“What’s the worst?”
I looked right at him. “I don’t remember really feeling all that safe any other time.”
As soon as the words were out, I felt the weight of them. I felt the weight of what I didn’t want to know. That I had felt tested so much of the time Nick and I’d been together. And maybe part of that was my doing as much as his—growing out of my desire to keep him happy because I loved him so much, because I wanted his approval. But did the reason matter so much? In the end it was the same result. Maybe that was part of the reason I wanted to be away from home so much, so I didn’t feel so immediately affected by it. That part of Nick—that final 20 percent—that always seemed so out of my reach.
Griffin took my hand, kissed it fast, right on the wrist, and pulled me to standing. One motion.
“Let’s get in the water,” he said.
“Wait, that’s it? We’re not going to discuss this?”
“What’s there to discuss?”
Nothing. All of a sudden, I knew. Nothing. Or, I should say, I felt nothing. The anxiety in my chest, that tight ball, smaller. Benign. Because there was no denying it. It hadn’t just been there since the breakup. It had been there for a while before that. And maybe now—maybe in this instance with Griffin—I was breaking free of it.
“But what about you?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you tell me the same thing? About your last girlfriend?”
But Griffin was already removing my bikini top.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting you into your wet suit.”
His hands felt cold and good against my back, chilling me as he removed the straps. I started looking around the beach—there was another couple far out of the way, and a few surfers in the ocean. But, in this part, we were alone. We were completely alone.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t watch.”
Then he did.
That night, as promised, we went dancing. I changed into a silver bubble skirt and a silky tank top and put on my tango shoes—yes, I have a pair of special shoes I tango in—which were black and wiry and tied tight right above my ankle.
We danced all night. Every song. Until we were both drenched in sweat, clothes clinging, laughing. Griffin wasn’t the best dancer, but he loved the music and was enjoying every second: completely unselfconscious as he twirled me around the floor, wrapped up in the moment with me. This, after a while, started to feel like the same thing.
“Stop putting it off. It’s your turn,” I said, at one point, while we were taking a break and sharing a ginger ale.
“My turn?”
“I assume I’m not your first love,” I said. “Tell me about the girl before me. Best and worst. You know, tit for tat . . .”
He smiled.
“What? I said tit?”
He shook his head. “You said love.”
My eyes got wide. “No, I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .” I shook my head, trying to recover. “Not that I’m love. Or not that I’m in love with you. Or that you’re in love with me. I meant . . . that’s not what I meant.”
He grabbed m
e up to standing, pinning my arms behind my lower back, kissing my neck, holding me there. “The best thing about the last woman I loved,” he said, “is that she spoke in full sentences.”
“Very funny.”
He started pulling me back to the dance floor. “And the worst thing? ” I asked. But I was letting myself be pulled, already letting myself forget. “All right, I know where this is going. Same answer.”
7
When you go from amazingly sad (sadder-than-you’veever-been sad) to happy (singing-in-the-shower happy) in quick succession, it seems like the other was never true. Like when you have a cold and you can’t remember that you ever felt normal, or when you feel normal again and, despite having someone sitting right in front of you coughing up a lung, you can’t quite feel the sick feeling. You can remember the experience. But holding on to that feeling, that is something else.