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The light was going when Sadie and I carried our things down toward the chairs along the shore.
I had a towel over my shoulder.
Sadie was talking about a woman at the store who had tried to return a birthday cake because the recipient had offended her before she could give it to him.
“She’d already eaten some of it,” Sadie told me. “That was the part that interested me. She wanted her money back and the cake.”
“Did they give it to her?”
“I don’t know. My mother started arguing with my father in the parking lot, and I missed the ending. They have terrible timing. Now I’ll never have closure.”
It was fully dark when somebody decided we were all wearing too many clothes to be so close to a lake.
The suggestion spread with very little resistance.
There were shrieks from the dock, then splashing. A shirt landed on the grass beside Ruckus’s chair. He picked it up, considered it, and tossed it farther from the water.
Some people had swimsuits. Some decided their underwear would do.
A few apparently decided even that was excessive.
I kept my eyes on the water.
From where we sat, the cove was a broad dark opening beneath the sky. Porch light reached the nearest edge, breaking into little moving pieces whenever somebody swam through it.
The trees were behind us, safely out of the way.
I liked the water. I liked being able to look up and see nothing over my head.
Clayton grinned at me, stripped down to his boxers, and went running for it.
He hit the shallows hard enough to send water over two people standing nearby. One of them swore at him.
He laughed and kept going.
Everyone was doing it. It looked fun. And harmless. Hell, almost every Bishop brother was there. What was the worst that could happen?
I didn’t particularly care if somebody saw my underwear, which actually happened to cover more than some of my bikinis.
I glanced at Declan’s dark form.
He was sitting a few chairs away, drinking a beer. I couldn’t see much else, but he was making no move to join the rest.
He had managed to sit close enough for me to be aware of him without acknowledging me once.
That took a particular sort of dedication.
I put my water down, draped my towel over the chair, and slipped off my shoes.
Sadie glanced at me. “You going in?”
“I think so.”
She tucked my shoes beneath the chair where nobody would trip over them.
I stood, my hands going to the hem of my shirt. I had it at my ribs, in the process of pulling it off, when Declan stood.
I paused.
