“No, you don’t.”
“I’ve known you for your whole life, Madison. I know your ice cream order.”
“See, when you say stuff like that it makes it sound like you’re my friend instead of Matthew’s.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are we not friends?”
I faltered. Before this summer, I wouldn’t have said we were. He was just Matthew’s friend who was nice to me. And sure, we worked together, but we normally hardly spoke when we were here. But something was different now.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are we?”
Charlie bit his lip but didn’t answer. We were both silent as he ordered the ice cream—getting my order perfect, of course—and pulled into a parking spot to eat it.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “I didn’t mean?—”
Charlie took me by surprise as he leaned across the car and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm, and his mouth tasted like vanilla ice cream. I kissed him back with all the passion I had bottled up over the past two years, mixed with the past couple of days since our last kiss. He pulled away after a few seconds, and I could see the smile in his eyes.
“I was thinking we could be more than friends,” he murmured.
“I...” My mind was spinning. I’d been thinking about him all day, wondering what was happening between us but not letting myself hope it could be more than a simple coworker/brother’s best friend relationship. No kissing is involved. “What?”
“I know neither of us are really long-term relationship people...” Charlie said. “But I was thinking, if we’re going to be together all summer anyway, why not have some fun, right?”
“Charlie Owen,” I said, “are you suggesting we have a summer fling?”
“Depends,” Charlie said. He ran his fingers through my hair. “What would your answer be?”
I didn’t say anything. I just kissed him again and trusted that would be enough of a response.
fourteen
“Doyou think either of them are going to show up?” Leah asked. It was ten minutes into when each of our last classes of the day was supposed to start, and we both had yet to see our students. The pool windows overlooked the most commonly used parking lot, so I was keeping an eye out for a car to pull up, but thus far, there hadn’t been any movement.
“There’s still time,” I said. I tucked a pool noodle around my back and leaned my head back into the water. My hair was already wet, so I figured I might as well enjoy floating around now. Since there were only supposed to be two classes for this last hour, we’d taken out all but one of the lane ropes to give us more space to just spread out and relax.
The first few weeks of the summer were always stressful, but as far as they went, that year wasn’t the absolute worst. Since everyone had worked there previously, we all knew how to work well together, and Courtney was being kept so busy by Kelly that I hardly ever saw her—something that I had no doubt was intentional on Kelly’s part.
And best of all, I’d gotten to see Charlie every day. Our drive home from work had turned into a little ritual where we’d stop in a random parking lot for a bit to make-out. When Matthewstarted questioning why I was coming home so late, I told him that my schedule had changed to have later classes in the evenings and to my delight, he hadn’t doubted it for a second. It all fell into place perfectly.
“What’s the rule again?” Leah asked. “Can we leave after fifteen minutes?”
Our managers didn’t want us hanging around the pool, waiting for students who weren’t going to show up, so for our last classes of the day if the student hadn’t shown up within a certain amount of time, we could just go home. If they showed up extremely late for some reason, our manager would take over the class for the day.
“I can’t remember, honestly. All I know is that my students have a knack for showing up right when I’m about to leave.”
Leah laughed. “Right? It’s like they try to cut it as close as possible.”
I tensed as I heard the sound of footsteps coming towards us. The tell-tale sound of flip-flops told me who it was without even having to see her—it was like I was trained to know she was coming in the same way that hearing the click of high heels told me a teacher was approaching.
“Hello, Courtney,” Leah said politely as our supervisor came sauntering into the room. Courtney had a smirk on her face that only ever appeared when she knew she was going to make my life a living hell, so I watched in trepidation as she came up to the side of the pool and glanced at her watch.
“You can go now, Leah,” she said as if she were a principal dismissing a student from their office.
“I...” Leah tilted her head in confusion. “What?”
“Fifteen minutes have passed, and your student isn’t here,” Courtney said. “So you can go home. See you tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Leah pushed herself out of the pool and glanced back at me with a confused look on her face. I was sure she had the samequestion running through her mind as I did—why did she get to leave while I had to stay? “Um, bye.”
