The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian Read Free Book Online Page B

tired,” he said. “Ready about!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI told you in the car—ready about!”
    It was true: he had told me in the car. This was sailing jargon and it meant I was supposed to do something. I just couldn’t remember what.
    â€œTell me in regular language,” I said, “just this once.”
    â€œReady about!” Shawki insisted. Then he said, “Hard-alee!” and hit me with the sail.
    It didn’t really hurt, but I was balanced so precariously on the side of the boat that it knocked me into the water. When I surfaced, I found my plastic sunglasses floating beside me. “Jesus,” I said. The lake was deep and so stayed very cold, even in summer. I briefly wished for a maillot, thinking it might’ve quelled the sting of water on my belly.
    Shawki was sailing away from me. He had turned the boat around—I now remembered what “ready about” and “hard-a-lee” were supposed to signal—and was heading back toward the launch. There was no point in panicking or calling out to him; he was just trying to scare me. I knew he would eventually come back, and he did.
    What I didn’t know was that he wouldn’t stop. Instead, he coasted by and yelled at me, “Get up!”
    I reached for the boat, but there was nothing to grab onto—no hooks, no indentations, nothing. My hands slipped right off the fiberglass. “How am I supposed to—” I hollered after him, but he wasn’t listening, and since I was almost out of breath from treading water in my sneakers, I stopped calling.
    He made a second pass. This time he slowed down a little, as if to be helpful. “Get up,” he said again. I reached for the boat halfheartedly. Mostly I kept my eyes on him. By the time my hands slid off, I had been dragged a couple of feet.
    On the third pass I just watched him go by. He didn’t tell me to get up and I didn’t try.
    I grabbed my sunglasses, still floating nearby, and put them on. By now Shawki had put so much distance between us that I knew he wouldn’t turn around again, so I excluded him from my plans. In an effort to conserve energy, I experimented with how slowly I could tread water and still stay afloat. I was hoping to save myself, and would need every ounce of strength I could muster. A last check on Shawki revealed him to be a billowy speck. He had wanted me covered up and now I was, in deep green water.
    It made the most sense to head for one of the private docks near town, roughly an hour’s swim. The breaststroke had always been my favorite so I went with that until my arms got tired, at which point I pitched my sunglasses and switched to freestyle. I wasn’t a bad swimmer. I had joined the swim team in high school, attracted by the idea of getting to take off my clothes for educational purposes (Allison had joined the ski club). I’d even set a school record. Shawki knew this, which was probably why he felt okay leaving me in the middle of the lake.
    I swam as long as I could without stopping. While my face was in the water, I imagined Shawki turning around after all. He might have found my sunglasses on his way back and worried that I had drowned. When at last he stopped to help me back on, the glasses would be waiting for me on the boat, dried and folded.
    Finally I looked up but Shawki was nowhere in sight. Or if he was somewhere in the distance, he was obscured by the bright sun and the film that coated my eyes from having opened them underwater.
    At last I heaved myself onto one of the docks, my lungs burning. I stomped my feet, trying to get some of the squish out of my sneakers, and adjusted my bikini, which had shifted during the swim. I was irritated with Shawki but at the same time proud of my accomplishment: I had not needed his help getting back to shore. In fact, I did not need him at all; I would break up with him the next time I saw him.
    I walked up the dock and