Page 32 of On Dry Land

I reach for the jacket, for a moment forgetting whose it is. It’s in my hand, and I’m looking back over my shoulder at Spencer when I remember. He’s watching me, shoulders and arms back under the water, the lights from below shimmering up and sparkling on his skin. If I were able to trust my own intuition about people, I’d say the look in his eyes is soft and intimate, trusting. Because I cannot trust myself, or Spencer, I place the coat gently back where I found it and step away.

“Sorry,” I tell him. This is the man whose eyes scan a room when he walks in, picking out all the exits. The man who remained zipped up tight the first few days he was here, fully clothed in physical and metaphorical armor. He is the man who very explicitly asked me not to touch him or his things. I have, apparently, become so used to the growing ease between us that I’ve forgotten his rules as well as my own. Another reason it’s time to evict him and send him away.

“That’s okay,” he replies after the silence stretches and warps between us, solidifying slowly. He swims a little closer, curling his fingers around the lip of the pool. “Left pocket. Could you hand me the towel, too? So I can wipe my hands.”

I start with that, passing the folded towel over and turning my back. I am so adept at never letting the outside world affect my inside one, practiced in keeping everyone and everything on the exterior of my boundaries, and myself protected inside. I am alone, and this is how I prefer it. I zip up the pocket after slipping out a bruised and battered cell phone, turning and silently handing it to Spencer. His fingers brush mine as he reaches a scarred hand to accept it, face tilted upward and brown eyes on mine. Not so alone after all, I realize, stomach plummeting to my toes. It would appear that Spencer walked right through a door I’d thought was closed and locked years ago and am only just now realizing was slightly ajar.

“Thanks,” he says now, awkwardly holding his phone far enough away from the pool that it wouldn’t hit the water if he were to drop it. I wait, fighting against the conflicting urges to tell him to get out and leave and the desire to ask him to stay.

Spencer chews thoughtlessly on the corner of his lip as he taps on the screen. Finally, he lifts it up in my direction and smiles a small, uncertain smile.

“Take a seat and hit Play,” he instructs. I can feel the press of his gaze on my back as I reclaim my lounger, this time stretching out and reclining instead of sitting propped up on the edge. Who do I think I am fooling anyway; I’m not going back inside.

Spencer floats idly around the pool like a jellyfish as I watch, volume raised enough for me to hear it over the ambient noise of the yard. The video opens on an image of a dirty, bearded man with flat eyes that looks so different than the Spencer bobbing around my pool that it feels shocking. It’s hard to pay attention to anything beyond the sunken cheeks and scraggly hair, and I almost miss the moment the vlog is spliced and a new, familiar setting is introduced. There’s a sharp pain, low in my stomach, as I watch Spencer—still dirty and unkempt, but with a smile behind the beard that knocks a full five years off his age—take a bite of a sandwich. Not really a sandwich, actually, since it’s nothing but lobster pressed between two slices of bread. He looks so happy, it’s almost hard to watch. I had put no thought into what food to bring him other than what would be easy to make, and there he is, acting as though I’d handed him a steak dinner. And then it’s the following day, and suddenly, we’re brought into the present with Spencer showered and shaved and perhaps no less haunted-looking in the eyes, but certainly more alive than he’d appeared in the footage just five minutes prior.

I can’t help but lose interest as the video begins to be less of Spencer and more of myself. He has carefully edited the view of my boat, I notice, cutting all shots that show her name. My name, too, is noticeably absent, even though I remember him using it several times during the course of the afternoon. It’s charming, this attempt to maintain my anonymity, and I find I appreciate it, even though I hadn’t been worried about it. We’re a fishing town, settled along a coast of many more fishing towns. Anyone from around here would recognize both me and my boat by this alone.

I watch the full thirty-two-minute-and-fifty-seven-second vlog, aware of the chill in the air and the soft sounds of the pool water lapping against the edges as Spencer swims. When I look up, he’s facing me, arms pulling him backward through the water, legs drifting upward. He smiles cautiously.

“I knew you would barricade the door,” I tell him. He tips his head back into the water, face to the sky, lips parting as the smile widens.

“Still am,” he admits.

“I could come through the window.”

“With those shoulders? Please.” He scoffs.

“This is good,” I tell him, lifting the phone into the air. He adjusts his stroke, feet falling languidly to the bottom of the pool, and swims toward me, once more resting his arms on the edge.

“Thanks. You’re sure you don’t mind being in it? I can blur your face out and distort your voice if you’d like.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Nobody will care who I am, Spencer. All I did was tie knots.” And say his name approximately two dozen times, apparently. I hadn’t realized until now.

“Oh, people will definitely care.” He chuckles softly, propping his chin on his crossed arms. Already, they’re pebbled with cold, hair standing up as the cool temperatures react to the water on his skin. “You look like an L.L. Bean model.”

“That sweater is Gucci, Spencer,” I correct, making him snort out another adorably unattractive laugh. Rising, I return the phone to his jacket and retake my seat.

“I’ll probably post it tomorrow. Maybe the day after. There are a few spots I need to clean up before it’s perfect. Or, well, as close to perfect as it can be.” He shrugs.

It didn’t seem to need any cleaning up to me, but I know nothing of vlogging and so keep my opinion to myself. I so rarely engage in small talk with people, it takes me a few seconds to even think of something to say.

“Did you film work this week?” I ask. Spencer shakes his head and then yawns.

“No. All I did at the clinic was fill out paperwork and watch these onboarding videos that looked like they were made in the eighties.” I pinch my lips together to keep from smiling. I’m fairly certain Rudy was born in the eighties as well. “I might ask him if I can film this coming week, but I don’t know. I don’t really want to run the risk of catching a panic attack. The world doesn’t need video footage of that.”

“You still have panic attacks?” I ask, surprised. I don’t imagine Caring Claws is going to be the type of caring environment it’s meant to be if he’s frightened every time he walks through the door.

“No. I just… I actually got chased by a dog a couple weeks ago in Massachusetts. It’s like dog behavior one-oh-one to not run away when one comes at you, but I panicked and just”—he holds a hand up and swipes it through the air—“ran for it. And when I finally stopped running, I made it even harder to breathe by having the first panic attack I’ve had in, oh, a year and a half? So now I’m worried I’ll slip back into old habits.”

I hardly think a trauma-induced fear response is a habit, but I understand what he means. He continues before I can think of a reply.

“But I was fine the three days I was there this week, and I’ll be fine every day in the future.” He sounds determined to make it so, which is something I can appreciate. I, too, work hard to always be fine.

Spencer dips his head under the water and uses his arms to push himself to the bottom, which I take as him wanting this particular conversation to be over. Tipping my head back, I look at the slowly darkening sky. It’s almost too cold to be sitting out here now, and certainly ridiculous to be doing so when there is a perfectly warm house not more than five feet behind me. Spencer is going to freeze the moment he gets out of the pool.

“Game tonight?” he asks when his head is back above water. I look at him.

“Many.”