AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I both feel and hear the quick inhale he takes at the movement, and he quickly lets me go, stepping back from me. I instantly feel cold from the loss of his touch.
I spin around, my brush held out, anticipating the same from him.
He holds his hands up. “Truce,” he says.
“Chicken,” I say.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m not up for giving someone chest compressions tonight.” He motions across the room at the old man I startled, who still looks frazzled.
I chortle. “Fine, but this isn’t over.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
Graham
LUCY GETS ME BACK.
The next night at the ER, she somehow attached a noisemaker to the hydraulics of my office chair, so when I sat on it, it was so loud it made my ears ring for an hour.
My scream came out like a prepubescent boy’s, and she laughed until she cried.
I told her I’ll be paying her back because that was way above and beyond some paint on her face. But since saying that, her senses have been so heightened in my presence, anticipating what I might do next, I feel like that alone is my retaliation.
It’s the next morning and we’re swimming laps in the pool. The beauty of getting here early is that except for a couple of lifeguards, we have the whole place to ourselves. We tried going later in the morning last week, and every lane was filled with teenage girls from the high school team. Lucy loved watching them, though, but agreed it was too much.
“Your age is showing, old man,” Lucy says, pushing her goggles up on her forehead as we come up for air after racing in the pool. Droplets fall down her face, and her chest rises and falls from the exertion.
“I’m tired,” I say, pulling my own goggles up before swiping a hand down my face. It’s the truth. Between working three jobs and getting up early every morning to swim laps with Lucy, not to mention all the effort and time I’m putting into these challenges, I’m feeling it. I wouldn’t change it, though.
“So do you still think you have a job at the hospital?” she asks, her lips curling up into a beautiful smile. She bobs up and down with the water as it ebbs and flows around us.
I chuckle. “I hope so.”
For the challenge yesterday we had to do something spur of the moment. So, while I was standing outside the nurses’ station, Evie walked by, and on a whim I grabbed her and danced her around the area, singing “Fly Me to the Moon”—a favorite of my grandpa’s—loudly to provide us music. She’s so tiny, I practically had to lift her. She was also not cooperative.
When I finally stopped, after what wasn’t more than a minute, I released her and she told me I was fired. But since Evie isn’t my boss, I’m not too worried. Unless she reports me to my actual boss, Dr. Zane, the chief medical officer at the hospital.
Lucy shakes her head when I tell her this. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”
“You better hope so,” I say. Lucy had announced to everyone that she was going to tell a joke for her spur of the moment thing. It wasn’t appropriate, according to Evie. We agreed to no more challenges at work, especially when Evie is around.
“I’m not worried,” Lucy says.
“I won, though,” I say, giving her my best smirk.
Morgan deemed me the winner because she said it was more daring than Lucy’s joke. Apparently, it’s the only one she knows and has told it often. Morgan told her to get new material when she sulked after losing.
“Whatever,” she says.
“Sore loser,” I say.
“Bet I can beat you again,” she says, putting her goggles back on, that competitiveness rearing its pretty head. It’s never been ugly on Lucy.
“You’re on,” I say, putting on my own goggles.
We take off, and even though I’m tired, I put my all into my strokes as I make my way down to the other side of the pool. Once I get there, a stroke ahead of Lucy, I push off the wall of the pool and keep up the momentum.
When I surface at the other side, I’m by myself, and I turn to see that Lucy’s only made it three-quarters of the way, but she’s stuck, bobbing up and down as she tries to keep herself afloat.
