“Oh my God!” I slapped my hands over my eyes and shook my head. “I can’t do this!”
Noah pulled my hands away from my face, but I kept my eyes closed. “Look at me,” he said. I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Wecan do this!”
I tried to nod, but I think my head actually gave a shake instead, which had not been my intention at all.
“Turn around, sit down and I’ll sit right behind you.”
“Okay.” I lowered myself nervously, immediately getting wet as I sat down. And then I felt Noah come up behind me. I felt a pressure on my lower back and then saw his two legs come out on the sides of me. I felt his breath on my neck as he leaned forward.
“Can I put my arms around you?” he asked. “Like this?”
I nodded. I didn’t think I could speak. He brought his big arms around the front of me and, before he had a chance to wrap them around me, I grabbed them and pulled them close, tightening them and holding on.
“You ready?” he whispered.
“Yes!”
And with that, I felt him push our bodies forward into the spray of the water and then I felt like I was flying. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The wind was rushing into my mouth and pushing the sounds back down, and so was the water. The water that was flying up off the slide and spraying into my face. I grabbed onto Noah tighter as the slide turned sharply, and we went riding up the side of it, lifting towards the sky, as if we were about to take off into the blue above. My heart pounded out of my chest. But it didn’t pound with nerves or anxiety, it pounded because it was alive. Adrenalin rushing through my veins alive. My senses were sharp and awake and I was terrified in the best kind of way possible, a way I didn’t even know you could be terrified in. I let go of Noah’s arms and threw mine in the air and was finally able to scream.
“Whoooo-hooooooo!” We picked up pace as we went around and around and then, a tunnel. We were plunged into darkness and my shouting turned to laughter, which echoed in the tunnel. It smelt of warm chlorine, fiberglass and coconut sun cream. I think it was the best smell I’d ever smelt before. This was the smell of all the things I had missed growing up. This was the smell of hot, sticky summers spent by the pool, of friends’ birthday parties and eating too much cake, of running through sprinklers laughing and going on merry-go-rounds until you’re so dizzy that you fall over. This was the best smell in the world and I wanted to bottle it and keep it because it now reminded me of joy. Pure, unadulterated joy as we burst back into the sunshine, flew up into the air and crashed into the pool below. I allowed my body to fully submerge, and stayed there for a while. Enjoying the feel of water surrounding me and holding me up. I was in another world down here, a world I hadn’t visited in the longest time. And I loved it. I finally bobbed back up and looked at Noah.
“AGAIN!” I screamed, and raced out of the water as fast as I could. I think we did it another four times, and each time it got better and my courage grew until I was flying headfirst down it. My eyes and nose burned from the chlorine and my skin stung from the friction of the slide, but it was the best feeling in the world. Well, that’s not true, the best feeling in the world was when Noah grabbed me by the hand and ran me to the next slide, called the Tornado.
We raced up the stairs together. I was taking them two at a time, all previous fears of heights gone. Heights took you to fun places. Places of rushing water and giggling and splashing and all those good things. We reached the top, and I didn’t even hesitate. Instead, I threw myself down the slide and laughed as the spray struck me in the face once more. The slide curled around and, this time, instead of a tube, it became a massive disk and, like its name, my body went around and around and around until my stomach flew up into my head and my toes tingled. I finally slowed down, and then, just when I thought I had stopped, I fell through the eye of the tornado and into the pool below. I waited for Noah to come through, and when he did, I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms around him and pulled him into a wet, tight hug.
“Thank you,” I said against his shoulder.
“For what?” he asked, wrapping his arms around me too.
“For this. For everything!”
“I should be the one thanking you,” he said into my ear.
“Why?”
“If I hadn’t met you, I would have sat on my butt watching TV series.”
I giggled and hugged him tighter. “Noah, I wanted to say—” But before I could finish a frantic scream filled the air around us.
“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” The lifeguard at the top of the slide screamed as someone flew out of the tube and into the tornado disk. We hadn’t moved far enough away from it and, any moment now, they would fly out of that opening and onto our heads. I felt myself being lifted up in one quick move as Noah raced us out of the way. It was only once the body had fallen and stood up again that I realized I now had my legs wrapped around Noah’s waist and he was carrying me.
CHAPTER 60
I turned my head slowly, acutely aware that Noah’s face was so close to mine now. Closer than he’d ever been to me before, except for that ill-fated almost-kiss in the field, but I was trying to forget that. Our noses almost touched, like the echo of an almost-kiss. I could feel his breath on my face; it was warm against the cool wetness of my skin. I’m sure he could feel my breath too, because it was coming out fast and jagged, in time to the beating of my heart. Fast, because I’d just been down a tornado slide, and fast because of something else. Because I was suspended in a man’s arms, my arms around his neck, our faces almost touching, our eyes meeting and locking and like a million lines I’d read before in my book:earth moving, stars exploding, fault lines cracking open and shaking the ground beneath my feet and relentless quivers and breath hitching. . .
It was happening.
All of it.
All the things from all the pages of my book were happening as I looked at Noah and he looked back at me and the water lapped around us and the screams and the laughter of people disappeared into the silence that engulfed us as we seemed to slide into our own little world. Noah’s blue eyes looked even bluer now, reflecting back the sky and the rippling water. They seemed to be as deep and vast as the entire ocean, and you wanted to dive right in and discover every treasure that was hidden beneath their surface. But I’d tried to dive once before, not in an ocean, but in a field of flowers, and that hadn’t exactly gone well.
“Sorry! Sorry!” The words I heard just as Noah and I fell backwards into the water. For a second, we were both under water, still looking into each other’s eyes, and then we came up to the surface and looked around to see what had happened. A large guy, well over six foot, was rushing towards us.
“Sorry, man, I didn’t know I would fly out like that!” he said, pulling up his swimming trunks, which were now dangerously low.
“It’s okay,” Noah said. “It’s a crazy ride.”
“Crazy,” the guy agreed, tying his swimming trunks tighter in the front. “Anyway, sorry I knocked you guys over. Keep well.”
