“Careful, Mads,” he said. His hand found mine and we interlocked fingers. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were starting to care.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said even as a smile broke on my face. “We both know I don’t get emotionally invested when dating.”
Charlie leaned down, his face only inches from mine. “Do we?”
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.
fifteen
“So I hearthat my brother’s been driving you home every day.”
That was how Penny greeted me on Monday morning: no “hello.” No “how are you?”’ Nothing.
“You just found out?” I asked as I hung my bag up on a hook. It hadn’t occurred to me that Charlie wouldn’t have told his siblings about what we were doing. He didn’t need to give Penny rides home because she always went out with her boyfriend afterward, but I figured that it would have come up at some point. Was he hiding it from her for some reason?
“Yes,” Penny said. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “I had to hear it from Flo.Flo, Madison.”
I laughed. “Why’s that so bad?”
“Because my kid sister should not know more gossip than me.”
“I don’t know if it counts as gossip. He’s just giving me a ride since he’s driving anyway, and I don’t have a car.”
“Sure,” Penny said, dragging the word out. I just shook my head and started toward the pool deck. Luckily, she seemed to catch my hint and changed the subject as we walked out. “What classes do you have this week?”
“Nothing too terrible,” I said. It was all within the levels that I’d requested, so I couldn’t complain. “All mid-levels and all private, except for a pair of twins. Gosh, I hope they’re not the kind of twins who distract each other for the entire class.”
“Siblings are always either the best or the worst,” she said with a nod.
“What classes do you have?” I asked.
“Mostly levels nine and ten,” she said. She turned the laminated paper towards me a little so I could see it. “I’ll probably barely even have to get in the water.”
“Don’t say that to Courtney,” I said. “If she knows what you want to do, she’ll make sure you have to do the opposite. Remember last summer when she forced Leah to be in the pool for her whole class?”
Last summer, Leah was teaching a class that was essentially for kids who had finished all the swimming levels, but who wanted to keep taking lessons. Since there were no new skills to teach them, she worked on getting them to swim faster. Obviously, it wasn’t ideal for her to be in the water while the two kids she was teaching were basically trying to race each other, so she would often stand at the end of the lane or beside the pool to give them directions. When Courtney realized this, she instituted a rule that instructors had to be fully in the water for at least ninety percent of each lesson, which was ridiculous in that case. I could only imagine how little progress the kids made after that when they had to start dodging Leah as they swam by.
“Honestly,” Penny said. She shook her head. “Can you imagine competitive swimming that involves dodging obstacles?”
“It could make a new fun sport,” I said. “Granted, there would probably be a lot of bad injuries, but hey, isn’t that part of the fun?”
Penny laughed. “My boyfriend is a football player and always insists that getting concussions is a part of the sport. I’m not sure I agree, but…” She shrugged. “Guess there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Ladies, let’s start setting up the pool!” Courtney snapped. “Or did I not make myself clear earlier when I said I wanted everything done quickly?”
Penny looked at me with wide eyes. “She is really in a mood today.”
I nodded. “Better get on it before she crucifies us.”
“Hey, McKinnon!” I looked to the end of the pool where the yell seemed to come from and found Charlie standing there, waving an arm. “Come on, help me put the lane ropes in!”
I put my schedule down on the table and walked over to help him take the lane ropes off the hooks on the wall. There were five of them in total since there were six lanes, and they were super heavy, so it was a pain to have to put them in and take them out every day. Charlie and I each started taking them down from one end and moved towards the middle to get them all on the floor.
“Sorry, Courtney’s being so annoying today,” Charlie muttered to me as we got to the middle.
“Is there some reason for it I don’t know about?” I asked. He glanced over his shoulder to check where she was, then turned to me again.
“Actually, I was thinking I should tell you about this,” Charlie said.
