“Me?” Courtney asked innocently. She put a hand on her chest. “Why, I would never push you in! Maybe you should just watch where you’re going.”
“Maybe you should watch where you put your feet.”
Somebody snorted behind me. I looked around to find Charlie standing there, hands in the pockets of his swim shorts because guys had that for some stupid reason. Of course he was there. The only thing that could worsen this situation was having a witness, especially one I had a major crush on. Courtney’s false-innocent expression turned into a glare as she stared at Charlie. He just raised his eyebrows back and asked, “What?”
“You should support your girlfriend,” Courtney said, “instead of defending someone trying to suggest that I would purposely hurt her.”
It took me a second to remember that I probably wasn’t supposed to know that they were dating since neither of them had actually told me, so I awkwardly said, “Wait, you guys are dating?”
“Yes,” Courtney said.
“No,” Charlie shot back immediately. I blinked in confusion and looked between them again. I was expecting them to just say yes and have that be the end of that. Why else would they have been kissing on the street corner? Was it possible that Charlie thought it was a one-time thing and Courtney thought it was something more? Or was there more to the story?
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“We were dating,” Charlie said. “But we broke up.”
“Yeah, boys always say that but then once they’ve had time away, they come crawling back to me,” Courtney said, rolling her eyes. “Every single time, Charlie. Why bother pretending we’re broken up right now when you know we’re just going to get back together?”
“Because I don’t come crawling back to anybody,” Charlie said.
Courtney put her hands on her hips and huffed in discontentment.
“Yeah, we’ll see.” She looked me up and down. “You know, you should probably clean up before you go back to Kelly’s office. It doesn’t look very professional to have soaked jean shorts on.”
She stormed off before I could even finish muttering, “Yeah, I’ll get on that.”
“Sorry about her,” Charlie said. “I know she can be a lot sometimes.”
“Told you,” I said.
“What?”
“Last summer,” I said. “You told me Courtney wasn’t that bad and I said she was awful to us instructors, remember?”
In the third session of the summer last year, Charlie found me hiding in the family locker room one day. I tried to pretend that I was there to write report cards for the kids in peace, but he saw right through my act and knew that I was actually just hiding from Courtney and he laughed at me. He tried to say Courtney wasn’t that bad, but I told him he only thought that because she was nice to the lifeguards; she had to be since she didn’t hold any power over them. Even though he nodded along, I knew from his viewpoint she couldn’t seem that bad.
“Right,” Charlie said. “Well you know what they say: hindsight is twenty-twenty.”
“That it is,” I said. I tied my hair up in a bun. “Why did you two break up, anyway? I mean, not that you need a reason beyond her just being who she is. But I’m guessing you didn’t just realize how much she sucked for no reason.”
Charlie smiled wryly. “That’s a long story. I’ll have to tell you some other time.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” I twisted the shorts in my hand again, then pointed vaguely toward the locker room. “Anyway, I really should go dry off.”
Charlie nodded. I started to walk off, but he grabbed my arm as I walked by to stop me.
“What time do you finish tonight?” he asked. Why did he care? Did he want to see me?
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m just filling out paperwork and stuff. Probably about an hour.”
“Great,” he said. “Me too. I’ll give you a ride home.”
I was about to say no and that he didn’t need to because my parents were coming to pick me up anyway, but then I paused. Why should I make my parents come pick me up, wasting both their time and gas, when I could just catch a ride with someone driving from the same place as me? Plus, it would make them more likely to drive me to Violet’s place after I got changed.
“Okay,” I said with a tiny nod. “I’d like that.”
Courtney reappeared out of nowhere with a clipboard in hand.
