, but I wonder how
many times she’s had middle-of-the-night training sessions.

It’s when she’s downstairs that
I flick through the papers once more. They haven’t changed, though,
there’s nothing new here, and again I ask myself why I’m wasting my
time doing this, when I probably won’t find anything.

I have to stop proving myself
to Charz. I can’t make her hate Elliot and I can’t make up my mind
if I’m willing to make her suffer through the public hate that will
ruin her relationships with friends and family—since they must be
part of the ninety-five per cent of people who have it out for
me.

But then I see it. It’s an
email that looks like all the rest, but still I don’t know how I
missed it.

Walter has emailed Dad. It’s
two words sent from an iPhone, saying:

Thank you.

Confused, I skim down the page,
to where Dad has sent Walter the first email, which says:

You did it for us, old man.

Wait. Walter’s planned this? So
all this time we’ve been seeing it the wrong way?

Like any rational guy, I run
down the stairs and to the pool house, maniacally calling Charz’s
name.

She hasn’t heard me at all,
that I’m sure of, as she emerges from the water, and flicks back
her long hair, wiping down her face.

“
Dex!” she
squeals, spotting me. “Come here.”

“
Hey, can you
c’mere. Need to chat about something.”

She tucks her hair behind her
ear, water glistening against her skin and the pool lights
highlighting her like the star of a show.

“
I got it,”
Charz says, gleaming. “You Americans sound so weird because you
accentuate your vowels!”

Charz wades up to the shallow
end, hips swinging in a way that almost makes me forget why I am
here. (If it weren’t for the issue of my father, criminal turned
old pal.) She giggles behind her hand—so unlike her. Her face is
glowing strangely from the artificial light. It’s crazy that she
can be so happy when she’d been crying into my chest in that
bathroom upstairs only a few hours ago. Girls.

“
I’m not sure
that’s important—”

“
Say ‘stone’
for me,” she says, her eyebrows quirking upward.

“
Stone?”

She feels her
way down my waist and her hands dive into my pockets without a
word. Holy fucking crap, she’s mental. Now I don’t know what mood
she’s in, but I feel exposed having her so close to my junk, so I
grab her wrists, ready to yank her out. She must have guessed I’d
react this way, so she clings onto the material inside my pockets,
grabbing the edges of my boxers underneath. Now she’s
definitely
too
close.

“
Charz…”

She mumbles something, and it’s
only when she yanks me forward, and we’re airborne over the water,
that I realize she said “empty pockets”.

I crash into the water above
her, both of us sweeping low, the weight from the pool pushing us
down until I think her ass has hit the bottom. When I come up, I
flail at the air, coughing up water.

“
Charlee
Fucking May. What’s gotten into you?”

“
Stone,” she
says, exaggerating the hint of the American accent I still have.
Then she giggles and jumps into my lap.

“
Have you got
a stone for me, Dexy?”

What am I, her baby? Then it
hits me. I lean in and wait for her to exhale, to smell it on her
breath, but she lunges at my face and crashes her lips to mine.

Holy fuck, what was I here for
again? Very, very suddenly I can’t remember anything as Charz’
nipples poke at her bathing suit and all I want to do is nip at
them, suck and drink her bliss.