“Is it drugs?” I have to know.
He recoils as if I slapped him. “If that’s what you think, you don’t know me at all.”
“I didn’t think you would do that, not after…” I let my sentence trail off. “But I had to ask. You must know how it looks—so much money, and you’re only twenty-four.”
“It looks like I’m a rich guy enjoying himself. Just like everyone else in your life now.” He cracks the caps off two glass bottles of sparkling water and holds one out to me. “A toast. To the unexpected.”
The clink of the glass rings through me like a bell, and the bubbles fizz inside me long after the sip. Or maybe the fizz is just me feeling unsettled, uncertain how I should respond to the enormity of the gesture he’s made by moving here, buying this house to be near me. Arranging this outing, this lunch, for me.
He’s so smooth now, so studied and controlled in his manners and movements. Even soaked with the rain, he looks handsome and elegant, with drops beading in his hair and a wet gleam along his cheekbones and the line of his neck.
Eight years, and he feels so different. So far away from the friend I loved.
I want to shake him out of this carefully constructed new self and rile him up a little. But before I can think how to do that, a shaft of rose-gold sunlight bedazzles the air between us. Outside the pavilion, the clouds are breaking into fragments.
“Let’s take some food and go out on the boat for a while,” says Jay. “Before it gets too bright.”
“It’s already too bright for me,” complains Cody. He takes out a pair of sunglasses and recoils from the incoming shafts of light as if they’re lasers.
“You could use some vitamin D, precious.” Nick catches Cody’s hand and tows him into the sunlight. Cody winces, but he doesn’t protest.
“Just for a little while,” Jay assures him.
With sandwiches, chips, and wine in hand, we climb onto the boat. I can’t imagine better weather—delicate veils of sunlight sifting through clouds, jeweling the lake’s surface. The rain washed away some of the humidity, and the air has a fresh, clean scent that makes me want to inhale it right down to my toes. Cody steers the boat, picking up speed until the sheer pleasure of wind rushing over my skin makes me laugh out loud.
Jay stands beside me and points across the water. “See that house over there? It’s owned by a client of mine. She and her wife have Jet Skis, and they told me I can borrow them whenever. We can try them out sometime if you want. Or I can buy a couple.” His hand curls around the railing so tightly his knuckles whiten. “Have you ever water-skied? I tried that about a year ago. Not as fun as it sounds, but if you want to give it a shot, I can make it happen.”
He still talks a lot when he’s nervous. I remember long streams of conversation uncoiling from him after nasty incidents with his parents or trouble at school. I would sit and listen, patting his hand until he was done and could breathe again. We have years of long conversations woven between us. Followed by eight years of silence.
But he still chatters like he did then, and a tremulous delight wakes in my heart, because I still know him.
I slip my hand over his, my fingers finding the notches between his knuckles and settling there. Jay stares at our hands, a flush coloring his cheeks.
Feeling self-conscious, I pull my hand back and start messing with my bracelet instead.
“You don’t have to bribe me with Jet Skis,” I tell him. “I’m happy to see you. And I’d like to spend time with you.”
“I’m having another party this weekend,” he offers. “A Met Gala theme. Dramatic costumes encouraged.”
“You don’t strike me as the dramatic-costume type.”
“It was Cody’s idea.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I glance back at Cody, who’s currently gaping at Nick, who has taken his shirt off for no apparent reason.
“If you come to the party, I can show you around my house,” Jay says eagerly.
“Fine, twist my arm.” I nudge his elbow with mine. “I’ll see if Jordan wants to come, too.”
“If she’s feeling up to it,” he says, and then bites his lip and turns away as if he’s said something he shouldn’t.
His discomfort unsettles me, and I pluck nervously at the clasp of my bracelet. “Why wouldn’t she feel up to it? Is she sick?”
“Not yet, but she might be soon. You know, big parties, lots of germs…circulating…um…”
“Shit!” I exclaim as the bracelet finally gives way to my fiddling, snaps open, and drops from my wrist.
“I’ll get it!” Jay sounds almost excited, or relieved. He shucks off his shirt, hoists himself over the railing, and plunges into the lake.
I squeal in shock, and Cody halts the boat.
“Jay Gatsby, you idiot!” I yell at the rippling surface.
Pretty sure this isn’t just about the bracelet. Something I said made him so uncomfortable he’d rather jump into a lake than stay on the boat another second. I’m tempted to try to figure out what it was, but I’m distracted because the ripples are fading, the water going still where it closed over Jay’s head.
A long minute passes. Then another.
“Maybe he hit his head.” I glance back at Nick and Cody. “Should one of us go in after him?”
“He’s fine,” Cody says carelessly.
Another minute passes.
Nick is looking very worried, but Cody only seems concerned about tucking every part of himself under the scant awning, the only scrap of shade on the boat. I guess I’ll have to do the honors. I’m not about to lose my best friend right after getting him back.
Frantically I strip my sandals off, swing my legs over the railing, and launch myself into the water.
The surface shatters under me, then wraps itself over my head, burying me in lake water much deeper and murkier than I expected. I can’t see Jay anywhere, not with the cloudy detritus stinging my eyes. He’s been under for three minutes. How could he hold his breath that long? What if he drowns down here while I’m muddling through the dark?
