Page 51 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FORTY-SEVEN

OVER THE COURSE OF the next few days, I focus on my chores because sitting with what happened is too hard. It only makes me obsess over what Vlaho and I did, what it meant, and what it could mean going forward. The pain of leaving things as they are, the pain it might cause if we don’t.

Different scenarios play on repeat in my head.

The one where Vlaho leaves his family for me and we ride off into the sunset.

The one where I discourage him from leaving his family, because I’m that good and self-sacrificing.

The one where he tells me that his children come first and I either concede or make a scene.

The one where what happened never gets mentioned again, and is instead swallowed by the oblivion of the coming years, until neither of us can be sure if it happened at all.

To spare myself these ruminations, early every morning I go swimming.

I swim so hard and so far from shore that sometimes I wonder if I’ll be able to return.

I need it, the exertion, the cleansing. On my way back, I let go of motion and just float there, allowing the sea to even the pressure between my body and the world.

When I come home, I make phone calls to try to get my dad into physical therapy. The right side of his body has drooped further lately and he’s been complaining of more pain. Getting help is, as always, a task of climbing up a rotten ladder with no stronghold.

I spend the afternoons and evenings with Asier.

He’s here for only a couple more days. I’m easy around him, a version of myself that isn’t entirely true, but that I wouldn’t mind being true.

If he sees a change in me after that night, he doesn’t mention it.

Or maybe, he ascribes it to the fact that we—the two of us—had sex that night, and so of course the dynamic has changed.

We take endless strolls around the old town, or go to dinner, or make love in his apartment.

It seems to me in those moments that I could go on like nothing happened.

That I could be the person I’d started out to be just half an hour before Vlaho dove into my life again.

There are glimmers of that person. If only I could hold on to them.

By the time I get home at night, I am exhausted and can only crash into bed. But sleep won’t come. Not until I take Vlaho’s T-shirt and hold it to my nose, to my chest.