Deep End

IN JANUARY, LUKAS IS ACCEPTED TO STANFORD MED.

My reaction is . . . complicated, but only because he tells me while we’re in the middle of fucking.

He and I have done some irresponsible stuff since our arrangement started, but this tops it all. I blame it on how busy we’ve been with travel and meets, and on the fact that the extent of our January encounters amounts to passing each other in one of the hallways at Avery, the always crowded one right outside of the PT room.

I don’t say hi.

He doesn’t smile.

His fingers brush against the back of my hand, though, and for the next twenty minutes I feel like the air is thinner than on a Tibetan plateau.

In those weeks, our closest interaction is a plastic bag I discover outside my locker, full of the green sweets I mentioned to him before the holidays.

For real fika, the note reads. I devour them, thinking of him during every bite.

At the end of the month, both the University of Arizona and Arizona State teams come to Avery for a four-day invite. The after-party is at Kyle’s house—which is, shockingly, also Lukas’s.

“I’d heard rumors,” Victoria says, walking up the driveway. “But I dared not believe them. Thought my sickbed was playing tricks on me. But no—Scarlett Vandermeer actually goes out. Color me shocked and pleased.”

“Vandy likes parties,” Pen tells her. “She just . . .”

“Likes her bed more,” I finish.

“I’m just making an appearance,” Pen whispers in my ear a minute later. “And then I’m skedaddling to Hot Teacher’s place.”

They’ve been inseparable for all of January. I even met him, with Pen introducing me as “one of my closest friends, Theo,” which had me so happy. We had lunch together, and they couldn’t keep their eyes, and hands, off each other. Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lukas.

What if he and I really started dating?

Would it be against girl code?

Would you even mind?

Most of the crowd, and it’s a big crowd, is out in the garden. Victoria disappears into her flirtation with a Montenegrin swimmer who looks uncannily like Michelangelo’s David. Pen is best friends with everyone, and is seamlessly absorbed by gaggle after gaggle. I wander around, am polite when a male U of A diver chats me up, but I’m looking for . . .

Lukas spots me through the windows and immediately extracts himself from the conversation he’s having with Johan and a couple in ASU tees. I meet him in the kitchen, and I want to touch him so bad, my blood fizzes like champagne.

He looks at me like a bird of prey. Focused. Acquisitive.

The U of A diver excuses himself.

“I cannot believe you allowed this,” I say. “Who’s going to clean this mess?”

“Not me.” He drains the last of his beer and sets it on the counter. “Detailed contracts were drawn.”

“You’re the least fun roommate, aren’t you?”

“I’m the roommate who lays down the rules.” He stands over me. “Let’s go upstairs.”

It’s the closest we’ve gotten to sneaking around, except that Lukas is not the kind of man to keep his head less than high. Five minutes later I’m inside his room, and he’s inside me.

“I fucking missed this,” he tells me.

I’m on top, but have no delusions about who’s in control. I have to take several deep breaths, because it’s a new position with Lukas. He drags my hand to my abdomen and covers it with his own, pressing down. Through my flesh, I can feel the faint outline of him, spearing inside me. “This.” He kisses my shoulder, and I feel his cock twitch, like he needs to get deeper.

“A little more,” he says, thrusting up, pulling me down. “Just a little. Be a good—fuck, yes, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Once he’s in all the way, my thighs spread wide to make room for his hips. I feel like I’m being split open. He lets out a pleased, guttural sound. One of his hands closes around my waist, the other cups my ass, and then he moves me—up, and up, and then down again, eyes flicking between mine and the bounce of my tits. Then he lets go and says, “Stop.”

I do. He’s inside me to the hilt, and I can barely breathe around him.

“Come here.” He hugs me closer. His hand splays on my back and pets me, a soothing vertical motion that lulls me into a floating, dreamlike headspace. He plays with my nipples, pinching them hard enough for me to moan in the right amount of distress, the one that’ll make him harder and me wetter. I try to roll my hips, but he won’t have it. “I don’t think so.”

It dawns on me then, what he’s planning. The wait ahead. I whimper, and he clicks his tongue soothingly. “It’s okay, Scarlett.” It’s the permission I need to bury my face in his neck and complain. I kiss him there, licking the salt off his skin, a couple of whined pleases, a handful of truly pathetic tears, a hard bite on his trapezius that he barely notices. He comforts me through it, tormentor and savior, and once I’ve exhausted myself, he settles me down in his arms.

Music vibrates through the walls, drowning laughter and chatter. I feel like an object, created for him. By him. Did I exist before the first time he fucked me? I have no memory of it. Do I exist when we’re not together? I’m just a toy. His favorite. Irreplaceable.

And that’s when he speaks about Stanford’s acceptance. How he couldn’t wait to tell me. How dark Sweden is this time of year, but every message from me felt like a little burst of sunlight. He tells me what he’ll show me when I visit in the summer, and that he doesn’t want us to be apart for as long as we have been in the last couple of months, because it feels “cruel, Scarlett, to know that you exist, but I can’t touch you and fuck you and be with you. You get it, right?” And after minutes or centuries of this, he finally takes pity on me. “You are so sensitive—you’d come if I moved just a little. You’d come for me, wouldn’t you?”

I would. I nod.

It takes one thrust, and that’s it for me. Maybe two more for him. We both come silently, clutching each other through shudders and twitches and aftershocks that never seem to end, and when the sweat is cool on our bodies and I can breathe again, I say, “Lukas?”

He nods his head into my throat, like he doesn’t trust his vocal cords.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that this is the best thing I’ll ever have. For the rest of my life.”

He sighs, and murmurs something in Swedish that my Duolingo app has yet to cover.

Downstairs, the party trudges on.

I wake up alone in Lukas’s bed, to a handful of noises coming from downstairs—like someone’s gathering trash or washing the dishes.

Well, shit.

The weather’s gray and dull, but it’s already midmorning. If Lukas’s roommates are up, getting out unseen is going to be difficult. Impossible, since I’m not willing to dive out of a second-story bedroom and into a dumpster full of beer bottles.

I clean up quickly, slide my jeans up and my shirt down, and make my way downstairs, as inconspicuous as possible. I stop in the hallway to the kitchen, listening for voices, wondering if I should just go back to Lukas’s room until the coast is clear.

“. . . was asking after you,” Hasan is saying.

“She has my number,” Lukas replies, unconcerned.

The rustling of plastic bags stops. Someone kills the faucet. “You told me a couple months ago that you guys broke up, but last night you went upstairs with Vandy. I wasn’t sure if I could tell Pen, or . . .” Hasan sounds puzzled.

“You can. Pen knows about it.”

The garden door opens. Kyle comes in, muttering something about being too wasted to remember who threw darts at the fence, but Hasan ignores him. “Okay. So, if she ever asks again . . .”

“What are you guys talking about?” Kyle interrupts.

Hasan sighs. “Just Sweedy’s love triangle with Pen and Vandy.”

Kyle whistles. “Dude, you’re doing Vandy?”

“There are no secrets,” Lukas says, once again pretending Kyle doesn’t exist. “Whatever Pen asks, you can answer sincerely.”

“Okay.” Hasan. “That’s a fucking relief, because I’m shit at lies.”

“Dude,” Kyle groans. “How did you manage to bag Vandy?”

I tense. Wait for Lukas’s response, but it’s Hasan who says, “Kyle, what kind of question is that?”

“Others tried. In vain. I tried. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up?”

“Bro, did you just say you shouldn’t have listened when she said no?” Hasan sounds pained.

“All I’m saying is, I kinda thought of her as off-limits—”

“She is.” It’s Lukas’s usual, laid-back tone, just a brush of tension sitting at the edges. I wonder if Kyle notices. “To you,” Lukas adds, which feels a bit like a threat.

Kyle, though, is still drunk. “I’m impressed. She’s seriously cute. The dimples are cute. The little gap between the front teeth is cute. Her t—”

A glass is set on a surface. None too gently. “Consider carefully whether you want to finish that sentence, Kyle.”

My cheeks are on fire. There’s a pause—in which, I’m sure, Kyle’s life flashes before his eyes. “You know what? I have no desire to.” He clears his throat. “What about Pen? Pen’s supercute, too. Always liked her. And if you’re not dating her . . .”

“Be my guest.”

“Got it. Pen, green light. Vandy, death wish.”

“You know, Kyle,” Hasan interjects, “you don’t have to hit on every woman you’re introduced to. They’ll experience fulfilling lives without your clumsy presence in them.”

It feels like a now-or-never entry point, so I walk into the kitchen as casually as possible. “Hey.”

“Oh.” Kyle has the decency to flush a little. “Hey, Vandy?”

I smile at him. Tight-lipped, because I’m suddenly self-conscious about my teeth, and I wore braces way too many years for that. The dentist said my wisdom teeth would descend and push the front together is on the tip of my tongue.

Whatever. My teeth are fine. Cute, even.

“Hey, Vandy,” Hasan says, a bit awkwardly.

Lukas just drops the red Solo cup in his hand into a garbage bag, comes to me, takes my face between his hands, and kisses me.

It’s slow. And thorough. And surprisingly public. I can practically hear Hasan and Kyle look away.

“I, um, have to go,” I say at the end.

“I’ll walk you home.”

“Actually, I want to make a stop before. I’d rather go by myself.” It’s a lie, but I’m rattled. Overhearing people talk about you is like being pinned to the vivisection table while med students take notes on your organs. I need to be alone for a minute.

“I’ll still—”

“And the thing is,” I add, walking backward, “the idea of you helping them clean even though you don’t have to, just because you won’t know peace until the house returns to its state of asepsis? Kind of a turn-on for me.”

Hasan and Kyle cackle. I wave goodbye. When I open the front door and turn around, Lukas is staring at me with an odd smile.