Page 45 of High Season

THIRTY-FOUR

ONE WEEK BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Tamara and Josie eat the cake at the end of the driveway, hands sticky with icing, buttercream smears in the corners of their mouths.

“Sorry I didn’t get you a present,” Tamara says. “The cake was kind of a last-minute thing.”

“My mum actually came home moaning about the ridiculous stuff your family asked her to do at short notice.”

“She did not.”

“She didn’t mention any names, but—”

“It’s a masterpiece. Mittens would have loved it.”

Josie shovels a mouthful of cake into her mouth. Swallows.

“I actually did get you something,” she says.

“Seriously?”

She nods.

“Technically it’s what I got you last year. But I never got a chance to give it to you.”

She digs in her pocket and pulls out a small jewelry box.

“It’s nothing special or expensive or anything,” she says. “You probably have much nicer stuff at home. But I saw a place doing them, down by the beach, and I thought they were cool, and…”

She trails off as Tamara prizes open the jewelry box. Inside is a small, delicate pendant. A heart on a silver chain. J T inscribed against its surface. A tiny, delicate rendering of a tulip, their shared favorite flower.

“I thought it was kind of like a grown-up version of the friendship bracelet?” Josie says. “I got one for myself, too. I know yours broke years ago and—”

“I love it,” Tamara says.

She doesn’t tell Josie that she kept the heart from the broken friendship bracelet. That she strung it onto a gold chain. Still wears it, sometimes, beneath her clothes.

She snaps the jewelry box shut.

“Hey, Josie?” she says. “Do you want to go for that swim now?”

Up at the pink house, they pull the cover off the swimming pool, one at each side, rolling the weight of it back to expose the sheet of blue beneath.

“You know,” says Josie. “Me and Hannah broke in here before the season started to use the pool. Mum went nuts.”

Tamara lowers her hand into the water to check the temperature.

“You should break in more,” she says. “It’s crazy that this house sits here all year with no one using it.”

In the light of the pool, Josie looks beautiful. She is wearing a white one-piece borrowed from Tamara that glows iridescent in the light.

“How’s your diving these days?” Josie asks with a grin.

In response, Tamara crouches and executes a sloppy, half belly flop of a dive into the water. From the side, Josie mimes holding up a scorecard.

“Ten!” she says.

Tamara is laughing. Josie takes a running leap from the side, contorts her body in the air so that she performs the perfect swan dive into the water. When she surfaces, she’s beaming.

Tamara had almost forgotten that they could be like this.

Josie paddles toward her, and they lean back against the side of the pool, their shoulders submerged.

“I’ve missed this, you know,” Tamara says.

She only meant to think it, but then there it is. Out in the world between them. I miss you. Something close to I love you . Something close to I’ve thought about you every day, and I can’t tell you.

Close, but not quite.

Josie nods.

“I’ve missed this, too,” she says. “When did it all get so complicated?”

“I don’t know,” says Tamara.

But maybe she does know. Maybe, if she thinks about it, she can piece together how a thousand moments, a thousand things, made her and Josie drift apart.

How all the ease and simplicity of girlhood slipped into popularity contests, and who your parents were, and who you loved.

How the fact that Tamara went back to London every autumn started to feel awkward, a demonstration of the things Tamara had that Josie did not.

How, so slowly that neither of them had quite seen it coming, their early morning swims had begun to feel like an impossibility.

But mostly, it was Tamara’s feelings for Josie that had shifted, and Tamara who had pushed her best friend away. She had closed herself off to Josie, because it was the only way she knew how to deal with this new, unknown thing that had reared its head inside her.

“Hey, there’s a party on the beach in a couple of days,” Tamara says. “A bonfire thing. It’s going to be fun. You should come.”

Josie turns to look at her.

“You want me there?”

“Yeah,” Tamara says. “I want you there. I want more of this.”

A half breath passes between them, long enough for Tamara’s heart to skitter.

“Me too.”

Me too . Another thing that feels almost, but not quite, like everything Tamara wants to tell Josie.

A promise that perhaps Josie feels the same way, too.

In that moment, Tamara thinks about the morning swims, the secret birthdays. The years of loving Josie in a way that feels bigger than the way she has ever loved anyone else.

She sees how Josie is looking right at her now, her gaze holding steady, the silence and the stillness. Her mouth, still wet from her perfect dive. There is only a half inch of water between them.

Before Tamara can let herself think about what she is doing she is leaning in, closing the impossibly small gap between them.

Josie doesn’t move. Tamara sees the friendship bracelets.

That small, silver heart. The way that Josie is the only person who doesn’t see the bad twin who lurks inside Tamara, the only one who believes that there is some essential goodness within her.

Something that Tamara can almost believe herself, when the two of them are together. When Josie says her name.

There’s a strange, shocking moment when their lips meet. Their bodies, slippery with water, their stomachs pressed together. Tamara, easing Josie’s mouth open. The unexpected flicker of her tongue.

Then, Josie’s hands, pressing against Tamara’s arms. The gentle firmness as she pulls away.

“Tamara,” she is saying.

She’s still so close that Tamara can feel the heat of her breath.

“Tamara,” Josie says. “I’m not… sorry.”

And just like that, Tamara’s world falls down around her.

She draws back. Josie looks almost pained, blinking water out of her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she is saying.

Tamara feels too hot all of a sudden, in spite of her soaked-through skin.

“You’re not what?”

Josie sounds almost apologetic.

“Well. You know. I’m straight.”

“Yeah, me too.” Tamara can hear the defensiveness in her voice.

Josie frowns.

“Then why did you…”

“Because,” Tamara cuts across her. “I thought it’d be funny. I wanted to see how you’d react.”

There’s a pause. A silence as Tamara feels her lie fill up the space between them.

“Tamara,” Josie says. “It’s OK if you’re…”

“I’m not.”

Tamara won’t let her say it. She won’t. She can’t stand hearing her secret spoken out loud. She doesn’t want the impossibility of Josie feeling the same way confirmed.

“I’m not,” she says again, more clearly. “Alright? God. Why are you getting so weird and uptight about it? Girls kiss girls all the time, it doesn’t mean that they’re…”

She can’t say it either. The part of her that she’s been afraid of for almost as long as she remembers.

The part of her that flinches every time one of her friends makes a joke, or one of the boys in their group talks about lesbian porn, as if the whole idea of women desiring other women only existed for their pleasure.

Every time someone says that’s so gay , like it’s the worst thing that something can be.

Every time Harrison comments on a news story about campaigns for civil partnerships or adoptions for same-sex couples, sneering, It’s not that I’m against them, it’s just that they don’t need to be so in everyone’s face about it . Every time her mother agrees with him.

“I’m not being weird about it,” Josie says. “I’m just saying that it’s OK if you are.”

That’s when something in Tamara snaps. When her arms fly up, push hard against Josie’s shoulders so that the other girl staggers backward, almost loses her footing against the slippery tiles.

“I’m not though,” Tamara says, her voice tight, her jaw clenched. “So can you just fucking leave it ?”

Josie blinks at her, taken aback.

“What is wrong with you?”

The words hit Tamara like a physical blow. There it is, the truth. There is something wrong with her. She is the bad twin, with all the darkness inside of her, no matter how hard she tries to push it down.

“What’s wrong with you ?” Tamara says.

Before she knows it, she’s grasped hold of Josie, pushing harder this time.

Josie flails and falls back, her head beneath the surface.

In that moment, Tamara wants to hurt her.

But more than that, she wants to hurt herself.

She wants to claw out the part of herself that is in love with Josie Jackson.

She wants to hold it under the water until there is no oxygen left to feed it.

Josie surfaces, gasping, blinking water out of her eyes.

“What are you doing ?” she says, furious. “What is your problem?”

There’s a blaze in her eyes now, an anger. A disgust. Yes, Tamara thinks. This is what she deserves. If Josie is not going to love her, then maybe she should hate her. There’s an exquisite kind of pain in how she looks at Tamara.

“Tammy.”

A tiny, scared voice from the side of the pool that makes them both stop.

“Tammy, why are you fighting with Josie?”

Nina is standing in a pair of pink pajamas, her hair in pigtails, wide-eyed. Her mouth is open in a small o, threatening tears. She kneads the hem of her top worriedly.

Tamara sees the scene for what it is then. She and Josie, squared up against each other in the water. The tender moment gone, replaced by tension and rage.

“Oh, baby,” Tamara says. “We’re not fighting.”

She paddles to the side of the pool and hauls herself out.

Picks up her little sister and pulls her into a hug.

She and Blake had been horrified when their mother had told them she was pregnant six years ago, but Tamara has never managed to hate Nina the way she thought she would.

Nina, who, ever since the day that she was born, has always seemed like something good and pure and right amidst the Draytons’ chaos.

“Were you scared?” she says.

Nina nods.

“We were just playing,” Tamara says, her voice singsong. “We were just playing.”

She is dripping on the side of the pool. Soaking Nina’s dress. She doesn’t care.

“Come on, baby girl,” she says. “Let’s go inside.”

And with her heart beating too fast in her chest, Tamara walks away from the swimming pool. She leaves Josie Jackson there, staring at them. Watching them go.