He huffed a half-chuckle and we both looked away.
OWEN HAD BEEN HANGINGin our house a lot when his parents were on the brink of divorce. He joined our family dinners, slept over, even volunteered to help my mom with grocery shopping. Anything to get away from the fighting and yelling in his house.
“You’re like another sibling for these two,” my mom told him.
Sure, a ‘sibling’ I developed a crush on.
“I wish my brother had such hot friends,” Ruby said whenever she came over. “It’s not fair.” She counted the months until her braces would come off and was exasperated over her thick curly hair and acne outbreaks.
Bless her, when I told her about my crush, she said, “I have a crush on so many boys, you can have this one. RiOwen. I ship that.”
The summer I turned fifteen, after begging and finally recruiting my mom’s power of because-I-said-so, Simon agreed to take me and Ruby to the new water park with his friends.
“You two are on your own,” he said in the car on the way there. His girlfriend, on the seat next to him, twirled her hair while looking at her own reflection in the visor’s mirror. She popped a bubblegum balloon and nodded vigorously. I couldn’t have known she’d become my sister-in-law one day and that I’d actually learn to like her.
At the park, which was a local endeavor of two pools, a kiddie pool, and a few slides, Simon and Nicole joined their friends, including Owen, while Ruby and I spent the day standing in endless lines to ride the slides.
In the late afternoon, Ruby was sick after eating one hot dog too many, and her parents came to pick her up. I went looking for my brother but after a while decided to enjoy the shorter lines and half-empty pools.
The sky turned deep purple, and the lights were on everywhere. A few families lingered, but the smaller pool I was in was empty and quiet. Which was great for me to practice my water acrobatics of handstands and somersaults.
Resurfacing after one of my dives, I found Owen sitting on the poolside, shifting his legs back and forth in the water.
“Hey! Where’s everyone?” I asked, kicking my feet to stay afloat and brushing my dripping bangs out of my eyes.
“Simon and Nicole went to grab something to eat and asked me to look for you. Where’s Ruby?”
“Her parents took her. She was sick. Probably the hot dogs. I had pizza, so ...” I shrugged.
“And you stayed alone?”
“I came looking for you but couldn’t find anyone.”
“We were all over the place.”
Though Owen stayed with us a lot, I’ve never seen him with his shirt off. Now, in dark gray board shorts and bare-chested, he looked like he’d stepped out of one of theTeen Beatfold-out posters I taped on my bedroom wall.
Not knowing what to say or how to act, I leaned back into a floating position, my ears in the water, my arms stretched to the sides, my gaze on the string of lights that hung above the pool area.
At some point, I felt ripples and let my body drift upright, my feet finding the pool floor. Owen was swimming at the far end of the pool.
A few minutes later, he leaned his palms on the ledge and pulled himself up. His biceps and the muscles on his back flexed and water sluiced down his body. He turned and sat on the edge, water gushing down his chest and eight-pack to his lap.
I took another dive, unable to take in more of this male magnificence.
When my head popped out of the water, I was breathless.
I swam toward him and grabbed the edge.
“Need help up?”
“No. I’m just resting for a sec.”
“Listen,” he said, turning his face up to the night sky, lit by the lights all above the park and in the trees.
It was quiet around us except for the sound of the water rippling around me, the rustle of leaves in the trees, and the distant sound of people chatting.
“I’d stay here forever,” he added after a while.
