“I want to get in the water.”
“Youarein the water,” I pointed out.
“I want to get in properly. Like all the way.”
“That’s disgusting. You have no idea what’s been in there or whatisin there. And it’s so dark. Ew. No way.”
“I’ll protect you. Nothing will happen to us,” he said.
“No. Come out or I’m going to go and call Mel.”
“Why are you like this?” Ro asked suddenly, glaring at me.
I glared back. “I’m not like anything.”
“You’re notyou. You’re not my best friend anymore.”
The words caught me off-guard, and they stung. “Because I won’t let you drink and go swimming in some disgusting lake in the middle of the night?”
“Because you’re different,” he said.
“Different thanwhat,Ro?” I asked, exasperated. Were we really going to do this now? And what the hell did he mean? After all the wayshehad changed over the past few months, he was accusingmeof being different?
“Remember when we were kids and we’d play mixed together, and you’d call out ‘mine’ for every shot? And then Coach was like, ‘Jessi, you have to let Rowan get the shots on his side of the court. When it’s for him, say “yours.”?’ But for like the next year, you wouldn’t listen. You still called out ‘mine’ every single time, so I just started running for every shot, and sometimes we’d go for the same one and collide?”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Yeah, so?”
“So, you used to fight me. They called us water and oil.”
“Because water and oil don’t mix.”
“They’re just as strong as each other,” Ro said. “They have an understanding.”
I sighed. “If you’re going to say that the understanding is that the water doesn’t tell the oil’s mom when the oil gets drunk, I’m not buying it.”
“No,” Ro said. “I’m going to say that my mom is fucking dying, I don’t know where I’m going when she does, I can’t play, and all I want is my best friend to get in the water and get drunk with me.” He was full-on crying now. “That’s all I want.”
“It doesn’t solve anything,” I told him now, softly.
“For a minute it does,” he said. “Please.”
And because he was my best friend and everything was falling apart, because he said it would make things better for a minute, because we’d been drifting apart for months and it felt like maybe for one moment we could find each other again, I did what everything in my head was telling me not to.
“Turn around,” I ordered.
He grinned through his tears and obeyed.
Unable to believe myself, I unzipped my jeans and climbed out of them. I discarded the tank top I was wearing and started toward the water.
Ro turned around when I was still only ankle-deep. I felt his eyes appraise my nearly naked body and I hugged my arms around my waist. I told myself I was pretty much in a bikini, underwear and a bra, but it did nothing to reduce the exposed feeling washing over me.
“It’s so cold,” I said, regretting this decision with every ounce of me but continuing forward. “What is even happening right now?”
“It’s not that bad,” he said. “You get used to it.”
Rowan peeled off his shirt then and flung it toward the beach, but he missed, and it landed in the water. “Son of a—” he said, wading out to retrieve it. He kept going until he was on the beach, where he started to take off his jeans.
I looked away, my entire body suddenly feeling warm even though I was immersed in lake water up to my thighs in October.
