My eyes dart about an unfamiliar room. The silk sheets, the ornate bookcases, the intricate detailing on the chiffonier. I recall where I am. The Hamptons.
I venture out into the mansion. An unfamiliar body adorns the tasteful, off-white couch, placed precisely as if it were in a painting. They remain still as I take a step closer. A girl. I try to see if she’s breathing, but sizzling from the kitchen pulls my focus away from the figure.
“Do you like eggs?” The words drip with affability. I remember her saccharine voice. It convinced me to make the trip out here. A reunion in the Hamptons. Her question calls attention to the taste of her cucumber vodka lingering on my tongue, but her beauty pulls me deeper before I can answer.
She is beautiful in a vintage way; strikingly handsome, even. Her nightgown hugs her ample physique. Natural light drifts across her Grecian nose and delicate, pink lips. The gold in her eyes matches the accents of her marble countertops. A laugh I could recognize anywhere jolts me back to reality, “I’ll just make extra.”
Without a word, I turn to a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door and notice another person outside. I use all of my strength to close it behind me as I join the man standing at the edge of the pool.
His lean muscularity accentuates the delicateness of his short stature. Flashes of him dancing through the halls and presenting syrupy drinks to partygoers jostle through my pulsing head. The bitter memory of his mouth on the nape of the woman’s neck endures, and the hope of loving her gets crushed again. A wedding after the Hamptons. He urges me to look into the water, ostentatious with the knowledge he imparts, “There’s a turtle.” Its body glows, flying across the mosaic tiling. We watch for a while, still, not daring to look at each other.
“Do you think it’s safe for it to be swimming in chlorine?” His maple eyes crystallize and harden. The turtle dives deeper, plunging further out of our reach. A net lays on the other side of the pool, and I trek to retrieve it. His shirt grows taut as he whisks the instrument from my hands, and I admire where the fabric catches. Heroically, he thrusts the tool into the animal’s course and carries the turtle to the edge of the property. I follow closely behind.
We watch over the turtle with adoration until it recedes under the white picket fence. He calls it our baby, and we return to that ledge triumphantly. The savior turns to me and stretches his arms out.
Embracing, obscured from the light of the August sun, what was once maple turns opaque black. His hands wedge between us and lie on my chest. I breathe. He shoves me into the water. I sink. My lungs fill with thick liquid. The man, the woman, and the Hamptons fade out to blue as the current coaxes me further down. My body deflates meaningfully against the mosaic.
She calls him inside, not daring to gaze toward the pool. Hand-in-hand, the pair waltz into a dining room ornamented with rococo compositions of women and twenty-four-karat silverware. The diamonds on their chandelier glisten. They ravage their eggs and mine without a thought.
