cares that you are shivering? That your heart is overloaded, shutting down? If you die now, you die in joy. His hands were possessive and sure on her breasts; by now he knew their curves. Under the waves, he tugged aside her swimsuit and slid a finger inside her. Hard, familiar. Lightning striking the sea. A wave hit them and she came up spluttering and started for shore.
They made it to the car, barely. Bodies wet, towels thrown in heaps in the trunk, wetsuit slung down to his hips, board strapped haphazardly to the roof, inviting a ticket. Sand fell from her feet to the carpet and stuck there. It would be there for months. She liked that idea.
“Drive,” she said.
Theo drove until they found an abandoned fire road, ankle-deep in weeds and lined with leaning eucalyptus. He crashed open the door to get out and she climbed over the center console and into the backseat. She took off her swimsuit and waited while he peeled off his wetsuit outside the door. Every part of her shaking, every cell banging against each other for release. He crawled in over her, his long body contorting to fit into the cramped space. Something bit her beneath the knee: a toy princess, her tiara dented beneath their weight.
Theo ran his hands over her breasts, between her legs, and she was wet so he slid into her without any elaboration. When he did she mouthed, Thank God, or maybe she shouted it, who could tell, what did it matter, every inch of that car was theirs theirs theirs. She cried out and only Theo and the woods heard it, only the ancient trees nodding to one another: Them again. Those fools.
* * *
“Are you awake?”
“Barely. I might be dead.”
Her heart winging up and down, like an injured bird.
“I like you, Kate Aitken.”
“You’re okay.” Flap, flap. “I don’t know about surfing.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“I did. But I’m not very good at it.”
“You have to do it more to get the hang of it.”
“Mmm, do I.”
“Ha, ha.”
They turned so they were lying on their sides on the narrow backseat. Bent knees, bent elbows, wrapped around each other. Sweat dried on their bodies and made their skin tacky. Her mind felt clearer than it had in days. The sex had briefly quieted her wildness, the rippling and shuddering. Even the idea of Miranda, of Jake, seemed to exist at a muted distance from her and Theo.
“I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Okay.” He drew a finger down her arm. “What is it?”
They were too close for her eyes to focus; his face was only a tan blur. She twisted her head to look up at the car’s ceiling instead.
“When I told you why I left the newspaper, I didn’t tell you the whole story. I mean—I did. In a way. This isn’t about Leonard. But I told you it was more complicated than that, them firing me.”
“I remember,” he said.
“After I reported Leonard—things got really messy. Half the office wouldn’t talk to me. Even some of the women. Everyone liked him a lot. He had won some mentorship awards. People started doing these tiny little things. Like if I came back to my desk, they would have changed the height of my chair. Or they’d mix up my files. Or they refused to meet with me alone. It made me so tired. Going to HR about it would make it worse. But I thought if I just put my head down and worked I could get through it. I had been there so long already. I started staying later at the office. Getting there earlier.” Kate began picking at her cuticles. It was hard to look at him. “For a couple weeks, maybe a month or two, I was so productive. I would stay at the office until midnight, one in the morning, even when everyone else left at six p.m. But I wasn’t tired at all, and even when I went home I couldn’t sleep.”
All through January and February, a tingling feeling had striped her entire body. The world was crisper, more vibrant. Colors fell off trees. Skyscrapers seemed to vibrate around her as she charged down the sidewalk to work. Smells were intense: urine-soaked subway platforms, rotting trash, clouds of June rising from the out-of-season tulips parked in furled bunches in the bodega’s doorway. Her body felt like it was skipping, skipping, skipping, like she had swallowed five cups of coffee in a row,