Hold Me Under

by Riley Nash

I like the idea of fate, a world with rules where everything happens just the way it’s supposed to.

‘do gay penguins know they’re gay’. (Answer: inconclusive.)

An anonymous black car with an anonymous driver delivers me to an anonymous security guard at the back door of a luxury hotel in downtown Seattle, like I’m a package of drugs in a crime thriller.

As the mics cut out, Ethan leans in and puts an arm around me, like any doting boyfriend would. As I turn and rest my forehead against his, I can see the smug grin playing on his mouth, the defiance in his eyes. “You’re dead.” I tell him with a smile, squeezing his shoulder. He stands up, brushing himself off. “I’m out of here. I hope the rest of your life is hell.”

I wish, as I disappear into the darkness, that I didn’t live in a world where the only way not to hurt was to shut everything out and live among your dreams.

I do have motherfucking questions. What’s a standard safety feature? How hard would it be for another passenger to throw me out of the plane mid-flight?

When I open my eyes, Victor’s sprawled sideways in his chair, headphones pushed off one ear, watching me with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. It just gets bigger when I point a middle finger in his direction. “Did you know sometimes they find wrenches and missing screws flying around the engine compartment?” he offers helpfully.

There’s a pause so long I think he left. “This is about the cookies, isn’t it?” He sounds weirdly proud, like he came up with an insightful observation. He has the emotional intelligence of a piece of tree bark. “They have cookies in Italy, you know.”

I want to know if being hurt by someone who hates you makes cleaner, sharper wounds than the hideous scars love leaves behind.

Maybe fate is recursive—the mention of fate can, itself, be fate, signposting the steps our unlikely journeys take through the universe. Or maybe fate is a word people invoke to manipulate those who are desperate for meaning.

I just needed to make sure you’d stay here, between me and the door. And I don’t know any other way to ask.

But you don’t leave. You pull back the sheet and climb in next to me. No one ever comes back for me. Until you.

“I never asked for this body, the things it needs. I never consented to it. And of all the exquisite fucking hells I’ve known, this sexuality has been at the heart of the very worst.”

He walks a little way down the street as I tap Gray’s number in my contacts. I’m kind of relieved when his phone kicks me to voicemail. “I’m babysitting your child,” I inform him. “I’ll return him tomorrow. He fusses all the time, but I’ve managed to entertain him.”

“I’ve been fucked more times than I could ever remember. I’ve been used, passed around.” He swallows. “But deep down, you think that no one in this world can give it to me the way you can. You think you know how to fix me, how to make me as good as you.” His finger brushes my bulge, trails along it as the corner of his mouth turns up. “You’re gonna have to prove it, because I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care how any other asshole fucked you, Victor Lang. If I’m going to do this, I’m gonna do it my way.”

I haven’t cried in ten years. I’m never going to cry again. “Stop.” Rolling onto my back, I push him away. “Calm down. We’re a couple of lost causes that fuck each other, not lovers from some regency romance you keep under your pillow at home.”

Victor, shut up

“Let me make this very clear.” Standing between his knees, I grab his hair and tip his face back, jabbing his throat with my other finger between every word. “I. Do. Not. Love. You. I will never love you.” “Cool,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “Because I pity any fool that thinks it’s a good idea to fall in love with you.”

“If you so much as think the word ‘love’, I will take you back out on that yacht and hold you under the water myself.”

Love has borders, limitations. A million movies and a billion books have charted its course. We chase it because we already know how it makes us feel, and once you’re in love, your only choice is to fall back out of it again.

He looks so happy it kills me. “I was put on this earth to ruin your life,” he breathes in my ear. “Fucking right.”

“I’ll be the sexy receptionist at your clinic. And secretly, I’ll be your sugar daddy who pays all the bills because you’re a fucking soft touch that just wants to cuddle strays.”