Float, page 16
“Oh, there’s Blake!” Lena said, pointing through the passenger-side window.
My heart did a little hiccup in my chest.
Sure enough, when I turned my head to follow Lena’s finger, Blake Hamilton was sprinting around the side of his house, wearing a pair of black swim trunks and a white T-shirt with some logo I didn’t recognized printed across the front. His hair was messy and his cheeks were flushed. It took me a second to realize that he’d probably slipped through a second-story window and scaled down the side of the house to avoid running into Chloe or George. Part of me, the part that had always loved James Bond movies and squealed over the mere mention of Jason Bourne, couldn’t help but think that Blake’s little escape—and the mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes—was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
“Waverly, you should probably scoot over a bit,” Lena suggested.
“Huh?” I mumbled back.
I was too busy staring at Blake to notice that Lena had a point: Blake was running full speed at the car. More specifically, the back door of the car. I realized this too late and had only shifted over about an inch when Blake yanked open the door, letting in a large gust of wind, and threw himself into the seat I was trying to occupy.
Which, of course, left me crushed.
“Rude,” I choked out as he pulled the car door shut behind him, sealing us in like sardines. Blake was sitting halfway on my lap—like an extremely heavy baby—and our legs were tangled together at odd angles. He leaned backward a little and I had to turn my head so he wouldn’t crush my nose in with his shoulder blade.
“Drive!” Blake commanded, ignoring the fact he was turning me into a human pancake.
Jesse nodded furiously and brought his foot down on the gas pedal.
The Jeep lurched forward, and we were off.
“Hey, mind moving?” I rasped.
“Oh,” Blake said, sounding surprised and slightly flustered to hear my voice coming from below him. “My bad, Waverly.”
He leaned his body against the car door as far as he could go. I wriggled out from underneath him and pushed myself into the middle seat of the bench. But even though Blake and I were sitting as far apart as we could manage, we still didn’t fit; Blake’s right shoulder was pressed up against the car window, and the left was dangerously close to my jawbone.
“Good job, genius,” I snapped at him.
I would’ve elbowed him in the ribs, but I couldn’t move either of my arms. One was trapped behind Blake, squished between his muscular back and the leather seat, and the other was pressed against the box of wet suits.
“It’s not my fault,” Blake told me gruffly.
“Not your fault?” I repeated.
I looked up to tell him off and was promptly struck silent by how close we were in the cramped backseat of Jesse’s car. The words I had planned to say dissolved in my throat, leaving me gaping up at his bright blue eyes. He still had a bruise on the right side of his jaw. It was purple and yellow and blotchy, like a grotesque flower. The scrape underneath his right eyebrow had started to bruise, too, but it didn’t look nearly as bad. It almost balanced out the thin white scar above his left eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Blake continued, oblivious to the fact that I was gaping at him, “it’s whoever put all that crap in the other seat’s fault.” He motioned to the box of wet suits. “I mean, why is there a box of—”
He stopped talking abruptly.
“Hey, Jesse?” he asked, his voice pinched. “What are all these wet suits doing back here?”
Jesse laughed, like Blake’s question seemed dumb to him. Lena snorted, too, and turned around in her seat to give us both a smirk.
“Do you want to surf naked?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Two things happened very suddenly.
First, the image of Blake Hamilton standing on the white sand of the beach wearing nothing but his birthday suit flashed through my mind. I made a strangled noise at the back of my throat, like a startled cat, and a rush of blood went straight to my cheeks . . . and some other places I don’t ever want to talk about ever again.
Second, the word surf set off blaring panic alarms in my head. This was a horrible idea. I couldn’t even tread water yet. I couldn’t even hang out in the shallow end at the Holden Public Pool without managing to swallow a gallon of chlorinated water. How did these people expect me to get on a surfboard and not get myself killed in a tragic accident?
Oh right. Two out of the three other people in this car had no idea I couldn’t swim.
Today’s forecast, 30 percent chance of rain and 99 percent chance of my death.
“I thought we were going to the beach,” Blake protested. My hand—the one trapped between Blake and his seat—was starting to go numb. I fidgeted and he leaned forward so I could pull my arm out from behind him. “I mean, the usual beach. You know, to hang out, play some volleyball. What happened to that?”
Blake leaned back again, and his shoulder blade nailed me right in the boob.
“Ouch!” I hissed, resisting the urge to grab my chest.
“Huh?” Jesse asked from the front seat.
“Not you,” I snapped.
“Sorry!” Blake grimaced, leaning forward again.
He looked back over his shoulder and our gazes met.
“Um,” he said, eyebrows furrowing, “do you want to be on top?”
Yes, please, the hormonal voice inside my head chirped.
Blake seemed to realize how what he’d said could be taken a beat later, and the faintest trace of pink appeared across his cheekbones. He hurried to correct himself.
“I mean, do you want to be in front?”
If anyone else had made this many unintentional sexual innuendos, I would’ve been howling with laughter. Instead, I was light headed.
“I mean, your shoulder,” Blake added. Finally deciding that he’d made the situation sufficiently awkward, he reached out a hand and pushed me forward far enough so that he could lean back against the leather seat. When he pulled his hand away, my shoulder fell back against his. In front of his shoulder. On top of his shoulder.
This made so much more sense.
“Oh,” I said, sounding like a total idiot.
Blake shifted his arm—the one that was now pinned behind my back—and tried to find a more comfortable spot to put it. He ended up draping his arm over the back of my seat, just far away enough that we weren’t touching but close enough that I could feel the heat of his skin radiating against the back of my neck.
I glanced up and caught Lena’s gaze in the rearview mirror. She winked.
“Jesse and I decided we should go surfing instead,” she explained, not even trying to conceal her full-blown maniacal grin. In the seat beside her, Jesse had his eyes narrowed at an upcoming stop sign like he was preparing to do battle with it. Which, given Jesse’s infamous driving skills, he probably was.
“Why?” I asked, trying not to sound too distraught.
Why did we have to do the one activity that could get me killed?
“There’s supposed to be a storm rolling in these next few days, and I heard the waves out by Marlin Cove are getting up to seven foot.” Lena shrugged. “How could we pass this up?”
The Jeep rolled to a halt at the stop sign.
Jesse reached forward and clicked a button on the dashboard.
After a second of silence, the radio crackled to life, and the car was filled with the sound of a thumping drum and the voice of a singer I didn’t recognize.
“Any suggestions?” Jesse asked, fiddling with the dial.
“Here, let me,” Lena said, knocking Jesse’s hand aside so she could choose a channel.
Jesse mumbled something about an overbearing sister under his breath as he looked both ways and pulled forward into the intersection.
“So, how far away is Marlin Cove?” I asked.
And by that, I meant How long am I supposed to sit here pressed up against Blake Hamilton and be expected to keep my emotions intact?
“Eh, twenty minutes or so,” Lena said, looking at Jesse for confirmation.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Twenty minutes. Unless we hit traffic.”
Oh. My. God.
Twenty minutes was going to feel like a lifetime.
Was I just supposed to ignore the fact that the last time Blake Hamilton and I were this close he had been about to kiss me? Were he and I just going to ignore the elephant in the room? Or, rather, car. Because there certainly wasn’t enough room in the backseat for an elephant.
“Have you ever gone surfing before, Waverly?” Lena asked.
I resisted the urge to laugh in her face.
“Um, no,” I replied, swallowing hard as I tucked a piece of wet hair behind my right ear. “I never really got around to trying it out.”
I felt Blake shift beside me.
“Well, you seem like a fast learner,” Lena told me, pulling her corkscrew curls up into a bun on top of her head. “And Jesse gave surf lessons all last summer. He can teach you.”
Jesse nodded and beamed at me in the rearview mirror.
“Thanks,” I told him, grinning back at him.
Blake cleared his throat.
“Is Alissa meeting us at the cove?” he asked. His voice, deep and slightly rumbly, reverberated through my whole body, starting at the point where my right arm was pressed against his ribs. It gave me the chills. Say something else, I begged silently. But this time don’t mention your ex-girlfriend.
“Yeah, she said she’ll meet us there with the surfboards,” Lena replied.
We pulled up at another stop sign. Jesse bent over the dashboard and fiddled with the dial for the radio. Lena let out a grunt of protest as her choice of music was suddenly cut off by static, then mariachi music, then more static, then the riff of a guitar, then static again.
“Cut it out!” Lena told him, trying to slap his hand away. “I was listening to that!”
“No you weren’t,” Jesse argued.
One of their hands collided with the volume knob, and suddenly some country singer was screaming at us about how much he loved his truck. Blake and I both jumped, startled, and I shrank back into the leather seat, clapping my hands over my ears and trying to ignore the fact that Blake’s arm had slipped off the back of my seat and was now resting across my shoulders.
“That was your fault!” Jesse and Lena cried in unison, two accusatory fingers pointed.
“Turn it down!” Blake shouted over the music.
Lena reached forward and turned the knob. My ears rang.
“You’re such a douche bag, you know that?” Lena scowled at her brother.
“Your face is a douche bag!” Jesse shot back.
While the Fletcher twins continued to bicker in the front seat, Blake bent his head down so his lips were only an inch or so from my ear.
“Did you get the note?” he asked me, his voice low and his breath warm against the span of cheek directly adjacent to where my ear met my jawbone. I pulled my head back, worried that if he did something like that again I’d pass out, and looked him in the eyes.
“Yeah.” I nodded, the corners of my mouth curling up as I thought about Blake’s crayon-scribbled handwriting. “The Dora the Explorer sticker was a nice touch, by the way.”
“I thought you’d enjoy it.”
And there, just like that, it was easy enough to believe that I’d been wrong. That maybe I’d misread or even misinterpreted his note. That maybe “I will not try to do it again, I promise,” actually meant I’m so going to try it again, so please chew a stick of gum and wear some lip balm the next time I see you.
It was easy enough to believe that Blake Hamilton didn’t regret almost kissing me.
“Hey, Blake?” I asked, trying to ignore the sudden swarm of butterflies in my stomach. “I sort of wanted to talk to you about—”
Blake shook his head, cutting me off in the middle of my sentence.
My heart lurched.
Was this rejection, then?
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Blake told me, his face suddenly becoming hard. His jaw locked and his lips tensed into a line. He glanced out the window, then looked back at me. Or, more accurately, at a point directly above my head. “It won’t happen again.”
There was a hint of apology in his tone, and it took me a second to realize what it meant.
He was trying to let me down easy.
“Okay,” I mumbled, nodding once before I turned and pretended to suddenly be very interested in the fabric of the wet suits. Tears prickled behind my eyes, and I had to start picturing a bunch of dancing bananas to keep myself from crying. It’s really a handy trick, actually. When my parents had finally sat me down to tell me that they were getting a divorce, I had bitten my tongue and stared at the fruit bowl on the dining room table. I had pictured the fruits coming to life—sprouting little arms and legs and growing faces—and performing a choreographed dance number, just for me.
I didn’t cry. Not even a tear.
But at least after my parents had announced their divorce I’d been able to run up to my bedroom and bury myself in a Harry Potter book. This time, I was trapped in a car with the entire side of my body pressed against the person who’d broken my heart.
I could get over this. I would get over this.
I straightened up in my seat, trying to feel empowered—I am fierce, I am independent, I am Beyoncé was my new mantra—and sent a glare at Blake Hamilton out of the corner of my eye. His elbow was propped up on the sill underneath the car window, and his forehead leaned against the glass. His eyes, usually so blue and warm, looked grey now.
Fuck it. I’d never be over him.
The next thirty-five minutes in traffic seemed to go by in slow motion. I didn’t risk another glance at Blake. In fact, I tried to ignore his existence completely. Which was difficult because his knee kept knocking against mine, and I could feel the steady thump of his heartbeat against my arm.
The truth was, I had never been more aware of Blake Hamilton.
Lena managed to win monopoly over the radio and played pop song after pop song. She knew almost all the words to every song that came on and howled along to the tune—much to Jesse’s annoyance. I was glad she was enjoying herself, but I was even gladder that she hadn’t noticed the tense silence in the backseat. Blake hadn’t said a word, and neither had I, since our attempt at a conversation.
“Oh look,” Jesse said.
“What?” Lena asked, turning down the radio so that we could actually hear him. “Where? What is it?”
“The clouds are rolling in.”
I leaned over the box of wet suits and peered through the window. We were driving on a winding road right by the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Far off in the distance, where the sky met the water, was a giant, menacing mass of grey. It seemed so out of place against the sunny blue sky.
“Do you think it’ll rain today?” I asked no one in particular.
Maybe if it poured, I wouldn’t have to get in the water.
“No,” Lena said, shaking her head. “Not today. The storm isn’t supposed to get to Holden until Wednesday. I’m sure it’ll be another day or two before those clouds hit the cove.”
“Which means it’ll be perfect surfing weather today!” Jesse chirped.
My entire body felt tense and cold, which was strange considering the inside of Jesse’s Jeep was pretty warm and shielded from the wind. I sat back in my seat, but my eyes remained locked on the ocean. It was huge. Huge and powerful and destructive. And I was about to jump into it with nothing but a giant board and a wet suit to protect me.
I debated telling Jesse and Lena my secret.
What was the worst that could happen if I suddenly blurted out I can’t swim?
An image of the Fletcher twins, their faces twisted in disgust and betrayal, popped into my head. I sank down farther in my seat, suddenly feeling very carsick. I squeezed my eyes closed, the sight of the ocean too much to bear. I wished Blake would say something. Anything. He didn’t even have to ask me if I was all right, he just had to crack a joke or ask a question or something! The silence was stifling.
Speak, I screamed in my mind, testing out my telepathy.
Blake didn’t say anything. My superpowers were still a work in progress.
I opened my eyes again and glanced over at Blake’s lap. Not in a perverted way, but just in an I’d rather look anywhere else but outside way. His leg was pressed up against mine, his shorts dark beside my pale white thigh. Resting on the middle of his leg, palm down, was his left hand. God, his fingers were long. Long and tan and really, really boyish. I had never seen someone with more attractive hands.
“How much longer?” I asked, sighing shakily.
“About five minutes,” Lena replied, too busy tapping away at her cell phone to notice that her estimation caused all the blood to drain from my face. Five minutes. I had five minutes to prepare myself for my impending death. I glanced back out the window. Sure enough, the road had started to swoop down at a slight decline, and I could make out the details of Marlin Cove—rocky beach, rough water, and huge waves. The perfect recipe for disaster.
I gulped and looked down at my hands again.
They were shaking harder, almost violently so. I curled my fingers in, trying to form the tightest fists I could, but it didn’t help. My stomach wasn’t just doing somersaults anymore; it was doing an Olympic gold medal worthy routine. I remembered what it felt like to sink into the ocean, churning water pushing and pulling at my limbs. Salt scratching at my nose and throat. Sunlight fading above me. Blake had saved me that first time I walked into the water—but what if he couldn’t save me this time?
I shook my head.
This was ridiculous. I could save myself—that was what the swimming lessons had been for. I just needed to calm down, get a grip, and stop shaking like a Chihuahua. I was a big girl, and I could handle a couple of waves. Besides, didn’t surfboards float? Wasn’t that the whole point?
