Jaxon didn’t seem to notice Violet’s words as he pretty much skipped out of the room. The rest of us followed along as he led us out in the street and grabbed his skateboards.
“Do we need to ask Charlie to use his skateboard?” Violet asked, barely masking the excitement in her voice. I elbowed her in the ribs. The last thing I needed was for everyone else to put together that I had a crush on Charlie and start teasing me about it—or worse, bring it up to him.
“No, he leaves it beside the house,” Jaxon said. He jogged over to the side of the Owens’ house and returned a second later. He handed it to me. “Here. Have a go.”
“Uh…” I glanced at Violet, hoping she might volunteer to go first, but she shook her head and took a step back.
“Go ahead,” she said. I hesitantly grabbed the board from Jaxon. I expected him to stay and help me, but he immediately spun back around and went to help Eli.
I looked at Violet. “Your boyfriend is weird.”
She just shrugged and chuckled. I put the skateboard down and awkwardly tried to step one foot on it.
“Madison,” Violet hissed a minute later. “Look.”
“I’m a little busy here, Vi,” I said. How the heck did people actually balance on these things?
“Trust me, you want to look.”
I sighed and turned around. The street was completely empty around us. “There’s nothing here.”
Violet grabbed my chin and turned it toward the Owens’ house. And sitting in the living room window seat was Charlie, staring right at me.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“He’s watching you,” Violet said.
“Thanks for the obvious,” I said with a grin. “But why does he care?”
The note—in my phone case, as always—felt like it was burning in my pocket, and the time we spent at the lake the other day flashed in my mind. Was the kiss on his mind as much as it was on mine?
I resisted the urge to wave at him like some obsessed kid. Instead, I turned back around and tried to get on the skateboard again, this time much more mindful of how I must have looked from the back.
We stayed out there for another hour and a half and I tried to focus all my attention on learning (because, boy, did I need to). But every time I looked back, Charlie’s deep brown eyes were still focused on me.
thirteen
I stoodoutside the large front doors of the school on Monday morning, feeling a little like I was going to puke. Between having to face Charlie and work with Courtney, I wasn’t exactly excited about my first day of work.
“It’s going to be okay,” Violet said from beside me.
“That’s easy for you to say.” Unlike me—dressed in ripped shorts and a tank top thrown over a “work appropriate” one-piece bathing suit—Violet was dressed up nicely in a pair of black jeans and her school blouse. She didn’t need to wear her uniform for the job, but when she called me in a panic this morning because she had no idea what to wear, it was the only thing she seemed comfortable in. She was worried about her tank tops having too small straps, her graphic tees looking too unprofessional, overheating in a thick long-sleeve shirt, and for some reason, all her other seemingly good clothes weren’t clean. Personally, I thought if any of her other long-sleeve shirts were too warm, then her blouse definitely would be, but she insisted that it would be fine. She was used to wearing it every day after all, and usually with something else over the top of it too. I told her just to go for it today and see what everyone else was wearingbefore she made her decision on what to wear tomorrow, which seemed to calm her down a lot.
“Hey, I haven’t met my supervisor yet,” she said. “We have no idea whether he’ll be better or worse than Courtney.”
“Hey, Paige vouched for him.” Paige was Violet’s older sister, who also happened to be the same age as Violet’s new supervisor, which meant they had gone to school together. Paige had said she didn’t know him well, but he was nice enough and she’d done group projects with him where he hadn’t been terrible, so it stood to reason that he would probably also be fine as a supervisor. It wasn’t a guarantee, but we could at least hope.
“Yeah,” Violet said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “We’ll see.”
“Whoever has a better day buys the ice cream after work,” I suggested. I stuck out a hand. “Deal?”
Violet shook it. “Deal.”
I nodded. “Let’s do this.”
We walked inside and hugged one last time before going our separate ways—Violet to the third floor, where the tutoring sessions took place, and me down the long hallway on the first floor that led to the pool. It was on the complete opposite side of the school, since it was a recent addition that had to be added where there used to be some portable classrooms that were never used. There were a couple outside doors that led more directly to the pool, but they were inconvenient compared to where the drop-off section of the parking lot was. Personally, I preferred to take the route inside with air conditioning.
I pushed open the door of the women’s changing room with my shoulder and walked inside. It was already brightly lit, and once I walked fully inside, I quickly noticed that I wasn’t alone.
