I began pushing myself up now. Owen looked down then grabbed my arms and pulled me out. His upper body strength nearly took my breath away.
I sat next to him in my purple bikini, our feet paddling back and forth in the chlorinated and unnaturally blue water.
Our bodies mirrored each other as we leaned back, our palms supporting our upper bodies, our gazes up at the night sky.
I closed my eyes and listened to the chirp of crickets, the murmur of water and leaves.
I was surprisingly relaxed in his company even though his half-naked presence made my body hum nonstop.
“So, how’s school?” Owen broke the silence.
“Okay, Grandma,” I replied with my eyes closed.
Owen laughed, and that made me smile.
“Sorry,” he said, still chuckling.
“You don’t know what to ask a kid my age, do you?” I opened my eyes. We were smiling at each other.
“Are you always this direct?”
“No. I usually have to look for substitute words so that sort of ruins my directness.” I was looking straight into his eyes now. I wanted to add that it was something about his reaction to me speaking that made me okay with being as direct as I wanted to, but that felt too much.
Owen bit the side of his lower lip and looked like he regretted opening a conversation with me.
“So, you like it here in the U.S.?” I asked, notexpecting an answer any more than I figured he expected of his question.
“Sure, Grandpa,” he replied with a smirk. Then, honestly, he added, “It’s okay. I grew up here until I was eight. Then seven years there, then back here. So I spent more years here.”
I’d overheard him telling my brother and mom that his mother wanted to take him back to England and that his parents said he could choose when he graduated high school, which would be next year.
“Do you miss your friends there?”
“I have better friends here. But I miss football. Soccer, whatever.”
“There’s soccer here, too.”
“For younger kids mostly. No guy in our school plays it now. It’s nice to play with girls and be beat by girls, don’t get me wrong,”—Owen smiled—“but of all the countries in the world, my parents couldn’t have landed me in a worse place for professional soccer. I mean, it doesn’t even get to be called what it is—a game that is literally played with the foot.”
“You wanna be a professional?”
“I was in Chelsea’s youth team. It’s a big deal over there—like playing for a top high school football team here. This is where teams recruit their future pros.”
“So that’s the dream?”
“Yeah.” He straightened up, no longer leaning back on his palms.
I watched his broad back from my leaning position.
“You’re pretty good at football ... I mean our football, too. Simon says you’re better than most.”
“That’sbecause I’m not allowed to not excel in whatever I do.”
“What do you mean?” I straightened up, too.
“Nothing. I’m kidding. I just love to excel. I can’t fail.” He looked away after that.
I did, too. Was my stuttering a failure in the eyes of someone like that?
