Page 55 of Catcher's Lock

The sound is almost subaudible, a rush of breath roughly swallowed before it betrays its meaning. I lift my head in time to catch a glimpse of Josha’s stricken face before he whirls back into the room across the hall and shuts the door.

Fuck.

“Hey.” I cross the hall and rap lightly on the door as Rachael disappears down the stairs. Josha doesn’t answer. “It’s not what it looks like. She just…”came into my room to offer me drugs? Wants me to charm you out of your shitty mood because she doesn’t know I’m the reason for it?

Realizing there’s no explanation where I’m not an asshole, I drop my head against the door with a thunk. “Rocket?”

“Go put some clothes on, Gem.”

Right. I glance down at my naked body. Shower. Clothes. Maybe a little of Rachael’s coke. And then I can pretend to be okay for a few hours and try to salvage enough of this day to put a smile on my boy’s face.

“Don’t leave without me. I’m coming with you to the river today.”

My “infamous Farrel charm” is failing spectacularly.

After dragging an ungodly amount of crap down to the narrow beach—camp chairs and towels and the girls’ huge beach bags and a cooler stuffed with tallboys and six flavors of White Claw—I spend an awkward half hour listening to Rachael dissect every guy in sight between the age of twenty and forty-five. My hair-of-the-dog approach to the hangover is losing to the jittery cocaine high, and it takes three beers before I stop feeling like I need to sneak off and hurl in the bushes.

Hannah and her boyfriend abandon us immediately, opting for a PG-13 make-out session involving a lot of laughing and a pink inflatable inner tube they commandeer from the nearby parents of a napping toddler.

Josha hasn’t looked at me since we left the cabin. He’s nursing his drink—a Black Cherry White Claw that I’m not sure is meant to be a statement or an actual preference—and making sarcastic replies to Rachael’s running commentary.

“He’s carryingthreechildren. The one on his back is at least twelve years old.”

“Single dads are hot.”

“His wife is literally right there.”

Andtwo minutes later:

“Pretty sure the fact that he’s kissing another guy means you’re not his type, Rach.”

“You don’t know that. They could be bi. Maybe they’re into some MMF.”

“Jesus.” Josha tosses his can back in the cooler and gets to his feet. “I’m going for a swim.”

“What the fuck is MMF?” I ask, watching him wade into the water past a trio of giggling teenage girls. I don’t know why we had to pick such a crowded beach.

“A threesome with sword crossing.” Rachael arches her eyebrows. “You’ve seriously never tried it?”

“Why would I—you know what? Never mind. I’m gonna go find Josha.”

“Good idea. It is what I’m paying you for, after all.”

“You’re not paying me.”

“So I can have my shit back, then?” She holds out her hand, peering at me over her sunglasses. Rolling my eyes, I dig the little baggie out of the pocket of my swim trunks and toss it on the coarse sand between her painted toes.

The river, mostly snowmelt off the Sierras at this time of year, is cold enough to pebble my nipples and send my balls ducking for cover, but I know from experience that the best thing to do is dive in and get it over with.

How long has it been since I lived somewhere I didn’t need a 3mm wetsuit to swim without catching hypothermia?

I come up gasping, blinking water from my eyes and squinting into the sun.

There.

Josha has wisely abandoned the water and is perched twenty yards downriver on a sloping slab of granite away from the shrieking, splashing crowd of college kids and families. He hasn’t seen me yet—or he’s pretending—so I have time to studyhim as I approach, soaking up all the little details I missed last night in my fog of misery.

He’s taller. Over six feet now, while I’ve topped out at five-foot ten. And though he’s still lanky, traces of the boy he was lingering in the narrow wrists and slim waist, he no longer looks like he’s outgrowing his skin. In profile, I can see the man he’s becoming in the faint copper stubble along his jaw and the proud, clean line of his shoulders.