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“I guess he doesn’t want to,” I said finally. And then, because I simply couldn’t help it: “Did you?”





MICKEY





MICKEY GRIPPED THE HARD lemonade between her knees until condensation mixed with sweat and trickled down her legs. Ruth was almost done with hers, but Mickey hadn’t taken a sip.

“Ooh, turn this up!” Ruth yelled, standing next to the captain’s seat and balancing in the space between the two windshields.

“DJ, take the wheel!” Cody said, reaching for the cell phone attached to the boat’s speaker. Ruth squealed and fell over him, grasping the wheel with both hands and landing squarely in his lap.

Mickey eyed Josh on the other cushion up front. His hair was longer than she remembered, but it had been at least two years since they last saw each other. It looked good. She liked the way the wind pulled it forward and back and the way Josh didn’t seem to mind at all. She imagined what it would be like to run her fingers through those deep brown curls, to have access to the parts of him she found herself wanting, so badly, to touch. When Cody cut the engine in a cove, the silence rushed in like something forgotten and hungry.

“We can swim here,” he said, cracking another bottle open against the boat’s gunwale “Or whatever we want.”

Ruth ran her hand along the wooden dashboard of the boat, polished to a gleam.

“Do you have a lot of these?” she asked.

“Boats? We have a few,” Cody answered. “My dad is a collector.”

“Of boats?” Ruth asked, flabbergasted.

“Boats, antique hunting rifles, handsome offspring,” Cody said with a wink. “Whatever he can get his hands on.”

“Are you saying your dad puts his hands on you? You should tell a safe adult.”

“Funny. Very funny.”

Ruth stood up and stretched, and Cody watched, not even trying to be subtle. Mickey looked around to see Josh watching, too, and she pushed herself deeper into the cushions. And then Ruth did what she always did, the thing that made up for all the ways she made Mickey feel invisible just by breathing.

She turned to her.

“Come on, Mick, let’s go swimming,” she said, grabbing Mickey’s hand. Mickey’s drink splashed against her knees.

“It doesn’t work if you don’t actually drink it,” Ruth said, pushing the end of the bottle up until gravity made the liquid pound on Mickey’s lips.

“That a girl!” Ruth shouted when Mickey finished the hard lemonade, coughing. “Come on.”

She took off her tank top and shimmied her shorts onto the deck. She could’ve been the most exciting exhibit in the aquarium, the way all eyes were hers. Mickey fumbled with the collar of her shirt, which had gotten tangled with the tie of her only two-piece, which she had worn every day since they arrived. Her hands were sticky from the hard lemonade and feeling thicker with each second.

“Ready?” Ruth asked, spinning around.

“I can’t—” Mickey said, tugging on the tag of her shirt.

Ruth squinted and looked at the boys.

“We don’t need our tops, do we?”

Mickey froze. “Ruth, what the—”

“I want to go swimming. So come on,” she said, pulling Mickey’s shirt up. “I’ll do it too. They won’t look; they’re perfect gentlemen. Aren’t you, boys?”

Ruth lifted Mickey’s shirt again, and Mickey grabbed the hem.

“No freaking way, Ruth,” Mickey hissed, ripping the fabric back down to cover her belly button. Ruth stepped back.

“Fine,” she said. “Suit yourself.”

She hopped up onto the back seat of the boat, wavering just enough for Cody to offer his hand, but she shook her head. The lake lapped quietly against the boat’s hull, the glitter of it reflected in her eyes. Or maybe the glitter in her eyes reflected in the lake.

Maybe Ruth was there first, and the rest of the world was built in answer.

Ruth reached with one hand to the middle of her back, grabbed the red string of her bikini top, and pulled. She did it slowly, so even Mickey hung on every stitch. Until, finally, the whole thing fell, limp and accomplished, to the deck. She hugged one arm across her bare chest and glanced back over her shoulder. The contrast of her tan against her nakedness upped the drama of it all: the pure engulfed, literally, in the grip of the exposed.

“You got another Mike’s?” she asked Cody. “I have a feeling the water is going to be pretty cold.”

Cody nodded and handed her his without taking his eyes off the length of her back, uninterrupted. She took a long swallow with the bottle straight overhead, her free arm silhouetted against the sun. Which was how Mickey first saw it. The delicate network of lines that crossed Ruth’s arm’s most tender flesh, the part closest to her heart. They were straight and clean, like a completed to-do list. Her body hadn’t made them.

In an instant, Mickey forgot about Josh. She wanted to touch those raised white lines much more than she had ever wanted to touch anything else. But there was a splash and Ruth was gone.





LILY





THE WEEK AFTER SHE met Gavin in the Market Basket, Lily went to group. Or, rather, she went to the Eaglewood Presbyterian parking lot. All week, she thought about his invitation—about him in his entirety. It was as if he had spread to her when she placed her hand on his wrist, creating a new, buzzing layer of skin. And every time she imagined seeing him again, she felt that animal satisfaction of an itch properly, gloriously scratched.