Wicked Games

His phone buzzed again. Not the short double buzz of a text, but the sustained vibration of an incoming call. He’d known this would come eventually, but that didn’t make him any less annoyed.

“Sorry, hold on,” he said.

He pulled out his phone and stabbed at the button along its side, holding it down until the phone was off. Then he couldn’t help but let out a small exhale of frustration. He cocked back and mock-threw the phone out toward the beach before shoving it back into his pocket.

“What was that?” said Jules.

“Lilah.” Though he tried to sound cool about it, Carter could hear the annoyance infiltrating his voice. For a second, he imagined her, stewing in her room at home, trying and trying to call him. Something inside of him—some buzzing feeling—collapsed in on itself. The difference between the drama with Lilah and this nice, light flirtation with Jules was too much for him. He couldn’t do it anymore, he realized. He was too exhausted by the vigilance it took to hide the cracks in his supposed perfect, loving relationship while so much of it was crumbling around him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking his phone out again. “It’s just … she’s going to keep calling.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s frustrating,” he said. “It’s exhausting.”

Jules wasn’t stupid. She could see the change taking place inside Carter—the sad expression wresting control of his face, the way he ran his fingers through his flop of sandy hair, holding them there at the top of his head like he was trying to stop his brain from exploding.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” she said, taking a seat in the chair next to his.

She gazed at him, attentive but calm, and let his mood float in the silence between them.

“You want to talk about it?” she said.

Carter took a deep breath, and though he’d never dared to put his fears into words before, he let it all pour out. Everything. How he wasn’t sure anymore if his relationship with Lilah was going to work, and all the ways this terrified him. Who was he without Lilah? He didn’t know. He was afraid of what life without her would look like, but he didn’t know how to be with her anymore. It was horrible. He could barely remember what had made their relationship so beautiful before, and the little glimpses he did catch filled him with sadness because he couldn’t find a way to get that beauty back.

“I’ve tried so hard, for so long now,” he said, “but things just keep getting worse between us. No matter how hard I work to keep her together, she continues to fall apart. And now she doesn’t even trust me. I mean, look at what happened tonight. It’s like she’s punishing me for caring about her. And the worst part is that just thinking these things feels like a betrayal.”

“But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just don’t work out,” Jules said. “You’re not always in control of everything, no matter how much you want to be. Something I learned from doing the I Ching with my mother. Chance sneaks in and changes everything, no matter how prepared you thought you were.”

“I know that. I’ve even tried to tell Lilah something like that. She’s so anxious, though. She needs me so much.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “And she holds on so tightly that she doesn’t realize she’s … killing us.”

Jules felt for him. She understood his fear. Walking away from love was hard—even if the love was bad.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” he said.

She was impressed, actually, that he was working so hard to understand and grapple with his emotions. It proved the suspicion that she’d always held about him. He had an unusual amount of integrity. He was a nice guy, a kind guy, mature beyond his years. The kind of guy she’d always secretly wanted to date, if only the gulf between guys like him and the new-agey, beachy stoner culture her mother had raised her in hadn’t seemed so huge. Any other guy in school would have thrown Lilah overboard a long time ago, without even thinking about how she’d feel. Either that or he’d have been oblivious to his girlfriend’s hopes and dreams, too busy partying and posturing for his friends to realize how much trouble his relationship was in.

That’s what Todd, her ex-boyfriend, had been like, so busy playing beach volleyball and smoking pot with his buddies that he hadn’t even noticed when Jules began to wonder if maybe there was more to life than bumming around the beach and listening to The String Cheese Incident all day. They’d dated for two years, and even though she’d known she had to do it, she’d put off breaking up with him for months.

After four years together, it must be that much harder. She wished there was something she could do to ease Carter toward the realization that, no matter how protective of Lilah’s feelings he might be, eventually, he was going to have to admit to his own feelings and take care of himself. She knew better than to push him, though. He’d figure it out in his own time.

“So if you can’t control the future,” she said, “and you can’t change the past, I wonder if maybe sometimes the best thing to do in the present is to throw your hands up and say, You know what, my fate’s going to take me wherever it takes me and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You have to have some sort of plan, though,” he said.

“Yeah, of course. But like you just said, if you try to control everything all the time, then you end up totally paralyzed.”

He hunched forward in his seat, listening, intrigued.

“I mean, look at it this way. We’re at a party. There’s a reason we came to this party, right? We want to have a couple drinks. We want to have some fun. Talk to some people. Maybe dance a little. Flirt a little. There’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sure. Fun is good.”

“And if Lilah is going to assume that you’re here for some sort of nefarious purpose, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just like I can’t do anything about what Todd, my ex, might think. So best to let it go, no? You can only be you. No matter how much you might want to be the person they think you should be, you can’t change who you are. It’s up to them to accept you. Meanwhile, you just do what you do and let it work itself out. Or that’s what I’m trying to do, anyway.”

“You’re right,” he said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Gazing out at the beach, he seemed to be taking this question seriously. She watched as he considered the possibilities. When he looked at her again, there was a hint of mischief in his eyes.

Which made it impossible for her to resist. “What do you say to a walk on the beach?” she said.

5

Carter and Jules picked through the beach grass, along the path, over the dunes, and down toward Jeff’s family’s private beach. They walked single file at first. Then when they exited the narrow path, they allowed themselves to walk side by side—conscious of the boundaries of each other’s personal space, careful not to get too close, not to touch each other, even incidentally.

They carried their shoes in their hands, dangling them, swinging them beside themselves, and the sand felt cool and soothing beneath their feet. They made their way to the upper edge of the tide’s reach and let the water wash past them.

A poignant silence floated between them: the sense that they were together, feeling the same breeze, hearing the same rustling of the grass in the dunes, watching the same waves breaking in front of them, the same foamy water licking at their toes.

Carter nabbed a stick and flicked it into the water.

Jules poked at a bubbling hole in the wet sand where a crab was digging below the surface.

They gazed out at the sea. The lights of Miami glowed red to the north. The dark outlines of the keys loomed in the distance to the south.

They were both separately, silently thinking the same thoughts. That it was nice being out here under the stars. Peaceful. There was no one else on earth but them. Like all their problems were far, far away.

“You cold?” Carter asked.

Jules shook her head. She smiled.

“You gonna go in?” Jules said.

“Are you?”

She made a face. “I will if you do.”

“I don’t have my trunks,” he said.

She laughed—one sharp haw—and then she said, “Silly boy. There’s no one here. You don’t need trunks.”

“Ha,” Carter said. Then he saw she was serious, and he couldn’t help grinning. “Really?”

“Swimsuits just get in the way,” she said. “Isn’t it better to be unconstricted? To feel the water sliding on your skin?”

Behind them, the deck of Jeff’s house seemed far away, and with it all Carter’s worries about Lilah. It was dark now, abandoned. The party had dwindled. The only light came from the window of the rec room, and this was dim—probably Jeff and one or two of the guys watching Anchorman for the three hundredth time on the large-screen plasma mounted on the wall in there.

“I dare you,” she said.

Carter grinned. “Well, if you dare me, then—”

“I double dare you.”

Screw it. Carter dropped his shoes and stripped off his shorts and T-shirt. He hopped out of his boxers. He ran into the waves and dove under. He felt like he was at the top of a roller coaster. The car he was in had just tipped and it was about to race down the ramp toward the loop-di-loop, and his heart was leaping up into his throat.

Crouching to keep himself hidden in the water, he turned back and waved. Jules was laughing so hard that she’d doubled over. Her long, dark hair dangled almost to the ground. When she flipped herself back upright and pulled the hair away, he saw that she had an expression of absolute joy on her face.

He watched as she stepped out of her skirt and pulled her tank top over her head, folding each article of clothing carefully and placing it all in a neat pile.

God, she was beautiful.

When she went to unhook her bikini top, Carter politely looked away. He pretended to be suddenly fascinated by something floating in the water. When he heard her splashing toward him, he glanced up at her and caught a glimpse of her tan lines before she dove under.

She resurfaced in front of him, still giggling. “See?” she said. “Don’t you feel free?”

“Free as a bird,” he said. “Absolutely.”

They grinned at each other. They floated on their backs, staring up at the stars. They each in their own way were surprised by what was happening. And though they didn’t speak of it, they both maintained the illusion that what they were doing now was entirely innocent, that it could stay that way, if they were careful, and they’d get through this night having done nothing more than take a swim together.

There was something so liberating about it, though. Carter had almost forgotten it was possible to feel like this.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, he splashed water at Jules and ducked under and swam away.

When he resurfaced, he saw that she had an expression of mock shock on her face. “You know that means war,” she said.

They danced around each other, edging gradually closer and closer to each other, and then she sent a wallop of water in his direction. He slapped one back at her. Splash, splash, splash. They created a tsunami between them.

And then, the game got riskier. It accelerated. Someone had to win. Carter dove under and took her legs out from under her, flipping her. She spun and grabbed at his arm. They were, all of a sudden, grappling with each other, wrestling in the water. Touching. For the first time they were touching.

He felt like he was melting inside. Every time he went to push her under one more time, he lingered a little bit longer by her side, soaking in the slippery warmth of her skin. And he sensed she was doing the same thing when she went to take him down.

She bopped up right in front of him and somehow, he had his arms wrapped around her. He didn’t even realize how it had happened. He was holding her now. He could feel the dimples at the base of her back. She had her arms around him, too, her finger tracing lightly up and down his spine.

And then it was too late. Neither of them was quite sure who started it—maybe both of them did, maybe it just happened, but they were kissing now. Grazing lips. Playfully rubbing their noses against each other.

It felt so good. Their hands slipping around on each other’s soft skin. Something wild and beautiful was passing between them. Neither of them wanted to be the one to tame it.

Jules forced herself to pull back.

“If I let you keep kissing me, you’re going to end up hating me,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“You will. You’ll blame me for whatever happens with Lilah. I don’t want to be that girl.”

“You won’t be,” he said. “I promise.”

He kissed her again, this time harder, more deeply. He wanted to feel every inch of her skin, to get inside her skin, to shrink the distance between them until they melded into one person. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t remember ever desiring Lilah like he desired Jules right now, right here.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, each searching for an explanation to the mysterious emotions that had been unleashed in them.

And when they kissed again, whatever lines they’d been worried about crossing had been washed away by the tide. They couldn’t ignore what their bodies were telling them. She could feel his excitement pressing against her abdomen. Cupping the backs of Jules’s thighs with both of his hands, Carter lifted her halfway out of the water and pulled her tight to him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and they drank each other in.

6

The next morning, when the sun came streaming in through the ocean-facing glass wall of Jeff’s pool house, Carter woke up in a sweat. It was six a.m. The wind chime mounted above the sliding door was tinkling, and he was lying under a pale green sheet on the pool house’s futon, which had been pulled flat into bed mode.

He was naked, and next to him, Jules was naked, too—beautifully, lusciously naked. Seeing her there, her lips slightly open, her breasts rising and falling with each breath, a hook of tenderness tugged at his heart.

For a while he watched her sleep. He studied the way that the light played on her skin. She had a small tattoo of a dove on her shoulder. He hadn’t noticed it before. He lightly caressed her arm with his knuckle.

“Mmm.” She stirred. She turned onto her side and smiled at him without opening her eyes. “Hi.”

When she finally opened her eyes, she didn’t say anything. She just gazed at him, a pure, simple tenderness softening her face.

He leaned in to kiss her, brought his lips close to hers, but just before they touched, his mind clouded with thoughts of Lilah. Somehow, kissing Jules in the light of day felt very different from kissing her under the moonlight. It was like Lilah was watching them this time.

Pulling away, he sat up and blinked in the golden light of the sunrise as it streamed in through the glass wall of the pool house. He held the bridge of his nose between two fingers and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get his head around what he’d done. He’d never once cheated on Lilah before, and though he didn’t regret what had happened with Jules, it worried him that he didn’t know what it meant.

Gradually, though, she registered his anxiety. She pulled the sheet up to cover her chest. She leaned up on her elbows and studied the tension constricting the muscles of his tan back.

“We should get up. We need to get out of here,” he said in a voice pinched with worry.

Tugging lightly on his hand, she coaxed it away from his face and got him to look at her. They locked eyes briefly, and in his hazel irises, she could see the worries he’d shared with her the night before, while they’d been sitting on that porch, pressing their way back into his thoughts. She held his hand softly in her two hands, took it between her palms, and brought it to her mouth, kissing the meaty pad of his thumb.

“You’re thinking about what you’re going to tell Lilah,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay. I don’t expect you to all of a sudden be my boyfriend. I understand. You’ve been with her forever. I don’t want to be the girl who broke up the class couple.”

She meant this as a mild kind of joke, to put him at ease, but Carter flinched when she said it. “What do you mean?” he said.

Reluctantly, she let go of his hand. “Just let me know when you’re ready,” she said. “Maybe you never will be. I don’t know. It’s the chance we take. Like the I Ching, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve created a total mess, I know.”

“It takes two,” she said.

He’d tensed up—listening to something outside.

There was someone moving around by the pool. The rustles and metallic clankings of cans in a trash bag. They couldn’t see who it was—the pool-side wall of the house wasn’t made of glass like the ocean-side wall.

Before either of them had time to gather themselves, the doorknob turned and the door flew open. There was Jeff, hiding behind a pair of Ray-Bans, his short hair matted with bedhead. He was shirtless, barefoot, wearing only a bright yellow swimsuit festooned with blue palm trees.

Jules was up and slammed shut into the bathroom with her clothes before he could say, “Oh! Shit!”

Jeff’s trash bag full of empty beer cans fell to the floor. He lifted his Ray-Bans onto his forehead, and his bloodshot eyes bugged out of his head as he stared at Carter in disbelief.

“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

7

After Jules left, Carter sat with Jeff by the edge of the pool, dangling his legs in the cool, clear water.

“But, man. Lilah. She’s totally wound up already. Can you imagine how she’s going to react to this?” Carter asked. Part of him thought that the best thing to do at this particular moment would be to drown himself in the chlorinated water—at least then he wouldn’t have to face her.

“Just don’t tell her,” Jeff said. “I sure as hell am not going to say anything.”

Carter shook his head wearily. He resisted the urge to unload the secrets only he and Lilah knew about the depths of her depression after the swim-team blowup. Instead he cupped a handful of water and splashed it on his face, hoping this might help him think more clearly. “It’s not that simple,” he said.

“You’re eighteen years old, dude. These are your best years. You’re smart. You’re good-looking. Chicks are gonna be into you. And you know, that’s a good thing.” He punched Carter lightly on the arm. “I gotta hand it to you, though, bro. That Jules is way above your weight class. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I’d never believe you could bag someone like that. You know what I mean? Hot chicks are my thing. You’re the old married guy. But, yo, I guess not so much, huh?”

This was just like Jeff. He could be so crude sometimes. And even though Carter knew his friend was trying to be funny—playing his part as the freewheeling hedonist he thought he should be, and talking tough in a way he would never dare to act—he wasn’t in the mood for jokes right this moment.

“Come on, man,” he said. “I’m trying to be serious.”

Jeff sized him up for a few seconds, studied the misery clouding his face. “Okay, being serious,” he said. “Whatever happens, you’re going to live. I mean, you know that, right? Either you’ll stay with Lilah and try to forget about last night, or you’ll finally leave her and then you’ll be a free man. You want to know what I really think?”

Carter shrugged. “Sure.”

“I think maybe this could be a wake-up call for you. I’ve always thought you could do better than Lilah, if you weren’t so scared of trying.”

“I take it back,” Carter said. “I don’t think I do want to hear what you think.”

“I’m serious, dude. Sometimes I wonder if you even still like her. It’s not like the two of you are feeding your larger lives … you know what I mean? Except for last night—and look at how that worked out. When was the last time the two of you hung out in public together? Sometimes it seems like you’re just still with her because you’ve been dating her so long you don’t know how to do anything else.”

“That’s not fair,” said Carter. He was wishing he’d asked someone else for advice, but there was no one he trusted more than he trusted Jeff. And since Jeff had walked in on the scene of the crime …

“Whatever. I’m not trying to be a dick, Carter. I’m just saying.”

Carter slipped his hand into the water and waggled it around.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” said Jeff. “What we really should be talking about is your cover story.”

Jeff slid into the pool and swam out a couple yards. He doused his sunglasses and then put them on. Treading water, he turned to Carter and said, “The best lies are ones that keep close to the truth, so really, it’s simple. After Kaily and Teresa took Lilah home, you hung out with me and the guys. This actually happened—for a minute or two, anyway. If she double-checks with Reed or Andy or Carlos, they’ll back you up without even realizing that they’re supporting your alibi. So, you had a few beers. The guys left. Then you had a few more. And you figured you were too drunk to risk driving home. Cool?”

“Sure.”

“You and I stayed up watching old episodes of Futurama on Hulu. Piece of cake.”

Jeff was right. It was that simple. The complicated stuff was all inside Carter’s heart. He closed his eyes and felt the morning sun, warm on the backs of his eyelids. He was suddenly exhausted. He’d been up with Jules until four, at least. He’d barely slept at all the night before.

“Whaddya say, bro?”

Carter reluctantly nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” he said quietly.

“All right, cool,” said Jeff. Then, splashing a plume of water at Carter, he said, “I gotta say, though, man—you’re one lucky dog.”

Slowly lifting himself from the edge of the pool, Carter wandered back into the pool house and laid down on the unmade futon. He could smell Jules’s scent on the sheets—peaches and rosewater. He remembered his face buried in her hair the night before, breathing her in, gulping down these smells. Images from their hookup flooded his head—his hands running up her smooth legs, the devilishly playful expression on her face as they’d chased each other up the beach toward Jeff’s house, and then the warmth of her skin when he’d covered her body with his own. An enticing, lingering memory of the night before.

Was it possible that Jeff knew what he was talking about? That the problem wasn’t with what he’d done the night before, but with the fact that his love for Lilah was disappearing? And then what? What would happen to Lilah if he up and left her?

The possibility disturbed him. He imagined her spiraling into a depression like she had after the swim-team fiasco. Hurting herself, maybe seriously. It made him sick to his stomach.

In a sudden panic, he leaped up and stripped the bed, crumpling the sheets into a ball and stuffing them deep in the hamper in the bathroom.

Back on the futon, he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. If he could just somehow get back to sleep, maybe he’d wake up in a world where he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.

8

In the three and a half years they’d been together, Carter had never once neglected Lilah’s calls. Never once failed to return a text.

If only she hadn’t gotten drunk, if only she’d tried a little harder to enjoy Jeff’s party and not made such a spectacle of herself. She should have remembered how fragile things were in their relationship. She should have been more careful, more attentive, less selfish. She should have put Carter’s needs before her own.

She regretted every single thing she’d done, and her regret made her hate herself, and her self-hatred filled her with an uncontrollable need to hear Carter tell her that everything was okay.