Even Lovers Drown

The host rambled on, recounting another story about some celebrity entering rehab for the millionth time. Silly gossip in the package of an attractive female meant to increase viewership. Saylor wouldn't have settled on the program, found no interest in delving into other people's lives, but Davy insisted. For the sake of informing Andy of any Say Goodbye mentionings, good or bad. Allegedly. He was far too engrossed in the program to claim such a noble cause.

Saylor wasn't paying much attention to his offhand remarks about why each celebrity mentioned was a jerk in person and deserved a little slandering. Karmic vengeance couldn't quite claim her attention.

"Did Blake wear glasses in high school?" Saylor asked, disrupting the female host's vague description of another celebrity's "strange" sex life.

She knew kinkier people.

Davy drew his eyes from the fascinating television and met hers, expression blank. He didn't say anything. If he had a response to her question, which she assumed he did since he attended the same high school as Blake, he kept it to himself. Maybe, she should have waited till the commercial break to start throwing questions about Blake at him. Her interruption didn't appear welcomed. Or he may have been startled by her sudden need to speak, not irritated she was distracting him from the show. Either way, she felt she should have waited.

But she had waited long enough. Almost an hour. Since Sage announced Blake's high school label. Saylor had filled the time twisting images of Blake in her head, trying to figure out how she fit into the nerd persona, and she came up with plenty.

She just needed a little help forming an accurate image. More out of curiosity than anything else. Really, what else would she get out of knowing what Blake looked like as a nerd?

Other than the urge to violate her.

But Blake wasn’t a nerd anymore. She had grown up, and, while she may have kept some of the personality flaws, she couldn’t be corrupted. She’d done that enough on her own, Saylor was sure. She was hardly innocent.

And Saylor still ached to know, needed to know, an urge she couldn’t explain.

Finally, Davy spoke, “She can't contribute her genes to your future pregnant belly.”

The statement distracted her thoughts, stirred the determined waters of her mind. Placing a hand on her stomach, she glanced down at the flat, baby-less stretch of skin then looked back at Davy.

“Do you really think I'd be the one carrying the baby?”

Pregnancy. This was a new, intriguing topic to spend idle hours contemplating, one she never had a reason to think about before. Katie never wanted kids or never expressed a desire to have them. If Saylor had ever thought about having kids, they were more tools she imagined would end her abuse and make Katie love her.

“Can you picture Blake pregnant?”

“No.”

She hadn’t exactly taken the time to think about it.

“There's your answer.”

She hummed an unintelligible response, fanciful scenes of pregnancy flitting through her head. Her stomach swollen, Blake laying a proud hand on it—as if her sexual fluids caused the baby hidden within—hormones sending her through fits of unbalanced emotions cured only by Blake satisfying her strange food cravings, and childbirth. Not as a means to end pain but just for the sake of having children.

She wanted kids.

Did Blake want kids?

She pushed the thought from her mind. No point in obsessing over it when they hadn’t made a commitment to one another. She was still learning what lay beneath each of Blake’s well-placed layers, and the topic of pregnancy was distracting her.

“So did she wear glasses?” Saylor asked, returning to her original topic of interest.

Davy took a lazy bite of ice-cream. “Didn't we just establish your baby will be unaffected?”

“I'm not worried about the eyesight of our nonexistent child. I'm trying to picture Blake as a nerd.”

Shock relaxed his features, his lips parted, his emerald eyes widened. Not the same shock Saylor experienced over Sage’s statement, the shock of Blake being labeled a nerd, but shock that she had been told.

“Blake told you?” he asked.

“Sage told me.”

Shocked expression tightening into a scowl, he grumbled, “Blabber mouth.”

Clearly, Sage had been sworn to the same secrecy that kept Davy from revealing any information about a gentler, less confident Blake. For what ridiculous reason the promise had been made, Saylor wasn’t sure. Being a nerd in high school was hardly damning. After all, high school didn’t last forever and the classification of nerd wasn’t the worst she had heard.

“I don't think Blake wanted me to know,” Saylor said.

Fear had read so vibrant on Blake’s face the moment Sage uttered those words. Over Saylor being told she had been a nerd. This was serious to Blake. Her own past caused her the same pain Saylor felt over allowing herself to remain in an abusive relationship.

“Probably not.” Davy shrugged. “It’s not something Blake likes to talk about.”

“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.”

“It’s not. What happened to her was a big deal. She relates it to being a nerd.”

“But being a nerd had nothing to do with what happened?”

What she wanted to know was what happened to Blake. Some bullying, of course. High school students weren’t the nicest people in the world. But what could they have done to cause Blake’s aversion to relationships and odd insecurity?

Davy, unlike Sage, wouldn’t tell her, though. She wouldn’t waste her time asking.

Maybe Blake would tell her.

She wouldn’t hold her breath.

Through a mouthful of M&Ms, he said, “Don’t know. Might have.” He washed down the candy with a swig of soda. “She made herself an easy target for a lot of bullshit.”

“And she thinks the same things will happen if people find out.”

Irrational, yes, but fears could stem from less. One traumatizing event, and a person was scarred for life.

He nodded. “She doesn’t realize no one cares what she was in high school or that some people feel differently about nerds than those jerks she dealt with.” A smirk and knowing green eyes pinned her, emphasizing his point. “Right, Saylor?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she raised her chin in the air. Mock-disgruntled, hiding nothing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were ready to ravage her.”

He was right.

“I was not,” Saylor returned.

She was.

“You have a nerd fetish. Admit it.”

“It’s not a fetish. Nerds are just so,” she paused, mind unable to form a proper explanation of her attraction. Falling back on the bed and pressing an overstuffed pillow to her face, she groaned, the only noise that could communicate her feelings.

“Sorry, I don’t speak Lesbian.”

Jackass. A groan was a perfectly acceptable expression of varying frustration, an acceptable explanation in the female language. Davy was fluent enough in that, having grown up with a sister who was a mere year his junior.

And there was the stereotypical, flamboyant gay thing. He should have understood her fine, should have nodded in understanding and moved the conversation along.

She knew he wouldn’t cave, though.

The pillow against her face muffled her response. “They’re just so cute and awkward.”

Best explanation she could give.

“And not very threatening,” Davy mused.

Saylor pulled the pillow from her face, staring up at the ceiling, eyebrows drawn. “They’re not, are they?”

He was drawing an obvious line. Suffering through abuse led to a need for safety. In relationships. In life. She spent months curled in the safe haven of her bed, where nothing could hurt her. Blake, in all her ex-nerd glory, was her new safe haven.

Unfortunately, her attraction to nerds and Katie’s violence didn’t correlate.

“Katie was a nerd.”

Not physically, not even in her social aptitude, but underneath her natural grace and enticing blue eyes, the studies-obsessed nerd lurked. She was beautiful, she had charm, and she was smart. Some called her an overachiever. Nerd was a more appropriate title.

“Blake’s not Katie.”

“I know.”

A smile spread on his face, slow and dimple-exposing. He flopped on the bed, twisting his body to land on his stomach, carton of ice-cream clutched in his hands, feet crossed at the ankles.

“She did wear glasses,” he said, “Thick-rimmed, coke bottle, large-ass glasses.” He cocked an eyebrow in amusement. “Going to rape her now?”