Aggie giggles. “Well, what a situation you found yourself in.”
“I didn’t learn to swim until I was ten,” I admit. “My parents wanted me to dance and that was all that mattered. So, I learned in Aggie’s pool with her dad.”
Aggie smiles.
Rachel snorts. “I almost drowned at a school swimming tournament once. It was so embarrassing.”
We laugh.
“My mother made the decision not to teach me to swim, and therefore I am of no help during this difficult time because I am unable to catch any fish,” Adrian pipes up, his eyes staring off into the distance.
I giggle, and Tatiana shoves my shoulder with hers.
“Oh,” Kellen says. “You’re keepin’ us alive, brother. Don’t doubt it.”
Adrian looks up, his eyes narrowing. “Well, I did catch a fish on my spear.”
“And what a fish it was,” Kellen says, grinning.
The fucking fish wasn’t enough to feed a toddler, but I love that he is hyping him up all the same.
“It was a good fish,” Adrian says, puffing his chest out. “Mother was wrong, I am capable.”
Oh dear.
“Yeah, buddy,” Ace grins. “You are.”
We all take another drink.
“Tell us about the fighting,” Tatiana asks, stretching her legs out, her voice slightly slurred.
This is the most life I have seen from her in days.
“Mostly underground,” Ace answers. “Sometimes legal, others not. I manage a club back home.”
Aggie’s eyes go huge. “Like a fight club?”
“Something like that,” he replies, and his smile is slow, dangerous. “We fight, people bet. It’s only illegal if someone gets caught, or someone gets killed. Otherwise, it’s Friday night entertainment.”
“Do you ever fight professionally?” Tatiana asks.
“All the time,” Kellen answers for Ace.
“So, it’s like a mix,” Rachel asks him.
“Yeah.”
The two meet eyes, then look away.
Oh, why do I feel like Kellen is going to get himself into trouble with Aggie and Rachel.
The fire spits sparks into the night. The moon is a smudge above us, half-cloaked by the clouds. Kellen tells a story about jail—he spent one night there for bar-fighting, but he makes it sound like an epic, a glorious brawl in which he stood up for the weak and walked away bloodied but triumphant. Zeke rolls his eyes and tells us that Kellen is full of shit and nearly got his ass handed to him.
We’re all drunk fairly quickly. Not the fun, dizzy kind, but the raw, fragile kind where I keep expecting to cry, but instead I’m laughing harder than I have in months. At some point Rachel stands up and starts to dance. Aggie leaps to her feet and pulls Tatiana up, their hands linked. I watch, and my chest gets tight, because it’s so clearly a memory we won’t ever be able to explain to the real world.
Ace nudges my knee. “Wanna dance?”
“Not really,” I say, but then he’s up, yanking me upright with both hands. He pulls me close, and for a second the world tips. The fire, the stars, the sound of girls shrieking on the sand—I only feel the weight of his hands on my hips, the steadiness that leaks through his fingertips into my bones.
