Lex regards me for a long moment, and I look down at myself to double-check that I am, in fact, wearing a bathing suit.
“What?” I ask. “Did I slip a nip?”
She clears her throat. “Nothing.”
Gabe points to the tallest slide. “That one first!”
I look up at the thing and nearly shit myself. “You know what? I think I’ll just watch...”
Gabe grabs my hand and tugs me along. “Come on! You promised you’d go watersliding with me.”
I eye the monstrosity. “I’m more of a... lazy river and ice cream kind of girl.”
“Please?” Gabe’s bottom lip sticks out so far that if my mother were here, she’d have told him a bird was going to poop on it. Unfortunately, I have zero immunity to Gabe’s adorable pouting and immediately cave. Before I know it, I’m climbing billions of stairs in the heat of summer to get to the top of a tower where I will load myself into a water cannon and, quite possibly, die.
When we get to the top Olsen goes first so he can be at the bottom when Gabe gets off. I add “afraid of fuck-all” to Olsen’s perfect qualities. Gabe goes next, only hesitating for a moment before climbing onto the slide, and safely makes his way to the bottom. Damn, I’m really going to look like an asshole if I chicken out after him.
With Lex and me still at the top, plus a lifeguard and a group of complete strangers, she turns to me, takes my hands, and looks me square in the eyes. “The odds of getting hurt on a waterslide are roughly three in ten thousand.”
“Of course you’d know the odds, you adorable nerd,” I tease. But her data does make me feel a bit better.
Lex eyes me seriously. “That being said, you can turn around and go down the stairs if you don’t want to do it, okay? There are lots of other slides and you have nothing to prove.”
“Next!” the lifeguard shouts, growing frustrated, evidently having called for Lex’s turn a few times.
With one final encouraging squeeze of my hands, Lex turns and enters the slide, disappearing from view with a blast of cold water. I approach the banister carefully, eyeing the gut-wrenching drop, and watch as Lex makes it to the bottom, joining two other blurry figures on the sidelines.
“Next!”
Ah, fuck. Okay. Here we go.I don’t want to let Gabe down, and I don’t want to have to go down all these stairs again—the water park equivalent of the walk of shame. Ten seconds of bravery.
Heart in my throat and stomach in my ass, I climb into the slide, holding on to the metal bar like my life depends on it. Knowing this curse and how much it likes to ruin my life, I’m sure I’ll become a statistic one way or another. Maybe it will be my turn to end up in the hospital. I hold Lex’s data in the forefront of my brain, take a deep breath, and let go.
I place my arms across my chest and push myself down the slide. My life flashes before my eyes as my body is engulfed in freezing cold water and adrenalin. A scream belonging in a second-rate horror film is wrenched from my throat, and for a moment I sincerely believe my life is about to end. Then, just asfast as it started, it’s over. I’ve made it to the bottom. My limbs are intact. I did, in fact, not die.
“I did it!” I cry, standing with my fists raised above my head like Rocky after he climbed that flight of stairs. I flash my brightest smile at the trio waiting at the bottom for me and—
Lex quickly covers Gabe’s eyes as Olsen’s mouth drops open. I look around the crowd, then down at myself. My smile isn’t theonlything I’m flashing.
I slap my arms across my bare tits and turn in a circle, looking for my top. Where the fuck could it be?
After twirling Gabe around, Lex springs into action, wrapping an arm around me and leading me out of the bottom of the slide. Olsen seems to snap out of his trance, too, and begins searching for my bikini top. Somehow it’s been sucked into an alternate dimension, because despite our searching we simply cannot find the damn thing.
Lex leads me away from the crowd. “Don’t worry, they have a little shop here. I’m sure they sell swimsuits.”
While Olsen takes Gabe on more slides, Lex and I grab a towel and head to the store.
“These things are hideous.” I grimace, trying to decide between a canary yellow one-piece with far too many straps and a boxy-looking green one.
“It’s impossible for you to look bad in anything,” Lex says, joining me on the other side of the rack.
I raise an eyebrow. “I think we’re about to put that to the test.”
“How about the yellow one?” she asks, nudging it toward me.
“Better than nothing.” I smirk. “Literally.”
Lex rolls her eyes and passes me the swimsuit before guiding me toward a change room stall, where I slide the flimsy vinyl curtain closed and strip out of my bottoms.
