Chapter 35: Chapter 35

I hadn't really known what to say to him since Saturday. I was more affected by what happened than I thought I would be. We were going to kiss, but I didn't feel that way around guys like that. I'd never felt that way around anyone else before.

But it was better not to talk about it. I had to move on and get over it. I need to try to work things out with Kent in a normal way, but not yet.

I don't know what to say on the slow, quiet walk home.

"You're quiet." I just shrug when he sighs.

"It's been a long day, and the humidity in the pool makes me want to go to sleep." I say quietly because I'm afraid. "You didn't need to walk me home."

"I thought that was the right thing to do." What he says makes sense to me. Late at night, he would always offer to walk me home, which was nice.

"You always seem to be there to walk me home." I chuckle.

When we get home, I open the door, kick off my shoes, and toss my ID over the edge.

"Hey Julianna." Kyle sits on the couch with a bag of Doritos in his hand and a smile on his face.

"Nobody drowned tonight?" Mark looks up from where he is sitting with his laptop open at the dining room table and asks. When he looks behind me and sees Kent, he stops moving his eyes. "Kent? You also just got home."

"Yes, I just got back from the gym," she replied. He just shrugs his shoulders and goes into the kitchen. I sit down on the couch next to Kyle and let my head relax.

"I'm tired and ready for bed." Kyle next to me is laughing.

"You always look tired when you get back from the pool. What went wrong?" As Kyle crunches a new chip, he asks, and I sigh.

"It's very hot in there, and you have to pay attention the whole time." I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. "That job isn't exactly easy, and I get stressed out easily."

"But I don't think that pool is where people really drown." Mark shrugs and closes his laptop, and I do the same while I nod.

"People who can't swim well can usually hold on to something if they need to. But people do drown, and it doesn't only happen when they go out into open water."

"How so?" Mark asks, and all I do is shrug.

"Dark spots happen often in shallow water. It happened at the pool while I wasn't at work last year. A trained synchronized swimmer had this happen to them during a practice."

"What is a blackout when the water is shallow?" Kyle asks.

"It happens when someone stays under water for too long without taking a breath. It happens a lot in synchro because they hold their breath for so long and work so hard that they pass out under the water and don't come back up."

"That is awful." Kent walks over to the chair in the corner of the living room and sits down.

"What else?" Mark asks me, and I just shrug.

"There are two bulkheads in the pool, and no one should swim under them because they could get stuck." I said it. "The person could also hurt his or her back, become paralyzed, and..." When I look at Kent, he immediately stops and looks away. "They can't turn over when they're in the water."

Kent looks tense and sad, which made me feel bad. I just happened to bring it up, but it must have been one of the scariest things he had ever been through.

"How did that happen?" Kyle asks. "What at a pool can hurt your back?" Kent's jaw gets tight, and my mouth starts to feel dry.

"The most common ones are diving from a good height and missing the water, swimming into the wall, and diving into the shallow end." When I whisper, Kent clears his throat.

"Are you done asking lifeguard Julianna stupid questions yet?" He murmurs, and I scratch the back of my neck.

"Take a deep breath, Kent. We're just asking her some questions." Mark keeps talking, and my cheeks are starting to get red.

In this situation, Kent's anger was understandable, and it was clear that no one else knew what he had done to his back.

"Yeah, you're always jumping on Julianna." Kyle is waiting.

"That's okay. I'm aware that it's a sad topic." Kent quickly clears his throat, stands up, and walks out of the room while I shake my head over and over.

Damn you, Julianna, you said something stupid again.

I feel bad, Julianna. Mark's head shakes, and so do mine.

"No problem." I give him a weak smile and tell him that it is. "How was the day for everyone?" Mark gives me a shrug when I ask.

"I've been packing because we have a weekend game away from home that we're leaving for tomorrow." I smile when he tells me why.

"That's awesome! What's going on in football?"

"It's fine, the season is going well, and the team's spirits are very high." When he tells me, I smile.

Then I realized that probably was what killed Kent. Something he used to like that his roommate has been doing since they were first-year roommates.

"Cool." I sigh and try to stop thinking about myself.

"I'll be going home for the weekend, just like you." When Kyle says something, I turn around.

Will they just leave me and him here? I've been alone with Kent in the apartment for a few hours before, but for an entire weekend?

"Really?" I try not to make my question sound too angry. I might spend the night at home or something.

"Yeah, mom is back from her business trip, and she wants me to come home and see her." He laughs when he talks about it. She's always gone, so this is the first time in almost six months that she's been at home.

"Oh wow." I blink, and then I realize how crazy that was. "Then it's a good thing that you're leaving."

I couldn't imagine being as close to my parents as any of my roommates were. Mark stopped believing in God, never looked back, and didn't want to go back to Salt Lake. Kyle only sees his mother a few times a year, and his dad is always working. He told me himself that he wasn't raised by his parents. And Kent seems to dislike his family and not want to be home.

I loved my family. I talked to my mom at least once every two weeks and called home at least once a week. It was so strange to think that some people might not get along with their parents. I thought it was great that my family and I were so close.

"Yeah." He shakes his head. "She doesn't know what I'm up to, so it's not that cool. It's like seeing an old friend you haven't seen in months. All we do is talk."

That made me feel so cold.

"Well, I'll see you both on Sunday when you get back." I smile, standing up and grabbing my work bag. "I'll read for a while and then go to bed."

"All right, Julianna, good night!" Mark says something, and as I walk down the hall to my room, I wave.

I throw my bag on my bed and unzip my sweater, which leaves me in my underwear and swimsuit. I also take off the pinny and put it on my bed on top of my bag. When I see Kents, I turn around to close my door and take off my sweatpants.

He is standing in front of his dresser and putting some clothes away. I had never spent more than a second in his room. I couldn't see much because his dresser was against the wall across from the door, so he was practically blocking my view from the room.

"I apologize." He shakes his head when I whisper. I could hear Kyle and Mark talking and the TV back on in the main room. "I didn't mean to upset you." I add as I walk to his door.

"It's okay, you weren't trying to hurt me." He just shrugs and doesn't look at me. "I'll see you tomorrow morning." He mumbles and pushes and grabs the edge of his door to close it, but I keep it open by putting my hand on it. "What?" He looks confused and asks why I stopped him, but I don't know why I did.

"Would you like to talk about-"

"No." He sighs.

"Have you talked about this with anyone?" I cut in again and ask.

"Goodnight, Julianna." I roll my eyes at what he says.

"Why do you do this all the time?"

"What do we do? He looks annoyed that I keep bothering him and asks, "What are you doing?"

"You tell me one thing and then don't say anything else about it." I still think about Kyle and Mark, so I whisper. "And you don't have to tell me, but you don't have to act like I'm the worst because I know something about you."

"I should not have said that to you." I blink when he mumbles.

"So what?" I ask, feeling upset. That day was very important to me because I felt like he worked hard to tell me something important. It was the first time we felt like we could work together. Besides everything else that happened between us.

"Because that look makes me mad." He tells me. "I don't care that you gave me that "oh god, poor you" look. I don't care what you said and I'm not upset about it. Julianna, I'm done with it." He says, "No," and my eyebrows go up. "Don't feel sorry for me."

"I-I don't feel sorry for you." I say in silence.

I'd never tried to make someone feel better or talk to them about their problems like Kent. I've always been good at dealing with messy crying or emotional words, but I'd never met anyone like him before. He kept everything inside and said he'd rather die than talk about it. I didn't know what to do for him, and my always-trying-to-make-things-better attitude didn't help me relax about it.

"So don't bring it up." He says it with the same tone even though his eyes are on mine. He made it clear that this wasn't something that could ever be talked about again. "Goodnight." He says more as he closes the door, and I just shake my head.

I guess things won't get less stressful any time soon. Since Saturday night, that was the most we'd talked. Things were hard, and I didn't know how to fix them.

I thought about how fun he was last weekend and wondered what was different about him that night. What made him smile the way he did at that time?

Something between us had changed, and it wasn't for the better. It just turned the tension into something different. Something I had never done before and was sure I would never do again.