Page 28 of Cabin Fever

Dahlia wades in waist-deep with her hat still on. “Winner takes the front seats back to the ship. Loser buys lunch.”

I shake my head. “We're not doing this.”

Theo sinks so Dahlia can climb onto his shoulders in the surf. Her knee finds his hand like they've been rehearsing it since middle school, which, technically, they have.

Finn turns around in the water in front of me and crouches. Looks back over his shoulder. Raises an eyebrow.

I groan. “Don’t you think we’re a little old for this?”

“Fifteen years, Harper.” He says it like we’re standing at a war memorial. “Fifteen years they've been undefeated. The pool. The lake. Do you not remember Fourth of July?”

“We got banned, Finn. There's a lifeguard in Ohio who still has our photos up.”

“He retired. I checked.” He pats his own shoulder. “Get up here.”

It was one against three, and based on how this wedding was going so far, I definitely wasn’t winning that fight. So I climb on and Finn’s hands close around my shins, his thumb settling into the curve of my calf.

I yelp and grab onto his head as he pushes up out of the water in one motion. “Okay. Her whole game is the tickle feint. Don't defend the hands, defend the hat.”

I snort. “What?”

“Trust me. She can't lose the hat.”

It was the bride's hat. He probably had a point.

Across four feet of open water, Dahlia cracks her knuckles. “I want you both to know that I love you. No matter what happens.”

What happens next is violence. Dahlia opens with the tickle feint—Finn called it—and when I don't bite, she goes straight for my wrists. Theo staggers us in a slow circle, talking to her like a crew chief. “Left, LEFT, she's got no base on the left.”

Finn and Theo get battered with a wave, but somehow stay standing. “If the wave knocks us, it doesn’t count!” I say.

“Whatever! Totally counts!” Dahlia comes at me again, and then I twist my wrist, fake a jab to her ribs, then reach up and flick the brim of the bride hat.

Both her hands fly up to save it, and physics does the rest.

The splash is iconic. Dahlia surfaces spitting seawater and pointing at me like a betrayed monarch. “I can’t believe⁠—!”

I’m laughing so hard, I don’t hear the end of that sentence. Theo holds the dumb hat aloft like a rescued flag, while Finn and I turn in drunk circles with all four fists in the air, bellowing variations of “VICTORY IS WON!” at the top of our lungs.

He backs up under a wave to dunk us both in celebration. We go down tangled. I come up salt-blind and laughing so hard I can't find my feet. He hauls me up by the waist with one arm like I'm a crab trap, and for a second, I forget every reason I've ever manufactured for existing away from this man.

* * *

We take out the snorkel equipment. My mask leaks so badly, I don’t last long. Especially after I spot miniature, electric-pink jellyfish in the water.

We dry off in stages. Theo finds the tide pools on the north rocks and calls us over to see a brittle star.

He points. “They drop their arms when they panic. Jettison a limb. Fully voluntarily. It grows back, but the new one's never quite⁠—“

“Can I touch it?”

“No, Dahlia. Did you not hear what I just said?”

She tries anyway, and he wrestles her back, the two of them devolving into giggles, on Dahlia’s part, and kisses.

Finn crouches down, gazing into the pool. “Remember when you two used to pay us in candy for answers to your questions?”

It’s so unexpected, I guffaw. “When we were, like, five and six?”