“So we just, like, get in?” I say.
Ivy smiles, amused. “I thought you were a nature girl,” she says. “This is nature.”
“But how deep is it?” I say. “Is the bottom just mud? There must be all kinds of bacteria in there.”
“The water’s medicinal or something. The pools are self-cleaning because the springs pump fresh water in all day. They put smooth rocks on the bottom, and there are all those boulders you can sit on. Any more questions?”
I don’t say, “And we’re supposed to be naked?”
I don’t say, “Why did you take me here?”
Ivy unties her robe and I look away before she takes it off. I pour us tea and the smell of jasmine sweetens the stench of the water.
I feel her watching me as I get in backward, as I try to cover my breasts with my arms in a way that looks like I’m not trying to cover them up.
Ivy laughs. “No need to be modest around me. Relax, Fern. This is supposed to be relaxing.”
I step into the water and quickly sit so I’m covered with the gray-white water up to my shoulders. It feels like a hot, smelly, silty bath.
“Are you relaxed yet?” Ivy teases.
“Don’t rush me,” I say.
She smiles, closes her eyes, and leans back against her boulder, so I decide to do the same. I have to admit, it does feel good, and I can feel the tension in my body let go a little. Maybe my body will convince my brain to relax too.
When I open my eyes, Ivy’s staring at me. I don’t know how long she’s been looking, or how long my eyes were closed. She smiles, and I think she’s going to ask me if I’m relaxed yet again, but instead she says, “So I have something to tell you. Remember how I told you I have a kind of favor to ask?”
I am the person people tell things to. I am the person people ask for favors.
I sit up on my rock a little taller, but my nipples poke out over the water, so I slouch back down again.
“We have a mutual friend, you and I.” Ivy sits up straighter now, her breasts fully exposed, and I try not to stare. I don’t understand how she can be so comfortable in her own body.
“Who?” I say. Everywhere I look there is bamboo and rocks and moss and water the color of dirty milk.
She pauses for a moment, like she’s thinking about changing her mind, like uttering the name will start something she can’t undo.
“Ash Kye,” she finally says.
My chest constricts. The smell of sulfur seems to get stronger.
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I say. “We’ve known each other for years. Our fathers used to golf together. I didn’t know he knew you. He never said anything.” But when was the last time I even talked to him? When was the last time he told me anything?
“No,” she says. “He wouldn’t have. I guess I’m kind of a secret.” This seems to make her sad, and I wonder what that would feel like—being someone’s secret.
“We met on vacation a year and a half ago,” she says. “On this A-Corp island in Brazil that’s a big vacation spot for the rich and annoying. He was there with his family. I was there with my mom. It was supposed to be my relaxing vacation before shooting the last season of The Cousins, but going anywhere with my mom is not relaxing. She was off chasing pool boys or something when I met him on the beach. He was trying to avoid his family. His dad was drinking too much and embarrassing him. His sister was on the phone the whole time and his mom was on her laptop working. We were both lonely and needed someone to talk to, I guess. So that’s what we did.” She smiles a private, inward smile not meant for me. “It was like we knew we were soul mates within ten minutes of meeting each other. I told him things that first day on the beach that I never told anyone.”
I cringe at “soul mates.” But maybe that’s what happens when people fall in love—they have no choice but to turn into clichés.
I wonder for a moment if I should say something, if I should interject, ask a question. What kind of a conversation is this? Is it one where I just let Ivy talk for as long as it takes to tell her story, until she’s emptied out? Is this a monologue? Am I her audience?
Ivy is somewhere inside her head, sifting through her memories. She has no use for me in there. So I decide to say nothing. I decide to just let her talk. It’s like I’m not even here.
I am strangely not jealous. Somehow sharing Ash with Ivy does not feel wrong the way Tami having him does.
Sharing Ash. How ridiculous. He’s not even mine to share.
“We were together there for two weeks,” she continues. “They were the best days of my life. We spent every possible moment we could together, every single night. He told me how much he hated boarding school and doing what everyone expected of him, how he felt so much pressure to fit inside a box. We told each other about our childhoods, about who we were before the world started eating us up. And it’s like we got to be those people together. Like we got to be innocent again. This one night, I remember it was a full moon, we talked until the sun came up. About running away, all these elaborate scenarios of the life we’d have away from everyone who wanted something from us. When the sun rose it felt like the beginning of a new world, like we had just created a new world. We were going to be free. Together.”
I am starting to feel too hot, but I don’t know what to do with my body. Ivy seems like she’s in a trance, like she’s channeling something, like she has no idea where she really is.
“I thought it was a plan,” she says. “A real plan.” There is a sad, almost desperate, tinge to her voice now. “He said tomorrow, we’re doing it tomorrow. We talked about starting over as brand-new people, getting an apartment somewhere, reinventing ourselves, building lives besides the ones everyone else has already figured out for us. He wouldn’t have to follow his mom and dad into some executive A-Corp career, and I could take the money I made and invest it smart and we could live off it for a long time, maybe forever. And he could write songs, and I could sing them. We would have real lives. So the next night I packed my suitcase and brought it to our meeting place on the beach. Just rolled it out there on the sand. Can you imagine? I was ready to leave. I was ready to run off with him.” It’s then that Ivy looks me in the eyes. “And he laughed. He said he was kidding. He looked at me like I was crazy.”
I want to go to her. I want to reach across the water. She is so small on the other side of the pool. But I don’t know what kind of friend I’m supposed to be. One who just listens to her monologues, or one who touches her?
“Is that what you want?” I say. “To leave your career and everything behind?”