Freshwater(25)

She never gave him the number to her dorm room and they never e-mailed or planned anything. Ada would just walk down that hill with the grass brushing her ankles, cool sunshine on her head, his room at the end of her journey. They would listen to music, talk, and then she started spending the night once in a while, lying in his arms under three comforters when the weather turned cold. His bed was a mattress lodged behind a dresser and braced against the wall. They didn’t even kiss. I don’t know why I left them alone—maybe I felt she had more of a right to him because she met him before I was born. But he was different, you know; he was not someone I needed to hunt. He meant her no harm. He didn’t even try to touch her. So I could, for a while at least, allow it to continue.

On Wednesdays they danced against the bar at the Irish pub, and on Saturdays, on the dance floor at Gilligan’s. Ewan loved Ada’s short hair and she compared that with Itohan’s younger brother, who had told her with disgust that she would look like a boy. With Ewan, they just listened to music and talked about their childhoods, and it was all nice and innocent if you forget that they were humans who had hearts. Eventually, they started to wonder what exactly they were doing, and that’s how they ended up on the couch in Ewan’s room, both nervous and unsure.

“I have a girlfriend,” he said.

“I know,” said Ada. They looked at each other.

“I’ve cheated on her before, with other girls.”

They had avoided either of these truths because that was the real world, the one that wasn’t supposed to infringe on their bubble. Bringing it up scared the shit out of Ada. She didn’t want to be out there alone, so she reached for me. I came in, but I entered gently because it wasn’t time to fight yet. She just needed a little coldness, a pinch of ruthlessness. I looked back at Ewan with her eyes. “Okay?” I said.

“I can’t do it with you,” he explained. “It would be different, I already know. I would care too much, get emotionally attached.” His words were floating up toward the old ceiling.

Inside the marble room, I looked at Ada and she shook her head. She wasn’t looking for anything. She didn’t believe in that anymore.

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

She shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself. “I found him and he makes me happy. That’s enough for me. Who needs a forever?”

I nodded. “No wahala. Whatever you want.”

I turned back to him. “I don’t want a relationship from you,” I said, as if none of it was a big deal. I was cool, languid, casual. “I like you. You like me. It’s that simple.”

Ewan laughed and Ada smiled back at him and the bubble stayed safe. In his bed that night, Ewan held her face and kissed her for all the time they had waited. When Ada kissed him back, it was very different from their first kiss, the one that happened before I was born. She hadn’t known desire then. This time, she had me, and he had come back, and so she drank smoke from his mouth like it was air. I barely even had to be there.

His girlfriend remained a pale face in a picture frame on his dresser. Ada continued to flow through Ewan’s life: nothing holding her, nothing keeping her, nothing pushing her away. One night at the Irish pub, she danced to a Shakira song with a Brazilian friend, their hips intimate, moving in a way a white boy’s couldn’t. Ewan smiled at her from the bar where he was standing with his friends.

“I wasn’t in the least bit jealous, you know,” he told her afterward, when she was back in his arms.

“Why not?” she asked.

Ewan smiled again, assured. “I know it’s me you like.”

He was right. Still, for a while all they did after these nights out was curl up in his bed, make out, and then sleep. Everyone knew about them. His best friend couldn’t believe they hadn’t fucked yet. Even me, sef—sometimes I couldn’t believe we hadn’t fucked yet. Luka had pulled back from Ada because he and Ewan were good friends and it was clear who she’d chosen. I knew it was the right choice. Everything with Ewan was moving at a different pace, one I wasn’t interfering with, one that no one had given Ada before. I wasn’t going to fuck that up for her. My job was just to be there if she needed me. Besides, I liked Ewan. He was a typical bad boy, after all—older, popular, a writer who drank all the time and smoked weed and cigarettes and blacked out regularly. Ada was the model student—she was both president of her graduating class and, at nineteen, the youngest person in it. Everyone at the school, like in Georgia, only saw her and couldn’t see me. It was fine. No wahala. They didn’t need to see me for me to be who I was.

One night, Ewan turned to Ada at the pub. “We have unfinished business,” he said, his eyes wrinkling as he smiled. If she didn’t know what he meant, I did. I know how to recognize my cues. But Ada didn’t mind. She liked him and I liked him, so it all worked out. Except that Ada was still Ada and I was still me, and this was where we overlapped. She didn’t have a capacity for desire that ran deep enough for fucking, she never did. Ada has been consistent. When it came to things like that, she came to me. We are the same person, you get? So that night, when Ewan took off her clothes, me, I took my place under her skin. I had made her a promise. I do not make exceptions.



She fell in love with him weeks later. I get annoyed just remembering it. I had been having a fantastic time with Ewan before that because, as it turned out, he had a dark side too, one that looked like me, a cruel and ruthless thing. I saw it one night when his eyes were cold and his voice was flat, when he covered Ada’s mouth with a rough hand as he fucked me. When he was done, he got off the bed and tossed a towel at Ada, lighting a cigarette. Ada didn’t say anything and Ewan turned away from her on the bed, closing his eyes. “Come on,” I told her, and I had her put on her shoes in the heavy dark and leave quietly.