Breathe (2 page)

“Yeah, but that one’s just plain creepy.”

I forced a smile, dived back underwater, and finished my lap while Garrett swam across the lanes to meet Zoe. The metal rungs of the ladder were cool against my palms as I pulled my body from the water and watched them in my periphery. When Zoe knelt down and planted a light kiss upon his lips, I was in more danger of losing my breakfast than I’d been when cleaning up the mess Maggie’d left in the bathroom.

The first time I ever laid eyes on Garrett Scott was at a swim meet the summer I turned twelve. I remember the smell of the chlorine, the sound of the swimmers splashing through the water and the din of the crowd on the metal bleachers surrounding the eight-lane pool. My Uncle Jim and his girlfriend Becca were sitting there, waving proudly and wildly, waiting patiently for me to make a fool of myself. At least that’s what I had assumed would happen. I’d never competed before. If not for Coach Scott taking a shine to me at the public pool earlier that summer, I’d’ve never known the difference between a butterfly and a breaststroke.

Garrett had never been to the public pool before that day. Not once. Yet, there he was, ready to take to the water with the rest of us. I’d found myself mesmerized by the way he moved, practiced and perfect. And when he’d emerged victorious and dripping, my stomach had done a somersault.

I saw the way Zoe and the other girls looked at him then. The way they adjusted themselves in their swimsuits to look more appealing. The upward tilt of their chins. The hand on their hips. The Barbie toe. Garrett, in perfect unassuming Garrett-fashion, was completely oblivious to the effect he had on the opposite sex. He’d stood stretching, one arm bent over his head with his opposite hand grasping his elbow, waiting for his next turn in the pool.

“He’s amazing,” I had whispered to Coach Scott later while Garrett toweled off.

Coach Scott had followed my gaze to his son. “Garrett? No. He’s average at best. What you have, Abby—that’s real talent. Natural. Raw.
That
can be shaped into something great.”

He’d stalked off to watch the next race, passing his son without so much as a congratulatory nod in his direction. If his father’s indifference had bothered Garrett, he hadn’t shown it. But I’d seen something in Garrett—a calm, almost laid-back confidence—that Coach Scott apparently did not. And I knew, unequivocally, that he was far too good for me.

Now I watched his hand glide across Zoe’s forearm and thought of how he would never dream of pulling her into the water the way he would do with me. She’d totally freak out about him messing up her makeup or her long, curly Taylor Swift hair. Instead, he pressed his palms against the ledge and hoisted himself from the pool, taking great care to avoid splashing her.

I shook my head and scanned the area for my gym bag. I needed a change of clothes and a towel. No way in hell I was gonna let Zoe Winchester observe my lackluster body in a swimsuit.

Zoe had given up swimming after that first summer when Coach Scott had made it clear she’d never be good enough to make the high school team. Because of that, she was still built like a girl—thin and soft with perfect, perky C-cups—while I was built like an athlete. Lack of body fat (aka breasts) made me popular in the pool, but not so much at school dances.

After a few minutes of futile searching, I remembered I’d dropped my bag in the hallway when I’d tried to beat Garrett to the pool. I was headed that way when a group of football players filed in led by Nolan Carter. That was the biggest problem with the pool: it was housed in the same building as the coaches’ offices and the field locker rooms, so every morning during football season I had to deal with Nolan Carter and his cronies.

“Looking for this?” Nolan asked me. There was a teasing lilt in his voice, a hard edge to his jaw and he dangled my black and turquoise gym bag on one finger in the air ahead of him. The urge to wipe the smug smile from his face and kick him in the knee surged through me. Popular or not, everything about Nolan Carter repulsed me—from his flat, round face to his oversized, sausage fingers. I wondered briefly if anyone had ever told him he looked like a Pug. Just less attractive.

I wrapped an arm around my stomach—an automatic protective gesture I’d picked up somewhere along the way—and reached out with the other to retrieve my bag. Nolan pulled it up and out of my reach with a snap of his wrist. The asshole. “Not so fast,” he sang. “What do I get in return?”

The bag swung over my head like a pendulum but I didn’t look up at it. I kept my eyes locked on Nolan, refusing to turn away. “My gratitude,” I replied. The words were bitter on my tongue, like licking an ashtray or the underside of a mule. The last thing on Earth I wanted to give Nolan was a thank you. A knee to the groin maybe. But a thank you? Not so much.

Swallowing hard, I waited while he considered his options. There weren’t many: he could give me back my bag or he could continue to taunt me. We hadn’t always been at odds—Nolan and I. I hoped that he’d remember that. And I suspected that if his friends weren’t watching, I’d’ve gotten off easier.

A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he lowered the bag to allow me to take it. I snatched it, intuitively knowing that couldn’t be the end of it, and turned on my heels. Once I’d put some distance between us, I leaned over and placed the bag on the ground, unzipped it and searched for my towel.

I felt his hands upon my hips first.

Snapping upright, I spun around and took a step back, the metal lockers banging against my spine. He was too close. Too large. I clutched my towel to me and willed my heart to remain inside my chest. It pushed against my rib cage like it meant to escape. Flee to the safety and comfort of the water.

“You’re a little jumpy,” Nolan sneered, leaning in and pressing his palms against the lockers on either side of my head. Behind him, I heard his friends snicker. “Do I scare you?” he asked.

He terrified me. Always had. Ever since his tenth birthday party when I’d seen him and his friends try to microwave a field mouse. “It’s only a mouse,” he’d cried after I’d run and told his mama. Only a mouse. Something tiny and helpless. As if that made it okay.

But I wasn’t about to admit that I was frightened. “What do you want Nolan?” I asked instead. I hoped he couldn’t sense my fear. Of course, Nolan was more animal than boy; he could probably smell it on me the way I could smell the rain.

He’d delighted in torturing me just about as long as I’d known him—pushing me off the swings and the monkey bars, pulling on my pigtails. I remember Maggie once telling me he only behaved that way because he liked me. I’d wondered aloud how the two could be related. How someone who was supposed to love you could go out of their way to hurt you. Maggie had replied that love was all about pain. “It’ll tear you up good,” she’d said. “If it doesn’t, sugar plum, you’re not doing it right.”

I was pretty sure it was all bullshit. Nolan didn’t antagonize me because he was harboring a secret crush on me. He tortured me because he was bigger and stronger than I was and somehow pushing me around and picking on those weaker than himself made him feel significant.

My fear urged Nolan on. His nostrils flared and his gray eyes flickered to my minimal cleavage. Gooseflesh cropped up where he ran his fingers along my arm. All I could do was lean back and try to get to know the locker behind me a little better.

“Well you did promise me some gratitude,” he replied.

I brushed his hand away. “Okay. So, thank you,” I said. “Now if you’ll get out of my way, I need to change and get to class.” Leaning under his arm, I rounded his body and tried to walk away. I knew he’d turned even before the towel was wrenched from my hands and I was forced back against the lockers. I’d felt the air behind me shift. Sensed his mood as it changed from playful to dangerous. I’d been around enough of those kinds of mood swings to recognize it immediately.

He pressed into me, not allowing me any room to wiggle free this time. His breath was hot against my ear. I reminded myself to breathe.
Don’t let him see you squirm.

I tried to listen but there was another voice in my head—one that shouldn’t have been there—telling me that it was my fault. That I deserved it. “Come on,” he whispered and I heard the other voice, deep and hard like it’d been cut from stone, saying the same thing—
“Come on Abby. It’ll be fun.”

Nolan’s fingers traced the side of my body down to the spot where my swimsuit met my hip. He lifted the fabric with a fingertip and let it snap back into place. It stung against my wet skin and I bit the inside of my lip to keep from flinching. “I know somewhere in there’s gotta be a little slut. Just like your mother.”

“Hey!” Garrett shouted, his voice filling the room followed by a splash. Nolan blocked my view of the pool so I couldn’t see Garrett as he moved through the water. All I knew was thirty seconds later Garrett had wrenched Nolan away from me. There was a squealing of cleats against the tile, low growls, and the thwack of skin and bone meeting skin and bone, before Nolan’s friends moved in to break up the scuffle.

“What’s your problem, man?” Nolan spat blood on the floor and wiped a trickle from his nose with the back of one of his bear hands. Garrett had punched him. From the looks of it, he’d gotten him good. 

“My problem?!” Garrett hollered. “Keep your damn hands off of her.”

I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or terrified. Garrett had stood up for me and while it wasn’t the first time and though I knew he was only protecting me, his temper scared me. Seemed almost out of control lately. It was a possessive and volatile side of him I wasn’t sure I wanted to get used to.

Nolan lifted his palms into the air in a show of surrender. “Sorry, didn’t realize you two had a thing going on.” He paused and chuckled before asking, “Does Zoe know?”

I’d almost forgotten she was there and when I glanced across the pool to meet her gaze, it chilled me from the inside out, as if she’d plunged a large icicle straight through my heart. She stamped her foot and stormed off in the opposite direction toward the exit.

“Zoe,” Garrett called to her but it was too late, she was gone and I was surprised that he remained planted between me and Nolan Carter. I thought for sure he’d go after her, but he stayed to protect me and force Nolan to retreat.

They stared each other down for a bit, neither one budging, until finally Nolan laughed and tapped his nearest crony on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” Then he turned back to Garrett. “She’s certainly not worth it.” Garrett lunged in his direction but I stopped him with a firm touch to his arm. Garrett didn’t need to get suspended because Nolan was an ass.

“You should go after her,” I told Garrett, thinking of Zoe, as soon as Nolan was out of sight.

Garrett shook his head. He was so close droplets of water from his still-wet hair slicked my skin and memories from a night just a week ago flooded my mind—
Garrett’s face above mine, his wet hair dripping on my forehead, my cheekbones
.
The feel of his fingertips as they grazed my lips.

“Just get dressed,” he replied, breaking through my reverie. Then he stood guard outside the girls’ locker room while I slipped from my bathing suit and slid into my uniform. When I emerged, he was talking to his father, Coach Scott.

When they were that near to one another, it was hard not to notice how unlike they were. Garrett was tall, broad shouldered, and tanned skin, while Coach Scott was short, pasty, and overweight. I imagined Garrett looked like his mother, though in the five years that I’d known him, I’d never once met the woman. Much like Maggie, she never came to meets and only rarely did he speak of her except in generalities, like
‘my mom got me that game for Christmas’
or
‘I can’t go swimming today, it’s my mom’s birthday’
.

From the way folks in town talked, I got the impression she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic and I wondered if he kept her at a distance to avoid embarrassment like I did with Maggie.

“Garrett says you missed your run this morning,” Coach Scott commented in the straightforward way of his that had a habit of catching me off guard. Like he couldn’t be bothered with a simple hello.

“Yes, sir. I was late,” I replied.

“You’ll do it this afternoon.” It wasn’t a question, but I gave a curt nod anyway to show I understood it wasn’t an option.

“Did you swim?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your time on the hundred?”

“Fifty one.”

He raised his eyebrows and gave me a stern look that said he knew I could do better. Which was true. Garrett and I had been playing around and I hadn’t exactly been trying. I hadn’t even bothered to put my hair away.

“I can get it under forty nine,” I promised.

“Do it before next Saturday.”

“Sir?”

“Penn State is coming.”

He disappeared into his office without another word. Then again, ‘Penn State is coming’ are the only words I’d’ve heard anyway. I’d set my sights on a swimming scholarship to Penn State five years ago. It was the only thing that kept me going day in and day out. It was the reason Garrett and I got up at five o’clock every morning and swam laps in the pool. It was the only thing on this planet I wanted. And now it was finally within my grasp.

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