Chapter 20: Confession

Jo had disappeared at lunch, and my afternoon was spent playing with building blocks with Judd and Holly. When I retired to my room that evening before dinner, I found something odd sitting on my bed. It was a bikini—the same pink bikini Jo had given me the day at the beach—laid out on the duvet with a note beside it. I picked up the torn piece of paper and saw scraggly writing on it. It was so messy and scratchy that I could hardly read it, but I was able to decipher: Meet me at the pool at midnight. JO.

She had written her two-letter name in all capital letters at the bottom of the note, and it made me smile. Even her signature was bold and outstanding. As I felt the paper between my thumb and finger, I recognized the texture and the lines inked on the torn piece. Glancing over to my desk, I saw one of my empty journals sitting on top, turned halfway open where one of the pages had a piece torn from it.

I was glad she had picked up an empty journal that I had brought in case I filled up my other ones, but it made me fear that she had nosed her way around my other journals. I didn't want her to know how sad a human I really was—my journals were the epitome of that. Plus, I had written about her. There wasn't anything about her that would kill me if she knew, but the extent to which I had written her might have been disarming.

At dinner, I felt nervous. I felt like if Marty and Katie knew that I was going to meet their daughter at midnight at the pool, they would have some questions. Marty's questions would be something innocent, like asking if I liked swimming, or if I thought the pool was deep enough, or if I wanted him to buy some floaties for it. Katie's questions would be different: Why are you meeting at midnight? Why are you trying to be friends with my daughter? Who do you think you are?

I shook the thoughts away and got through dinner and helped Flo put the children to bed, and then I waited. Normally, I would've been a couple hours into sleep already, but I sat up at my desk, journaling about my day as I stared at the green clock on the wall. Time seemed to go so much slower after Jo's summoning.

Finally, it was midnight. Reluctantly, I put the bikini on and tied my robe over it, not wanting one of the parents or children to catch me in the hallway half-naked. I hadn't ventured through the house at night very much. It seemed smaller, in the dark and quiet, the only noise being the grandfather clock ticking and Marty's distant snores that echoed from somewhere else in the mansion.

I tiptoed down the stairs and past the living room where I came to stand at the patio door. Jo was already there, to my surprise. She was wearing a pair of tight swimming shorts and a swimming tank top, sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water. Her hair was parted over to the side messily, and I saw the side of her face as she stared into the water, the blue light from the pool reflecting off her cheek. She looked like a child like that, so focused on the way her feet flipped in and out of the water, bent over with no concern for ladylike posture.

The sound of me opening the doors drew her attention, her eyes catching me across the patio. "Hey," she said a little wobbly—she seemed nervous. Nonetheless, she lucidly smiled.

"Hey," I said, wrapping my arms around myself and walking over to her. "What's so interesting about that water there?"

"Oh, nothing," she said, turning to look at her feet again. I stood beside her, waiting for her to say something or do something, still confused as to why she wanted to meet me here. "Sit down," she said, patting the space of concrete beside her.

I sat down beside her, hanging onto my robe for fear of it coming undone, and let my feet sink into the water. They didn't go as far as hers did, due to the difference in our height, but it was enough for me to wade them around.

"I wanna teach you how to swim," she said a little brighter. "So take that robe off."

Rolling my eyes, I laughed and shook my head. "No, Jo."

"Why not?"

"You can't just teach someone to swim in one day."

"I can at least try." She tugged at the arm of my robe. "Come on, you don't want to get that old thing wet—it might disintegrate."

I looked down at my navy-blue robe that my mother had bought for me on my twelfth birthday, some ten years before. It had a few unknown stains and a few more rips and tears.

The sound of water splashing drew my attention, and I saw Jo jumping down into the water. "I said come on!" she yelled as she turned to face me, easily wading backwards.

Sighing, I looked around at the night sky. The moon was full and bright, not a single cloud to cover the millions of stars twinkling down at us. I felt more comfortable with Jo now, even with the tension of the unspoken night still vibrating in my heart.

Slowly, I untied my robe and let it slip off my shoulders, folding it into a neat pile and setting it away from the pool so it wouldn't get wet. Jo waded in the water and watched me, her chin resting just above the surface as I stood up.

"Just step in. It's shallow," she said quietly, her eyes tranced on me as I carefully let my legs slip further into the water, my hands holding onto the edge. The water was a little chilly, snatching my breath from me as I let my body slide all the way in. I feared for a moment when I couldn't find the bottom of the pool, but finally my feet touched the ground, and I let go of the edge. The water was shallow, but it still came up to my chest.

Jo stood up in the water with a smile. "See! It's not so bad!"

"Yea, but I'm not swimming. I'm just standing in water."

Wordlessly, Jo walked over to me, her eyes darker under the night sky. She reached under the water until she found my hands, taking them in hers and gently pulling me. "Let's go to the deep side."

"Jo," I argued, but she was pulling me in the water, and I had no choice but to walk with her to keep my feet from slipping out from under me and my head going underwater.

Holding onto her hands, I let her pull me a little further. The water went over my collarbones, up my neck, until finally it was at my chin and I already felt like I couldn't breathe. "That's enough."

"What did you mean?" she suddenly asked me, still holding my hands. She had stopped pulling me and lowered herself down to my level now, her face only inches from mine.

"Huh?" I noised, raising my chin up as her movements caused the water to slap over my lips.

"The other night," she began, and I felt my face heat up. "When you were drunk. You asked me—you asked me not to kiss you."

I looked away from her, pinning my eyes to the lines of the pool's floor that looked wavy from above the water. "I don't know."

"Don't lie to me," she flatly spoke, keeping her eyes on mine. "You said that someone else kissed you, and that it was bad. You said... she."

My heart started to swell painfully in my chest and throb, as if it were going to break right out and swim away from me. "I don't know what you're talking about, Jo. You were drunk, too."

I don't know why I lied to her, but when I turned my eyes back to her and saw the disappointed look on her face, I instantly regretted it.

"You're lying to me again," she whispered softly, unsteadily, looking at me as if I were holding a knife to her throat. "Just tell me."

It became hard to breathe, with her hands still holding mine, her face so close, her eyes, remembering that night I had briefly mentioned to her. I didn't want to ruin whatever streak we had going—I didn't want to go back to when she was being cruel and heartless to me. Even if we weren't friends, or she didn't consider me as one, I just wanted her to be nice to me. Every kind of attention she gave was in extreme—her dislike was terrifying, and her approval was elating. I didn't want to be anywhere away from her kindness.

"I don't think I should tell you while my life is literally in your hands," I whispered, only because it was true. She surprised me when she laughed a little, squeezing my hands in hers.

"I wouldn't risk your life over something like this."

I didn't feel unsafe. Although I was nervous, which was my right during that time when these kinds of confessions were not taken lightly, I sensed that this wasn't her interrogating me. She just simply wanted to know.

"I don't know how to explain it," I said, but truly, I did. I had run it over in my mind a million times since it had happened. I had looked at it from every angle and viewpoint, with objectiveness and subjectiveness, poked and prodded at it, turned it over and over until I knew everything there was to know about that one night that had shaped my adult life.

"Try me."

I looked down at the water with a sigh. I could see our entwined hands just barely through the moving water, held together at our sides.

"It was the first semester of college. I was a party with my roommate, Georgia." It felt odd saying her name out loud. I don't think I had spoken it since I last saw her. "I got drunk, and this guy, he—he tried to... well, I don't really know. He took me to a room is all I know, but nothing happened because Georgia came and got me. She took me back to the dorm."

Jo listened quietly, and she was more still than I had ever seen her. Not a muscle moved on her face.

"I told her that... that I didn't really like boys." I paused to watch Jo. She still didn't move. "And I don't remember exactly what led to it, but I know that I... I kissed her. I think I was the one who kissed her first." I don't think my body temperature had ever been as high as it was as I confessed to Jo in that moment. "But she did kiss me back. It was... strange. She kissed me like she was angry at me. She grabbed me, too. I had a bruise on my neck the next day. And then she moved out of the dorm and never spoke to me again."

I expected myself to cry, but I didn't. Whenever I thought about this event, it would stir tears behind my eyes. Now, telling it to Jo, my eyes felt perfectly fine. It was a stumbly retelling of the story, because verbally telling it was a lot harder than thinking about it in my mind. I felt like that about summed it up, and I was afraid to speak any more because I was expecting Jo to just start drowning me, and I didn't want to die faster by having my mouth open while she did it.

Jo just stared at me with no expression. I don't know how long she stared, probably only a few moments, but it felt like years. I felt like I was turning into stone under her gaze.

"Either say something now or don't say anything at all," I snapped, feeling the flames of shame turn into spite within me.

Finally, she blinked. "You're gay."

My eyes widened, and I jumped away from her. "No, I'm not!"

I was shocked to see her face turn into that signature gleeful Donnelley grin, wide and cracking. "You are!"

"Jo!" I exclaimed, and now I felt the tears start to prick my eyes. "Stop!" She was laughing, and I felt like I was going mad, so I pushed myself away from her. Like an idiot, my feet slipped from under me, and I went straight underwater.

Fear filled me for a minute as I drowned, but honestly, I was happy to be away from her and would have rather drowned than face her again. But her hands grabbed me and pulled me up from the water, clutching my body against hers. Gasping as I felt the water in my nose and mouth, I didn't realize my legs hooked around her. She was just holding me now as I wiped the water away from my face, my hair now wet and sticking to my forehead.

"When are you gonna stop drowning in front of me? I'm starting to think this is your way of picking girls up," she chuckled, and when I finally could breathe normally again and had the water away from my eyes, I gazed down at her.

With a jolting awareness, I realized I was straddling her. "Let me go." I tried to wiggle away, but she held my thighs around her.

"Just for you to drown again? I'm getting tired of this bit." She grinned, looking up at me with sparkling eyes.

Realizing that I was now stuck on her, I carefully rested my hands on her shoulders. "I'm not... gay." The word itself felt like poison, like speaking it too many times would paralyze me. My time spent at Café Lafitte had eased me a little, with how many gay people I met there, but I had been away from the Café for a while and now only thought of Greg.

"Becks, I'm gay," she blurted, and I began to fear that maybe someone in the house had woken up and was watching us. It really didn't come as a surprise to me that Jo was gay, but I still felt moved by it. "And Bobby is, too."

My eyebrows creased as I thought of Bobby and his muscles and stupidity. "Bobby?"

"Uh huh," she said, nodding. She pulled me closer to her because I was slipping a little. "Becca, it's 1964. This is California. I smoke cigarettes and wear men's pants. What did you think?"

I didn't want to think. She was holding my thighs, and my legs were around her, and I was confronting this feeling I'd had since I was a little girl—the same feeling that got my best friend murdered. I pushed myself away from her and struggled to the edge of the pool and climbed out, not even realizing that I just swam myself away.

"You can swim!" Jo yelled from the pool, jumping up with her hands in the air, not even noticing how upset I had gotten. "You're gay and can swim!"

"Shut up!" I yelled at her, worried that her parents had heard. She saw the look on my face and deflated, just watching as I took my robe and went back in the house.