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I watched his arm motions and then nodded. It didn’t look difficult. I sucked in a breath and kicked off.
While I wasn’t trying to go at my fastest speed before, knowing he was watching now, I threw my body into the motions. My body curved against the water and I tried the hand movement he was showing me. It was more work forcing my arm muscles into sweeping motions but he was right. The stroke was much more powerful and the effort was twice as effective.
I broke the surface at the far corner and I heard him hooting.
“You’re good,” he said.
I was breathless but I smiled at him. I moved a hand to my arm, rubbing the bicep. It was going to be sore tomorrow if I kept up that pace.
“You should do some weight training.” He walked over to where I was against the edge of the pool and slid in to stand next to me. He tilted his head at me. “Are you going to join the swim team?”
I blushed, shaking my head. “I’m not much of a competitor.”
“You’re shitting me.”
I half laughed. “I don’t mind a short race.”
He blinked at me, smiling. “Should we race?” he asked.
Race him? He had to be kidding. “I’ll try,” I whispered.
“Should we bet on the outcome?”
My eyes narrowed at him. “You’ll win.”
“You don’t know that. You’re pretty quick. You’re smaller than me, too. You could probably move through the water faster than I could.”
“What do you want?”
He shrugged. “If you win, what would you want?”
I raised an eyebrow at him, unsure of his motives. Was this a trick to get me to do something else crazy? “I want to know the secret to getting into the back woods.”
His mouth broke into a wide grin. “I was going to show you that anyway.”
I made a face. I didn’t know what else to ask for. Then I pointed to the t-shirt I was wearing. “This?” When I said it, it seemed to be too much. Was he being serious at all about it though? Or was this just for fun?
He nodded. “If I win...” he paused, looking at my face like he was trying to read something from me. I got the feeling he was weighing out what he could get away with asking me. “If I win, you promise that if we end up with a class together, you’ll sit next to me.”
It was an odd request. I felt my brows lifting. I wasn’t sure if he was serious. “That’s it?” I croaked out.
“Hey, if I’m going to cheat off of someone, I’d like a willing participant.”
My mouth popped open and my fingers flutter to the base of my throat. “Nathan?”
He shook his head, laughing. “I’m kidding. I don’t cheat.”
I grinned. “I do.” There was no way I could win this race. I knew he wouldn’t let me. I positioned my feet up against the edge of the pool.
The smile remained on his face and he tilted his head toward me. “Really?”
Before he reacted, I shot away from the wall under the water, pushing myself against the resistance with what strength I had inside me. I managed to get past him and I tried to widen the distance to be out of his reach. I used the arm movement he showed me, throwing my whole body into the stroke. If I was going to have a chance, I needed to get clear of him.
I was halfway through the pool when I felt a hand on my ankle. In one pull, I was sailing backward through the water faster than I’d ever moved at my own doing. Nathan flew ahead of me. His reddish hair broke the surface and in a few easy breaststrokes, he was on the other side.
I made it over hallway again before I surfaced. I bobbed in the water, my chest heaving as I was laughing too hard. “Cheat!” I gasped out.
“You can’t cheat if you didn’t set rules.” He stood up, drips of water sliding over the muscles in his chest and stomach. I tried not to gape but it was hard not to be in awe of the power he had.
I made a face at him, sticking my tongue in his direction.
“Don’t go pulling that face on me. You owe me now.”
I laughed, splashing him. I didn’t think I would have minded sitting next to him in class, anyway. Although when I thought about it, I wondered how I would concentrate if I had someone like him nearby.
He smirked, sizing me up and positioning his legs against the wall. “I warned you about splashing.”
He caught me before I had a chance to move.
It was another hour before I crawled my way out of the pool, falling on my stomach on the concrete, gulping in air.
“Give up?” Nathan asked, coming up beside me and sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water.
“You play rough,” I wheezed out. Between all the races and him tossing me around the pool, I was dizzy.
He laughed and shook his head, rubbing a palm at his temple. “And here I thought I had my own little mermaid who could keep up,” he challenged.
I blushed. Was he claiming me? “You know she dies at the end of the original story.”
His eyes darkened and his lips twisted. “What? Why?”
“She sacrifices herself for the prince’s happiness.”
“That’s fucked up. Wasn’t he happy with her?”
“He was in love with another girl.”
“What an ass.”
I rolled my eyes and then flopped over until I was on my back, letting the sun warm me. There was a gentle breeze that flitted around us. I remained jealous of the pool he owned. Whenever I could own my own house, I decided I wanted one just like it.
His eyes focused on my body. I thought that he was being perverted for a moment as the shirt was sticking to my chest but I felt the breeze on my skin and then realized my side must have been exposed. The bruise near my butt was prominent.
“Where’d you get that?” His eyes focused in on it. He reached out as if to touch it but he only lifted the shirt a little to get a better look. He sucked in a breath and then reached for his other hand to pull down the fabric of the shorts, leaning in to get a closer look. “Jesus. What’d you do that for?”
“I fell,” I said softly.
“On to someone’s foot?”
“On to the concrete.”
“How the hell did it get that bad on your hip?”
“It was the angle, I think.” I moved a hand to pull away the shirt and stuff it down to hide the bruise. “It’s fine,” I recited. “Looks worse than it feels.”
“Probably not,” he said. “I’ve had my share of bruises. That’s a nasty one.”
I shrugged and swallowed to try to get some voice back. “I can’t do anything for it.”
He pushed himself up until he was standing and then reached a hand down to me. “I’ve got something.”
I wasn’t sure if this was another trick but I’d gotten sort of used to his face. When he expressed that serious look, he meant it. Then I hesitated because he was asking to touch him again. I reached up, feeling his hand wrap around mine and he pulled me up until I was standing.
He held on to my hand, walking around the pool and heading toward the large shed that was in the back. It made me blush that he was holding my hand. We’d just met. He was touching me. Was this normal to happen right away? I mean friends held hands sometimes, I was sure. I’d read about it in books. It also happened when a guy liked you a lot and wanted to be your boyfriend. So which was it? Why did these things have to be so confusing?
“Wait here,” he said. “The floor is wood. I don’t want you to slip.”
“What about you?”
He ignored the question or did hear me that time and opened the latch, pulling open the wide barn-like door. The inside of the shed did have a pine floor. The polish gleaned. There was black padding along the edges about a foot high against the wall and karate posters above them. There were a few belts in cases in different colors, dates etched into gold plates in the frames. A skylight at the top let in some natural light but he flicked a switch and two rows of fluorescent lights turned on.
I knew he said not to but I could
n’t resist wanting to get a closer look of the belts and posters on the wall. There was his name, Nathan Griffin, etched into those gold plates with the various degrees of rank that I didn’t quite understand. There was a framed newspaper clipping with his name on it, too, and a picture of a much younger looking Nathan holding up a trophy. I sensed him stepping up behind me, looking at what I was looking at. “You do karate?” I asked.
“Kind of.”
