My whole body freezes.What the hell?
She has a little light vest underneath, thin but decent enough to not be inappropriate. She kicks off her red heels, then pulls up the bottoms of her dress pants.
Dipping her feet into the pool, she releases a breathy sigh of relief, then looks back at me with a playful tilt of her head, and beckons me over.
"I’m not putting my foot in that," I mutter under my breath, not even sure why that’s the phrase that slips out.
"Come on. I did it, so don't be a pussy," Sarah fires back.
"Sarah, I—Jesus Christ, we need to get back," I exclaim, looking around nervously.
"Would you let go and live a little bit? If you stay stuck up and stony the entirety of your time at Helion, you're gonnabecomeone of the robots. And then you're gonna go insane. People don't last long here if all they do is work and not sit down and enjoy the beauty of things," she argues, leaning back on her palms.
"I'm tired. I'm not dead. And we're wasting time. And if we waste time and I lose my job—" I start.
"I promise you won't lose your job. I've done this lots of times. Come on. Sit," she urges, patting the stone beside her.
I roll my eyes but eventually sit beside her, pulling off my socks and shoes.
"There you go. Oh my god. Look at you, you risk taker," she teases, smiling brightly.
My eyes roll once more.
"Now just try to relax," Sarah instructs.
The moment my foot hits the water, I jerk it back out, splashing everywhere. I swear something just nibbled me. "What the hell is that?"
Sarah bursts into loud laughter, her head thrown back. She looks pretty like that, annoyingly so.
"It's the fish. They like nibbling your toes, but they don't hurt you," she explains through her laughter.
"Yeah. What kind of fish are those?" I ask warily.
"They'rekoi," she replies.
"Yeah. Ibetthey are," I mutter.
"You're so weird," she laughs.
We sit there with our feet in the water, and after a while… I actually feel myself relaxing. The exhaustion slowly shifts into something lighter, serenity, maybe. The cool air mixed with the cool water on my feet feels better than I expected. Calmer. Like something in me is finally unclenching.
"You feel a little bit more awake, littlelesshopeless?" she asks.
Smiling, I look ahead at the rippling water. "Yeah. Actually,surprisinglyso."
"There you go. My fountain of youth. Success," she declares proudly.
I laugh, feeling more alive than I have in days, and we start getting ready to head back up to the building.
-??-
Chapter 5
Sarah's POV
My heart is dancing around in my chest just seeing Lincoln smile again. When we met around 4 months ago and started working together, I remember thinking that he was so passionate about his work.
Working at Helion is not a joke. I understand the pain that comes with it, and nobody understands the pain that comes with it more than Lincoln.
