Page 36 of All That Remains
"There's nothin’ you can teach me that the instructors haven't already, yeah? It's useless, man. Just forget about it."
I lay across the bed beside him, the opposite way. "Well, we have to do something, alright? We can't just give up, y'know? That's what they want uz to do. What if your life depended on it?"
"On us winnin’?"
"On youswimming, ya knob!"
He sat up and looked down at me like I had a point. He was tired though. His eyes always got dim and heavy this time of evening.
"Um, well I suppose I'd be fucked then, right?"
"Only if you give up and accept it."
"Then what do you want me to do, bro?" he smirked, humoring me like a petulant child.
"I say we go downstairs, find my old floaties, then tomorrow before we start filming, you and I go out and start from scratch."
He let out atehehesort of snicker, burying his face in the mattress. It was ridiculously adorable. I slapped his bum and started out the door.
"C’mon!"
“Where we goin’?”
“The cellar!”
"Why don't you go alone, bro, since you know so much?" He propped onto his elbows.
"You’re coming with me!"
"You scared or somethin'?"
"No..."
"Rafe..."
"Alright, look...there's bugs down there, and it's really dark since the sun's setting. I just need you to come with, ok?"
The cellar was as large as the house and filled with old furniture. Suits hung about and looked like great men towering in the shadows. The entire place had the off-putting smell of a thrift shop, peppered with decades-old mildew. My dad had made narrow aisles to pass through to the opposite end of the house where things were a bit more orderly.
As we made our way through piles of old newsletters and boxes stacked as high as the ceiling, Rome grabbed ahold of my shirttail. Instinctively, I reached back and held his hand a little. No sense getting lost on this mission. He stroked my fingersabsently, and instead of setting my nerves at ease, it made them feel frenzied.
Pushing forward through total darkness was frightening, but proved far less alarming than the heat swirling around my belly, elicited by his touch. A touch he probably didn't think twice about, which I was now obsessing over. He drew so much out of me without thought, and I couldn't help but wonder if I was capable of drawing anything out of him.
Halting beneath an unclad light fixture, my fingers slipped from within his, leaving me cold all over. When I pulled the cord, nothing happened. Not a single spark of electricity to illuminate the next few feet. That meant we had to make our way to the second fixture as the shadows deepened.
"You good?" Rome whispered, noticing I’d slowed.
"All good," I whispered back, trying to recall where the second switch was from memory. I could barely see my hand when I waved it before my face, but sensing his pressure behind—listening to him breathe—was reassuring.
"Got it!" I triumphed, pulling the chain. A weak light filtered throughout the next few feet, right to the threshold we calledthe courtyard. There, the cellar opened into what looked like a town square tiled in red. It used to be a bar, and the stools still lined the outer side of the bar-top in cracked leather upholstery.
"Sickkk!" Rome laughed, slipping behind the counter and searching through the old glassware. I heard him popping the top off an empty decanter while I rummaged. Then I heard him sneeze a few times as he kicked up dust. After the third sneeze, I gave up blessing him and told him to get from over there. He joined me at the boxes and we carefully took them down one at a time, searching for any sort of flotation device. There were heaps of old postcards and Polaroids in each box, and when Rome found a camera, he watched me through the viewfinder with his signature half-grin.
"Can't believe he keeps all this stuff," I muttered, sitting in the center of the square with a box of old photo albums.
"Where's it from?" he kneeled on the floor across from me, rummaging without relent.
"Trips from his childhood. Stuff from his family and old jobs. This place used to belong to his father—"
