Deep End

THE FIRST MEETING FOR DR. SMITH’S PROJECT IS THAT NIGHT, in the Green Library. When I arrive I pull up Lukas’s emails to double-check the location, and two results appear: the thread we’ve been using to make plans with Zach, and the other.

What you need

A hazy flush spreads over my cheeks.

I haven’t reread the email since it was delivered. I don’t need to, because it’s branded into my occipital cortex. I didn’t mean to memorize it, but it was one and done. I can’t revert it to unread—it would drive me bananas, as I cannot dwell in this plane of existence unless all my notifications across all my devices are cleared. I could archive it. Trash it. Mark it as spam.

It’s not like I’m ever going to reply to it. It would be so weird, and—

A knuckle bumps softly against the fleshy part of my arm. “Room’s this way, troll,” says a deep voice above my left ear. Lukas’s long legs don’t slow down, and by the time we’re upstairs, I’m winded—and trying to figure out whether I hallucinated that last word.

“Huh,” he says, holding the door open.

“What?”

“A surprising amount of panting for someone who spends her day climbing stairs.” His eyes are warm, gently teasing. Heat blooms inside me as I wave at Zach and enter the small room. It has three chairs, one desk, and one projector. I’m not sure what it says about the fun house of horrors that is my social life, but the meeting that follows is the most fun I’ve had in a while.

“You really know your neural networks,” Zach tells me during a break. It could be the glossy patina of the deep learning algorithms, but my brain has classified him as Fairly Unthreatening. I’m relaxed enough to kick off my shoes and genuinely laugh at his terrible nonparametric statistics joke. Lukas is at the fountain right outside, refilling our water bottles. He conspicuously left the door open, and he made sure I was aware that he could see me through the glass doors.

Ah, the frazzling ordeal of being known.

“I took a couple of online classes,” I explain to Zach, lifting my bare feet on Lukas’s chair to stretch my hamstrings. “And was in the bioinformatics club in high school. And went to a comp bio research camp in my junior year.”

“Wow. A jock and a nerd.”

I laugh into my shins and deepen my stretch, closing my fingers around my toes. “Collecting archetypes is my passion.”

“Don’t stop on my account. You’re clearly great at it.” He points at the whiteboard, where I drew the forward and backward passes of my network. “You’re a senior?”

“Junior.”

“What are your plans for after?” He laughs at my pained expression. “Are you going pro?”

“With diving? I don’t think so. I’m trying to get into med school.”

“Have you taken the MCAT?”

“This weekend.”

“You’re on top of it.”

“Not really. My essays are a shitshow. And I think the German homework I’ve been turning in might be the written equivalent of burning a German flag?”

Lukas returns and hands me my water bottle. “You’re taking German?”

“Regrettably for everyone.”

Before I can vacate his seat, one of his hands wraps around both my ankles. He lifts them, holds them up as he sits down, and then lowers my bare feet in his lap.

I blink at him. Then at his hand. His grip softens against my left calf, its circumference loose. He has short, blunt nails. Long, enveloping fingers.

A wave of heat irradiates up my legs.

“Why?” he asks.

My eyes rocket up to his. What are you doing?

“Why German?” he repeats, imperturbable.

My cheeks burn. “Just . . .”

Move your legs, I order myself. He’s not pinning you. He is, in fact, fully relaxed in his chair. Only mildly interested in my tales of academic mistakes. The pad of a chlorine-roughened thumb unhurriedly sweeps back and forth over the ball of my anklebone. Is he even aware of what he’s doing? “Med schools like foreign languages,” I say. It’s raspy. More of a dry-mouthed croak, really.

“Do you like foreign languages?” His eyes are on me. The weight of his hand settles on my skin like it belongs there, unchallenged.

I manage a fuzzy headshake. No, I don’t like learning foreign languages is as beyond me as the Cartwheel Galaxy. My pulse thuds, sticky in my ears. Between my legs.

“Maybe you should take Norwegian,” Zach jokes. With the table between us, he can’t see what’s happening. “That way Lukas could help you.”

“Swedish,” I correct reflexively. Lukas’s hand wraps against the heel of my foot in a lingering caress.

“Oh, shit—sorry about that, man.”

“You’re fine. Same peninsula.” His thumb presses into my arch, strong, capable. I bite my lower lip. Hard.

Zach, whose hobby appears to be inquiring upon the five-year plan of everyone he meets, asks, “You going to move back there when you’re done with school?”

“We’ll see.”

“Your girlfriend lives here, right? Wait—weren’t you dating a diver?” His eyes dart to mine. “It wasn’t you, right?”

“No.” I clear my throat. Consciously slow down my breathing as Lukas’s grip trails upward, under the hem of my leggings.

Zach nods anyway. “Gotcha.” He laughs. And after an awkward beat: “What about you?” He points a pencil at me. “Are you dating a swimmer?”

“Me? I—”

Suddenly, Lukas’s hand is a manacle around my ankle, like I’m something for him to hold and control and restrain. My brain trips. I’m sure everyone—Lukas, Zach, the front desk librarian downstairs—can hear the erratic pound of my heart.

“She’s not,” Lukas replies, eyes steady, fixing mine. Voice rumbly and calm. His hand is a vise, and—

It’s just the way I’m wired. It’s written in my neurons, how much I enjoy the strength behind his grip. His size. The ease with which he could overpower me. He could make me do things, and knowing that stokes a hollow ache in my abdomen. But he will not, not unless I give him the go-ahead, and that’s the kind of belly-warming knowledge that makes that ache even sharper.

It’s not morally wrong. It doesn’t hurt anyone. There are no victims here, but maybe it’s messed up? At the very least it’s so fucking—I don’t even know, heteronormative of me. Gender conforming. Regressive. Stereotypical. Banal. I hate it.

I love it.

“A diver, then?” Zach jokes, somewhat clumsy, and I need to rethread the conversation, find its lost stitches. Whether I’m dating a swimmer. Or a . . . ah.

“Nope,” I say, and Zach nods, like I’ve given the correct answer. He excuses himself with a soft “be right back,” and Lukas and I are alone, his touch light again. I open my mouth to ask him what he’s doing, why now, why here, but—I haven’t opened my mouth at all.

I’m just staring, lungs and heart not quite steady.

“He was trying to figure out if you’re single,” he tells me. His casual stroking continues in small, light patterns.

I swallow. Collect myself. “I knew that.”

“Did you? Really?”

Truthfully, no. But it has nothing to do with me being oblivious, and everything with his hands. “I’m not clueless.”

He hums low in his throat. By now, I know him better than to believe it’s in agreement. “Do you remember Kent Wu?”

“I don’t—wait. Swimmer?”

“Butterfly. Distance. He was a senior when you joined the team.”

“I think I do?”

“He tried to ask you out twice.”

“What?” I frown. “How do you—how would you even know that?”

“We were good friends. Still are.” He drums his fingers over the back of my foot. “He noticed you. We talked about it.”

Talked about it? What does that even mean? Lukas is probably thinking of someone else. Swimming and Diving are more incestuous than we like to admit, mostly because our chaotic schedules match well enough to allow the penciling in of some fucking. “You’re mixing him up with Hasan. He asked me out when I was still with my ex, a million years ago—”

“A million?”

“Two. Two years ago.” I bite the inside of my mouth. “You are very literal.”

A twitch of his lips. “And you are prone to exaggerations.”

“It’s a rhetorical figure also known as—”

“Hyperbole, yes.” He thumbs my skin, and I nearly shiver. He seems to weigh me like I’m a pound of meat. “Kent was after Hasan. Toward the end of the season.”

“I don’t—”

“Remember. Because you never noticed. Don’t worry, Kent’s happily engaged, I just got his save the date.”

I glance away. Lukas’s flesh is still warm against mine, and so is that liquid feeling traveling down my spine, but the implications of what he said sit heavy in my gut. “I’m not clueless,” I repeat.

“You’re not. You just keep your head down. Focus on what you can control, and cut the rest out as much as you can without letting your world collapse. Right?”

I exhale. “Just because Pen shared something about me she should never have, it doesn’t mean that you know me.” It comes out nicely firm. I’m proud of it. Except that Lukas’s reaction is not contrition, but amusement, the beginning of that crooked smile on his lips, and I don’t—

“Ready to start again?” Zach asks.

I do what I should have five minutes ago—pull my feet away and fold them underneath me.

“Yeah.” I smile at Zach without glancing at Lukas or waiting for him to echo me.