"Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. It's more than twice as deep as Crater Lake, as Tahoe. It's more volume than all the Great Lakes combined." She brought her fingers together again and pulled them apart. "It's nearly a mile deep, but when you hit that mile mark, you haven't really reached the bottom. There's a thick layer of sediment"—she wiggled her barely joined fingertips at me—"adding another four miles of depth. This rift valley sits at least five miles beneath the surface."
"And that's, I mean, it's five miles. It's a lot. So, that is very scary," I said. "I can see that."
"No, you're not scared. Not yet." She dropped her hands. "There are bigger lakes out there. Much more prominent. All the ones that come to mind when someone talks about a good-sized lake. Even several of the Great Lakes, the ones I blew off a minute ago, are much, much bigger than this long, ragged, skinny crescent of broken earth in Siberia. Baikal doesn't look remarkable on the surface but then you keep going down and down and down, all the way to these dark, unimaginable depths. And when you get to the bottom, you find the great open wound that makes Baikal what it is."
What…why was she telling me this?
"That's what scares me. Thinking of a lake about half the size of Lake Michigan but six times as deep and broken at the bottom." She stared at me for a heavy moment, edged her glasses up again. "It's cold and lonely down there, you know?"
I gulped. This wasn't about lakes or valleys. "Yeah."
"I thought you should know that. I thought you might understand. I hope you do." Nodding to herself, Erin took a step backward. "I'll just say that lake is important to me. I'm protective of that lake. The last thing I want is someone coming in with heavy machinery or risky new drilling ideas. I know what that lake has seen and I don't want anyone putting it through anything more."
This wasn't about lakes at all.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find the meteorite I left somewhere around here," she said.
"Sure. Yeah. No problem."
This was fine.
I stayed at the Acevedos' party another hour though my stomach was still very unsettled and I couldn't stop thinking about that frown from Sebastian. Oh, and the lakes. Those damn lakes—and that warning. Shit. Who knew Erin was the secret mama bear of this social circle?
I splashed around in these thoughts while parking myself next to Alex, my designated extrovert, while she kept the conversation going with Stella and Malakai. Alex's husband was busy peering up the chimney with a flashlight and I bounced between watching that from ER visit waiting to happen and tuning into the chatter around me until Hartshorn sidled up and decided talk my ear off about blood clots. He didn't require much more engagement than a few nods and murmurs of agreement, which was great because what the hell did Sebastian have to be disappointed about? What on earth could I have done wrong here?
Of course there was nothing. I did nothing wrong and Sebastian knew that. He just loved being impossibly moody, even at the expense of logic.
I wasn't missing something. I couldn't be. I understood the situation perfectly.
After breaking away from the clot conversation, I made a quick round to say goodbye to everyone and then headed home.
What could I have done wrong? What did Sebastian expect from me here? There was no fathomable reason for us to give Erin a true accounting of our toxic cycle of sex, violent team-building activities, and resentment. Definitely not. There was no explaining that to anyone.
I didn't dare begin to explain it to myself.
I stopped in the foyer when I arrived home, my keys clutched in my fist and my gaze traveling up the twist of the staircase to where it led up to Sebastian's apartment. After a minute, I started toward the stairs but I turned back before reaching the first step. An eternity passed where I paced the foyer, replayed every minute I'd spent with him earlier today and this evening, turning it all over and over until the only thing I could recall was the moment when he wrapped his arms around me, holding me with more possession than I'd ever received from him.
That was the one thing I didn't understand.
He'd never hugged me before, but more importantly, it hadn't been necessary. He'd made a choice to reach for me without sex being on the table. Obviously, we were both insane but not insane enough to get naked in the middle of Acevedo's house so that hug wasn't about sex, it wasn't about hating each other, it wasn't about any of the things that had previously brought us together.
One of these things was not like the other.
That jolted me out of my pacing. I ran up the stairs before I could think better of it.
I approached his door, not hesitating a second before bringing my knuckles down on the wood. The sound echoed in the stillness around me but I was positive I'd heard movement on the other side of the door. A creak of a floorboard, a bit of shuffling, something. I waited, convinced Sebastian was busy being an obstinate ass who got off on making me wait.
But then I realized I'd waited far too long. Even if he was inside, he wasn't going to let me in and I would not beg for his attention.
Oh, hell no.
I finally took myself downstairs and tried to settle in for the night but that was out of the question. There would be no settling. Not after…everything.
I couldn't keep doing this with Sebastian. I couldn't keep taking his bait. And I couldn't confide in him ever again. The only explanation I had for telling him about my recovery was nausea-induced delirium. I couldn't find any other reason. It wasn't as though I wanted him to know, that I wanted him to understand how difficult it was for me to participate in the simple ritual of eating with other people, that I wasn't the relentlessly hostile woman he took me for but someone who was just trying to keep it together while he turned my life upside down with his side-eyes and his penis and his scowls.
I didn't want any of those things, but most of all I didn't want anyone to use my private mental health and medical history against me. All doctors were held to an odd double standard—we weren't supposed to get sick or experience chronic illnesses—and female docs had an extra layer of that double standard. If we had to menstruate, get pregnant, or progress through menopause, we were expected to do it without anyone else becoming aware of those conditions.
But the truly exponential standard came in the form of mental illness. I knew people who'd been exited from internships, residencies, and fellowships as a result of their mental health concerns. That was never the official reason. It was always something like inadequate clinical skills or misfit in the specialty or failure to keep up with the coursework—and I'd nearly killed myself avoiding that fate.
I wasn't ashamed of myself, my disease, or my recovery, but I wasn't ready to let others into this side of my life.
Yet somehow I was certain Sebastian wouldn't divulge anything I'd said to him tonight to anyone else. He'd silently judge me for it but he wouldn't gossip.
At the same time, I was certain we were very, very bad together. We clashed and scraped and wounded each other, and we couldn't seem to stop. I couldn't keep doing that. I wasn't in the business of harming myself anymore and that meant I couldn't allow him to upturn my safe, healthy life. Yes, he'd listened and he'd helped me tonight—