Maybe I should just let whatever happens happen—but I’ve never been very good at that.
“Yeah, but he’s Emil.”
“And Emil just happens to be super kind and a total babe.” She gives me a look. “You could do a lot worse.”
She’s right. When I take off my cover-up and lower myself into the pool, I see Emil watching from the corner of my eye. I could face him, smile to let him know I don’t mind him looking, but I’m too shy. Which is definitely new; I must have been around Emil in a bathing suit dozens of times and never thought twice about it.
I slip under the water until it covers my head.
A few minutes later, Grace and Tommy wade through the pool, trying to organize a tournament of chicken fighting. I can’t think of anything that sounds worse right now, so I dip back under the surface when no one is looking and quietly travel to the shallow end. But as soon as I emerge for air, I hear my name.
“Come on, Emil needs a partner!” says Tommy, who is damn near unrecognizable without a guitar strapped across his body.
I shake my head and then, when he and Grace keep pestering me, I say no aloud. But they are relentless, starting up with a slow chant of “Suzette, Suzette” that only gets louder and grows in force until I say “Fine!” and meet them back in the deep end.
“I promise I had nothing to do with that,” Emil says when I’m treading water next to him.
I don’t know how much of that is true… or, for that matter, how much I want it to be.
“You’d better not drop me” is what I say in return, and he grins.
We’re up against DeeDee and Alicia first, with Dee on top of her girlfriend’s shoulders, facing me. I feel nervous about Emil supporting me—what if he slips and falls? Or gets tired of holding me up?—but his arms feel strong around my legs. He’s not letting go.
Dee and I are useless competitors, giggling more than actually trying to defeat each other. She’s taller than me, but after a few false starts, I grab hold of her long arms and, with Emil as my base, wrestle her off Alicia’s shoulders with an unceremonious splash. They come up laughing and Emil says, “Nice work!” in a voice that’s muffled below me. I ask if he needs a break between matches, but he says no, he’s ready.
Grace and Tommy are up next, and as if the competitive gleam in her eye weren’t enough, Grace says, “You guys are totally going down.” I’ve never seen anyone take chicken fighting so seriously, and then I stop to wonder if this is about chicken fighting at all. Does she somehow know about Rafaela? Maybe she saw us talking at Dee’s party. Or maybe Rafaela mentioned how she basically offered me the job at Castillo Flowers.
I’m still lost in my thoughts when the match officially starts. Grace swats hard at my shoulders, nearly knocking me off-balance in one try.
Or maybe this has nothing at all to do with Rafaela, and Grace just happens to be wildly overcompetitive.
We push and pull and twist at each other’s arms while Emil and Tommy faithfully keep us upright, and after a few minutes I wonder if either of us will ever give up or if this will go on all afternoon. If DeeDee’s mom will come home from work to find us swatting at each other like wrinkly, exhausted prunes.
And then Grace gets distracted by a fat fly that buzzes near her ear. She stops fighting to smack it away, and it’s only a brief respite, but I take the moment to push her hard and she goes tumbling off Tommy’s shoulders backward, into the water with a resounding thwack.
“Still the champions!” Emil cheers as I raise my arms in victory.
“No fair,” Grace says, splashing us as she finds her footing. “Black people aren’t supposed to be able to swim.”
A chill settles over me, starting at my shoulders and ending never. Emil’s arms tighten around my calves instinctively. Sometimes it’s easier to let things slide, to laugh along with them, to pretend like what they said to you wasn’t really fucking offensive. But sometimes my mouth takes over first.
“What did you say?” My dreads are soaked, sending tubes of water cascading down my back every few seconds, and I’d like to get off Emil’s shoulders, but this moment is frozen. Everyone heard her and no one is moving.
Grace laughs and wipes a few strands of green hair from her forehead. “I just mean… you know. Black people don’t, like, swim.”
“And yet here are two right in front of you,” Emil says coolly.
“God, you guys, it’s just a joke.” She looks around for support, only to be met by downcast eyes and puzzled faces. Even Alicia is picking at her fingernails instead of looking at her friend.
“Did you know that black people weren’t allowed to use public pools back in the day?” Emil says, his voice never wavering. “And that even if they weren’t actually segregated, white people used to attack black people who tried to swim? But black people get made fun of for not swimming, like there’s no fucking reason for that. Not all jokes are funny.”
Grace’s face is pure white and her bottom lip hangs down, but Emil doesn’t wait for her response. I’m still balanced on his shoulders and he walks us over to the side of the pool, carefully depositing me on the edge. Then he jumps out, grabs his towel, and walks in the back door of DeeDee’s house.
After a couple of seconds sitting in the collective silence of our friends, I do the same.
Inside, DeeDee’s dad is sitting on a stool in the breakfast nook, sketching on a small pad. He designs bottle labels for wineries and breweries all over the state, but most of his clients are on the Central Coast.
“Hi, Mr. Sullivan.” I flex my bare toes against the tile floor. I’m wrapped in my towel, but water still drips from my hair, pinging the floor next to my feet in fat drops.
He keeps sketching and doesn’t look up, though I know he hears me. The slight quirk of his mouth gives him away.
I clear my throat and try again: “Hi, Rick.”
“Suzette!” he booms loud enough to be heard outside as he jumps down from his seat to give me a hug. “Our DeeDee is real happy to have you back.”
“I’m happy to be back.”
Rick eases back onto the stool and slips on his glasses, peering at me over the top. “Massachusetts treat you okay?”
“Yeah, it was okay.”
That’s partially true. It was okay when no one had figured out what Iris and I were doing. Life has changed here in California, but I know I’m loved and safe and wanted. The only person who came close to providing that sort of comfort in Avalon was Iris, and all of that was ruined. What if we both go back but she wants nothing to do with me?
“The snow wasn’t so bad,” I say to DeeDee’s father. “And I got to wear boots and sweaters for longer than two months.”
“Well, sometimes you gotta leave a place to really appreciate it,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s talking about the East or West Coast now. “You want a ginger ale? Iced tea?”
“I’m good.” I twirl a loose string hanging from the bottom of my towel. “I was actually… I just need to use the restroom.”