Side Effects May Vary

Something torpedoed past me, grabbing me underneath my arms as it did. Water spilled from my mouth as I broke through the surface. My eyes were blurry, and I choked on the rush of oxygen. Harvey held me tight. I wrapped my legs around his waist, leaning my head against him. I was freezing, but his body warmed me. He treaded water for the both of us.

“Hey! Al, it’s all right. Are you okay?”

I nodded against his chest.

After I caught my breath, Harvey swam back to the beach with me still clinging to him. It was slow going, but every muscle in my body felt useless. When the seafloor returned to us and we were able to walk, Harvey pulled me in front of him with my back to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around my waist, squeezing me like I might disappear.

On the beach, my legs wobbled, my muscles having forgotten the laws of gravity. Harvey held my hand and spotted me as I stumbled through the wet, cool sand. If I hadn’t been in complete shock, I would have relished the feeling of it sliding through my toes. I stood in the moonlight, shivering violently. We reached the pile of clothes and towels, and carefully he surveyed my body for damage before pulling his sweatshirt over my head and guiding my limp arms through the sleeves. I stared over his shoulder at the ocean, the unknown, the answers to questions I didn’t want to ask. Then he wrapped one towel around my waist and the other around my shoulders. I tore my eyes from the ocean, turning my focus to him.

Then I kissed Harvey. I stood on my toes and kissed him on his salty lips. He didn’t say anything or push me away. He stood still, not kissing me back. His jaw twitched, but then that was it. My mouth went dry as my lips slipped into a wordless, “Oh.” I didn’t know what I expected to happen. But I did not expect for him to place his hand around my shoulder and walk me back to the beach house in silence, which was exactly what he did. Was it Debora? Was she why he wouldn’t kiss me? Harvey didn’t say no to me. Even when he said he would or even when he wanted to, he didn’t. My breath quickened, and I walked past him and back into the house.

Inside our room, he said, “You’ve got to change out of that bathing suit, Al. You’re shaking. I think you went into shock or something.” Then he left, giving me some privacy. I dried off and stripped out of my soaking mismatched bikini in favor of fresh underwear, boxer shorts, and his sweatshirt. I slid onto the bottom bunk bed, Harvey’s bed, and rolled over on my side, curling into the wall.

I heard the door open. Harvey climbed up the ladder and pulled the blanket off the top bunk, and then he pulled both his blanket and my blanket over my body, tucking me in. He wasn’t going to sleep next to me. Completely disappointed, my eyes stung with the threat of tears. I’d lost him, and this time he wasn’t coming back.

But then his weight sank into the mattress as he climbed under the blankets behind me. His hand slid up my bare back beneath the sweatshirt, and he began to trace letters of the alphabet on my back, like Natalie used to do to us when we were little.

“Q,” I said. My muscles eased beneath his light touch, despite my racing heart.

He tried again.

“W. Harvey, where did you go?” I asked in a small voice that I had never heard myself use before.

“I thought I felt the key to the beach house fall out of my trunks while we were swimming.”

“Oh. B.”

“Then I remembered I left it on the towel, back on the beach.”

He continued to trace letters and some numbers too, even after I stopped guessing.

“Al, it’s okay to be scared.”

I swallowed. My mouth was dry and wordless. Just images of the water rushing around me, as I created my own panic. A nonexistent storm that had only been real in my head. My cheeks flushed.

“Huh,” mused Harvey.

“What?”

“Did you notice the plastic stars on the ceiling?” Harvey stopped tracing on my back, the absence of his touch jolting me.

I rolled over and leaned past him to look up at the ceiling. “Like the ones in your room,” I said. “Let’s sleep on the top bunk.” I crawled over him, the heat of his body pressing against mine for a moment, and climbed the ladder before he could object. He followed me up the ladder with both blankets thrown over his shoulder, but not before opening the window next to the bed.

“It feels so good outside,” he explained. “But I’ll make sure you stay warm.” I didn’t say anything, because that’s exactly what I wanted, for him to keep me warm.

We lay down flat on our backs, side by side, our bodies barely fitting in the twin-size bed, beneath the glow-in-the-dark stars, the secrets between us thinning.

“Someday,” I said, “when we’re married to different people, we won’t ever be able to talk to each other.” Turning on my side, I draped an arm over his chest.

“I know,” whispered Harvey, running his fingertips along my arms.

I slid in closer to him. “I couldn’t be happy for you, you know.”