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The sounds of playing kids echoed all around us.
“Is this your way of forgiving me?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe I just felt like taking a swim,” I said, fluttering my hands through the water.
“Em,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve decided that I want to move forward. Or at least move in a more forwardly direction,” I said.
“With me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “With you.”
She smiled.
“That’s really good to hear. What changed?”
I shrugged because I really didn’t know.
“I guess I just got tired of being pissed at you. It takes up a lot of energy.”
“That makes sense,” she said.
I flipped on my back again and closed my eyes, letting the soft waves of the lake push me around.
“We probably don’t want to stay too long in the sun. If I’d known we were going to do this, I would have put on sunscreen,” Natalie said.
Right, sunscreen. Something else I hadn’t thought about. Normally I was so good at thinking of those kinds of things. Guess I was being impulsive today.
“Sure,” I said. “And I’m definitely hungry. You want to just eat here?” The restaurant was right next to the lake, and we could take our food and sit in the shade of some of the huge trees.
“Sounds good,” she said. “Thank you.”
“For what? Forcing you to come take a swim in your clothes?”
“No. For moving on. I want that too,” she said.
We were so young when it happened. I knew I’d fucked up plenty of times in my life. Where would I be if the people I cared about didn’t give me another chance?
“I guess this will be the start of our second chance,” I said.
“I like the sound of second chances.” There were tears in her eyes and I reached down and pulled out the bracelet that was still in my pocket. I held my arm out of the water so she could see me put it on my wrist.
“To second chances.”
Natalie bumped her wrist that had the bracelet on it with mine.
“To second chances,” she said.
* * *
We had hot dogs and fries and milkshakes at the picnic tables in our wet clothes.
“Not as good as one from the Castleton Creamery,” Natalie said, about the milkshakes.
“Oh, that closed,” I said. “Sorry.”
“That’s a bummer,” she said.
