My heart feels wrong in my chest.
“This isn’t a service I’m providing. It’s…an itch I’m scratching.” What a lie. It’s not an itch anymore, it’s something much, much bigger. It’s a hole I’m trying to fill. Or something.
“It still itching?” There’s a smile in her voice.
I force a smirk to my face and admit the truth. “Much, much worse than before.”
“Clark called me a bitch, guess now I’m down to itch. Maybe someday I’ll just be a tch.”
“You’renota bitch.” Just thinking about that little prick raises my ire again. I wish I’d ground his face into the university’s brick walkway.
“Oh, I know.” She turns over with a groan, puts her chin on my chest and looks at me. “I’m an itch.”
“You’re a fuckin’…” My brain supplies nothing except, “Treasure,” which surprises a laugh from her. She’s laughing, but I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe and that’s not good when your job involves diving underwater.
“What? Oh my god. Where did that come from?”
“You are a treasure. Okay, one…” Warming to any subject that doesn’t involve my heart, I sit up with my back to the wall, and she shifts so she’s lying face-up, head in my lap. The breath I’ve been trying to catch quickens. “You’re all sparkly.”
“Sparkly?”
“Shh, let me finish.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“So, you’re sparkly. You know, like you glow from the inside out. Two, you’re…deep.” Her shout of laughter is the best sound. The best. “Hard to get to, and…”
I put my hand over her mouth to smother her snorting. “And you’re worth the fucking dive.”
“Dive,” she repeats, muffled by my palm.
“Like a treasure. At the bottom of the sea.”
“I guess you’d know.”
I pause, my chest doing this weird thing where it goes tight and sort of expands at the same time. Christ, is it a heart attack?
“You okay? Jake?”
I nod, picturing myself out on the platform. Whenever I have to dive to weld underwater—literally the most dangerous gig in the world—I go in knowing that it doesn’t matter if I come back up or not. The hazard pay’s worth it when you don’t give a shit.
And I don’t give a shit.
Right?
“I’m good. I’m good.”
She shifts until she’s sitting across from me, legs drawn up, clearly uncomfortable in nothing but her top. Her makeup’s kind of smeared and her cheeks are bright red, her lips, the most bitable, kissable curve nature could have made. “What’s going on?” she asks laying a hand on my leg in a way that feels natural, easy.
“Just thinking.”
“Okay.”
“Got a couple weeks before I take off.”
She watches me, wary.
“We should…we should make sure we give you that baby.”
