How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  I shut the door behind me when I made it to Lily’s dressing room. Mom was already gone, and Lily was waiting by the door for me to come.

  “Are you okay?”

  I sighed and slumped back against the door. “You invited Michael.”

  She bit her lip. “Is that okay? I just wanted—”

  “It’s okay.” I popped open the ring box and took out Tom’s band, a plain white gold band with Lily’s initials engraved on the inside. “I just don’t know what to say to him.”

  I reached for the door, but she put a hand on my arm. “Why don’t you tell him that you’ve been miserable since he left?”

  I gripped the doorknob. “Because that would be pathetic. Tell him I’ve been pining for him for months?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? I can’t be happy if you’re not happy.”

  “I am happy. I am.”

  She kicked the heel of my shoe with the toe of hers. “Never hurts to have good things in your life.” All day, her eyes had had a smiling curve to them that made her even more beautiful than normal, but when she stood there in the open doorway, her eyes lost some of their luster. “It’s weird, isn’t it, not having Dad here?”

  “Lily,” I said, as close to a warning as I could get. She was going soft now that she and Tom were back together. Where was my angry sister who was furious with my mother for not leaving Dad sooner?

  “What?”

  “Even after everything he did?” I asked her. For me, it wasn’t weird that Dad wasn’t here. I had learned to live without my father in my life, and I thought I could be perfectly fine without him in it forever.

  “Even after everything,” she said softly and reached out to hug me. She didn’t say anything while she did it, but I didn’t have to hear the words to know she was thinking them: We should forgive him, we should let it go, life’s too short to be so broken.

  I took her hand and we walked down the hall together to the open doors of the sanctuary. I could hear the music playing inside, and I turned to smile at her before walking in. I stared straight ahead, at the stained glass window above the baptismal as I walked down the aisle with Tom’s ring in one hand and my bouquet in the other.

  My entire body trembled through the whole ceremony. I knew Michael was there, but I didn’t know where he was sitting, couldn’t see him as long as I was looking ahead of me, at Tom and Lily. But I thought about him the whole time. While they exchanged rings and said their vows, all I could think about was Michael at the graveyard, bent down on the ground, crying.

  *   *   *

  “Ladies and gentleman, I’m proud to announce, for the first time ever, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Murphy!”

  I was sandwiched between my mother and Lily’s empty seat as Lily and Tom twirled into the middle of the makeshift dance floor for their first dance. The room was mostly dark, and I couldn’t bring myself to scan for Michael’s face. I stared down at my plate, full of food from a home-style restaurant that could cater with little notice: potatoes, chicken, and a roll. A plastic flute of champagne fizzed in front of me. My mother was already sipping from hers.

  As the dance ended, Tom put a hand on Lily’s waist and escorted her to the table, where she took a seat beside me. The music played and people ate, and Lily leaned over and smacked a kiss onto my cheek. I could feel the weight of her lipstick as it stuck to my skin.

  “This is absolutely perfect.” When she picked up her fork to dig into her own food, people started to line up against the table to talk to her and Tom. She put her fork down, and I tried to smile at the people who also wanted to drag me into the conversation, but I was distracted by my thoughts.

  “Oh, my lovely nieces! Look how beautiful you both look!” My aunt Marie leaned down and planted a kiss on my cheek, right beside where Lily had already left a mark. As soon as she was gone, I dipped my napkin in my cup of ice water and scrubbed at my cheek. Lily winked at me.

  The man up against the table now was apparently a work associate of Tom’s, and when he turned sideways, I saw Michael behind him, sitting alone at a table with a group of Lily’s college friends. He fiddled with his water cup while I watched him, and I saw the differences in him now from the last time I’d seen him. He was here, really here, sharp and purposeful, like he hadn’t been at the funeral. That Michael was a shell, an intruder taking over. But this was my Michael. I could see it in the way his eyes moved around the room, the way he took a bite of salad, the way he smiled when one of Lily’s friends leaned over and shook his hand.

  And then he got up and walked out.

  I felt everything in me seize up in protest. He couldn’t be leaving. I couldn’t lose him again.

  “I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Lily and skirted the dance floor, where people had already started to huddle and dance to the music, to get to the hallway. By the time I got there, Michael was gone. I rushed to the exit, but I didn’t see him in the parking lot. But in a parking space right by the road, the very far left corner of the lot, was his mother’s old station wagon. I turned and went down the hallway. He was probably just in the bathroom, and I was probably acting like an idiot. The bathrooms were at the very end of the hall, where it opened out into the foyer of the church, and I leaned against the wall outside.

  I suddenly didn’t care if I came off as pathetic because I had been pining since he left, and I wasn’t about to let him leave without at least talking to me.

  A blond in a cocktail dress sent me a kind smile when she walked out of the bathroom and disappeared into the meeting hall.

  I stood there for another minute before I realized that Michael probably wasn’t in the bathroom. I moved down the hallway, back to the meeting hall, but then I heard something, a strange shuffling noise coming from the sanctuary around the corner.

  Inside, the room was dark, but I could still make out the shape of him in the light of the stained-glass windows, sitting halfway back from the front podium, staring down at a hymnal that he’d produced from I didn’t know where.

  “I was afraid you’d left.”

  Michael twisted around in the pew to look at me, closing the book in his hand. His lips tilted up a little, like he wanted to smile, but he didn’t. My body stuttered. “No. I was just looking for someplace a little quieter. You were busy, so…”

  I grabbed hold of the doorjamb beside me. I wasn’t sure how to start. What if this wasn’t why he was here, to hear me say I was sorry? What if this was good-bye? Before I could decide how to start, he broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  I waited for him to say he was over me, that he could never forgive me. He shook his head and turned away.

  I wanted to see everything. I wanted to see what was going on in those eyes that I’d been dreaming of looking into again. I walked around him, facing him from the front of the room. He looked sad, and I was afraid that I was losing him, and that any second now he would go back to the shell.

  “Why are you sorry?” I asked him, guiding him along. If he was going to walk out of my life, I needed it to happen fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “I was such a jerk the last time I saw you.”

  I grimaced, remembering what he’d said, how his words had felt like a knife. “You were grieving.”

  He nodded in a distracted way. “Yeah. I was really messed up. I was messed up for a while, actually.” When he impaled me with that steady gaze of his, his mouth was the furthest thing from a smile I’d ever seen it. “It was like I was asleep, and when I woke up, you were the only person I wanted to see, and you were so far away.”

  Something caught in my throat: my breath, my heart, my vocabulary.

  He went on. “I wanted to call you. That’s all I wanted. But it’d been weeks, and I didn’t even know if you wanted to hear from me.”

  “Of course I—”

  Heels click-clacked into the room, and my mother stopped in the doorway, not much more than a silhouette. Her eyes went straight to Michael, and I expected h
er to greet him, but she didn’t. She looked from him to me, and as if my pain had traveled all the way to her, like radiation that blanketed the room, her face crumpled a little. “It’s time for your toast.”

  I was terrified to let Michael out of my sight. I looked down at him, still sitting in his pew, his hands gripping the back of the pew in front of him. “You won’t leave?”

  He shook his head, looking up at me out of the corner of his eye. “I won’t leave.”

  The promise made it possible for me to unglue my feet from the ground and follow my mother back into the reception hall. I took my seat at the table while the best man finished his speech, which had apparently been funny because laughter was still tittering through the hall. He raised his glass with the traditional salute and everyone followed.

  I hadn’t really considered my speech. I’d been so focused on getting Lily down the aisle and through her vows that my brain hadn’t made it all the way to the reception. But as all the eyes in the room turned to me, I picked up my champagne glass for something to do with my hands just as Michael came into the room. He didn’t take a seat but stayed in the doorway, like he was standing watch, waiting for something.

  My eyes moved around the room. I didn’t know most of the people in it, but they were looking at me like they knew every secret I’d been hiding.

  The champagne was quivering slightly in my glass.

  “Maybe I’m not supposed to say it, but the last time we were here, it seemed like maybe today wasn’t going to happen.”

  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t the complete silence that greeted me. It seemed that not a single soul in the room was breathing. I glanced down at Lily, and her eyes were steady on me.

  I wrapped an arm around my middle, feeling so exposed with everyone’s eyes on me, and tried not to look at Michael. “When I think about who you were before, I think maybe you’re not that person anymore. You’re braver, and you’re more confident about what you want, and you’re not scared to take a chance even if it might turn out to be wrong.”

  There was a little murmur in the room. “Um, I’m not saying that you’re making the wrong decision. The exact opposite. I saw how miserable you were without Tom, so I know how much you want to be sitting exactly where you are right now. I just mean that getting married, falling in love, opening yourself up completely to someone else is scary and it’s risky, and it doesn’t always work out. But taking the jump is worth it. I’m just really, really happy that you’re taking that jump.”

  I sighed out a shaky breath and pulled the microphone away from my mouth so everyone wouldn’t know how hard I was fighting to breathe. “Lily, I’m so happy for you. You’re my big sister and my best friend. When I needed you, you were my rock, and every single day, I’m glad you finally made it back here. Congratulations, Lily and Tom. I love you guys a lot.”

  I set the microphone down and everyone clapped as Lily and Tom shared a kiss and Lily rose to hug me, rubbing my back even as the music started and the DJ asked everyone to go out onto the dance floor.

  “Thanks for inviting him,” I said when I pulled away.

  She squeezed my hands. Her eyes went over my shoulder and when I turned, he was there behind me, where my mother had been moments before, holding his hand out and looking so beautiful in the lights off the dance floor that it was enough to make me want to cry. His skin against mine when I put my hand in his was bliss, our fingers wrapping around each other so easily and naturally. I let him lead me to the dance floor, where he pulled me against him, and I died a little.

  I’d spent so much time wishing that I could feel Michael against me again that the reality was almost painful, the nerves rising under my skin until his touch felt severe in the best way.

  We didn’t say anything for a long time. He moved his hands up from my waist and twisted a lock of my hair around his index finger as we swayed. “I missed you.”

  My answer was something like a whimper. His hand curled around my jaw, and he pressed his head against mine.

  “I didn’t want to leave.”

  I pulled back to look at him. “Then why did you? Because of me? Because I lied?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t really about that. Sure, it hurt at the time, but that was only part of the problem. Everything was falling apart, and I was just falling apart without you.”

  I gripped his shoulder, keeping us moving through the slow, jazzy dance. “I should have been there with you.”

  His thumb stroked my cheek. “It wouldn’t have kept her from dying.”

  My heart ripped when he said it. He was so resigned to it. But of course he’d been living with the reality for months.

  “I went to Vancouver because I had to. My uncle wanted me to go with him, and I wasn’t in any condition to fight him on it. But I wanted to be here with you. It’s all I’ve thought about, getting back here. I—” He stopped, and his eyes landed on me like a question.

  “I love you,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t what he was going to say, but it didn’t really matter. I’d felt it when he was here before, in those quiet moments on the roof and those brief glances that made me feel like maybe someone else understood me. But I didn’t really know it was love until I was losing it. I didn’t know until Michael was gone and he’d taken a part of my heart with him.

  He smiled, like maybe he was relieved. “I love you, too.”

  My heart felt wild then, like it knew better than I did that there’d been a chance he didn’t feel the same way, not after all this time and all the ways he’d been hurt.

  He moved in closer to me, but before he could kiss me, before his lips could find mine, the music changed. I waited for him to kiss me anyway, but he pulled back and looked down at me with eyes that were sparkling. “Ready to dance?” he asked.

  I was under the impression that we were already dancing, but when my brain processed the salsa music that sparkled through the room and the sound of Lily cheering loudly, I groaned. “Michael, not here.”

  He pulled me into formation, with not much more than his fingertips touching mine, and we started to move. I still didn’t know very much, as we’d only had a few lessons. He spun me around and pulled me in again. I let him lead me, even though I didn’t really know the steps.

  We weren’t the only ones on the floor attempting to salsa and doing a clumsy job of it, and after a minute, Lily and Tom joined us, and Michael and I reverted to a more basic step so that Tom and Lily could follow.

  When the song was over, Lily high-fived me like we’d just won some kind of competition, and I let Michael lead me back to a table so we could share a piece of cake.

  *   *   *

  Michael stood beside me and cheered loudly as Lily and Tom drove away, and while the guests began to file out to their cars, we turned to go back inside. There were still plenty of people who wanted to stay and dance, and we had the church until six. Michael held the door open for me, but I stopped when I felt a hand on my arm.

  My mom pulled me off to the side of the entrance, out of the way of the door. “Why don’t you go on home?” she asked.

  I pointed over my shoulder at where Michael was still holding the door open. “You don’t want us to stay and help wrangle any drunk family members?”

  “Kate.” She lowered her voice, and her eyes went over my shoulder to Michael. “I’ll take care of this. You go.”

  Maybe a better daughter and a better sister would have argued with her, but I was selfish, and I wanted all the time I could get with Michael, so I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him through the parking lot. He didn’t object.

  I’d ridden with my mom, so I couldn’t exactly take the car, but I knew where Michael had parked his, so I pulled him behind me, toward the street and away from my mother. I heard her go back inside, and I stopped on the far side of Michael’s station wagon. I turned and pressed my back against the car, pulling him against me. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted it more than anything.

  He
leaned in, gripping the collar of the jacket I’d put on, but I pulled back, catching sight of a shadow of a figure across the street, standing shaded beneath a row of trees lined against the sidewalk.

  Even from far away, I could see that it was my father. He was staring down at his feet as the sun beat down on the pavement between us, his hands in his pockets and dressed in a suit, like at any moment he was fully prepared to go inside and crash Lily’s wedding.

  Michael saw him too then. “Is that your dad?”

  I nodded, unable to take my eyes off him. He raised his head and saw us, but I didn’t see any kind of reaction in his expression. Just emptiness.

  “Do you want to go and talk to him?”

  My first instinct was to say no. My instinct was to turn tail and run, forget that my father existed and move on with my life.

  But looking at him standing there, I felt bad for him. I’d never pitied my father before. He’d always made me feel like I had to please him, even if it meant letting myself down, and that had hurt. But he was my dad. And he was standing on the sidewalk like he was begging for it to open up and swallow him whole.

  I squeezed Michael’s hand. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” I’d said it almost as a joke, but when I saw him standing there, beside his mother’s car, I suddenly meant it.

  “I won’t.” He had a smile in his eyes.

  I forced myself away from him and across the street, where my father kept his hands in his pockets and looked up at me from under his lashes like he was in trouble. “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  He kicked a rock with the toe of his best leather shoes. “She didn’t invite me. She told me I wasn’t welcome.”