“I haven’t been online much. Why? Is there something else I should know?”
“Nothing like that. I, uh, took the liberty of moving your mother to an institution closer to your new place. There’s one not too far with excellent care. You’d mentioned you wanted to do it sometime anyway, and the facility she was in before didn’t protect the names of their patients as well as I would have liked.”
I rolled my neck from side to side. The mention of my mother made my shoulders tense. I’d come to terms that we were long past any meaningful reconciliation – her alcohol-induced dementia prevented us from connecting on that level. But she required care, and though I couldn’t be 100 percent responsible for her on a day-to-day basis, I wanted to be involved. Just dealing with her was emotionally trying, and I avoided her as much as I avoided most anything. It would be harder to continue that with her close by. It was so much easier to make excuses about how rarely I visited when she was over an hour away.
Joe misread my silence. “I should have waited until you got back to me before doing anything. I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” I assured him. “It’s fine. It’s necessary. I just need a minute to get used to the idea.” At least I didn’t have to worry about the mechanics of the transfer. “Thanks for doing that for me, Joe. Thanks for all of it. You’ve been a really great friend.” One of the only ones I had at the moment.
My gratitude seemed to fluster him. “It’s my job,” he said after a few seconds.
It was more than that, but I didn’t need to argue with him about it. He knew I appreciated him. “Anyway. I’ll let you know when my flight is arranged.”
Saying it out loud like that made my leaving a reality. It felt like I kept coming back to this same place. Kept making the decision to go and yet never ended up seeing it through. This time would be different. It had to be.
I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Reeve a second time in one day so I pushed off asking him to make my travel arrangements. I didn’t bother joining Amber for lunch either, and, after grabbing a sandwich late in the afternoon, I had a valid excuse of not being hungry enough to show up for supper.
When I was sure that Amber and Reeve were dining, I put in thirty minutes in the pool by the master bedroom. I hated being so close to his room – their room – but the pool by my room wasn’t heated, and the water was too chilly for my taste once the sun began to set. The rhythm of swimming laps was comforting. It got me out of my head and forced me to concentrate on the basics – my form, my breathing, not drowning.
It was dark when I got out. I wrapped a towel around myself and slumped into a deck chair in the shadows and brought my knees to my chest. My workout had brought me to a Zen state. I felt, not numb, but subdued. The thoughts that had taken front stage in my mind all day were now background noise, eclipsed by the hypnotic sway of wind in the trees and the distant crash of ocean waves.
The sound of splashing water interrupted my daze, and I looked up to find Reeve in the pool, swimming laps at a steady speed. My breath hitched, both because he’d surprised me so completely and because he looked, as always, so damn good in the water. His stroke was perfect. The muscles in his body flexed and stretched fluidly, as if he were a part of the water. He was beautiful to watch, magnificent and strong and graceful all at once.
It felt voyeuristic to watch him like this. He didn’t know I was there – I was sure of it. I was too curled up in the shadows for him to have noticed me easily, and his form was too natural and uninhibited to have been a performance. Which was why it was so hard to look away. I told myself just a few more minutes, just one more lap, and then I’d slip inside without him ever knowing I’d been there.
But one more lap turned into two more. Then three. And I hadn’t left. I couldn’t tear myself away for any other reason than I didn’t want to stop watching him.
Then the curtains at the door of the master bedroom parted, and Amber stepped out onto the patio. I was too late to sneak away unseen.
And I really didn’t want to be here anymore.
Amber took a seat in a deck chair at the pool’s edge, crossing one leg suggestively over the other, and watched Reeve as intently as I had. She was clearly in seduction mode. Her hair was pulled to the side in a loose braid, and the nightie she wore was more sexy lingerie than sleepwear. She looked alluring and provocative and, just like when I’d first seen her in my neighborhood, I felt plain and drab in comparison.
I pulled my knees tighter to my chest, wishing I could disappear. Wishing I could love her enough to truly want this for her. Wishing I could love her enough to forget how much I loved him.
“You look good out there,” Amber said when Reeve popped his head up from the water.
He paused. “Thanks.”
Even from where I sat I could tell he hadn’t expected her to be there when he’d broken his lap. But there’d been some reason he’d come up. Had he expected me instead? Could he sense my presence the same way I’d sensed his when I’d swam in his Palm Springs pool that first day I’d met him?
It wasn’t a good idea to wonder about that. Or him.
“I’ve always loved watching you in the water,” Amber cooed. “I love being in the water with you, too. I could join you.”
My gut twisted as images flashed in my mind of times he and I had been in his LA pool together, naked. But now, like in a dream, I saw them from a distance and she was in my place.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to make those pictures any more real than they already were in my head.