“A little. But yeah, I thought you’d feel a little younger and more—naive. Like you were swept up by these guys.”
“Maybe I am swept up.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “You seem pretty in control to me.”
“How so?”
He slid me a glance from beneath half-lowered lids. “You seemed pretty in control on the ferry.”
A silence stretched between us, hot and tight and tense, and Iwanted to rip it open. I could feel the potential between us, how if one of us moved, the other would respond. I wanted to kiss him the way we had before, to close the gap between us and feel his skin on mine.
I stood abruptly. “I’m going for a swim.”
“I’ll come too,” Ethan said, which had not been my intention.
“Fine.” Then, because I was a child, “Last one in’s a rotten egg.”
“What—”
I ran in, plunging into the water.
“Are you crazy?” Ethan yelled when I surfaced. “It’s freezing! Save that shit for September!”
I laughed, pushing my wet hair up and out of my face, spitting out salt. “You a chicken?”
“How dare you. Call me a red junglefowl or call me nothing.”
“What—?”
Ethan let out a giant, ridiculous “Cock-a-doodle-do!” and charged screaming into the water. I yelped, falling down to my neck and pushing off the ocean floor, kicking away from him, unable to avoid getting splashed as he landed with what could not have been a comfortable belly flop. He emerged, shaking his hair and grinning.
“You’reso weird,” I said, both alarmed and a bit admiring. “How do you get away with being so weird?”
“It’s my dashing good looks,” he said. “Also, my family’s loaded.”
“You’re alot,” I told him, but I couldn’t keep back my snorted laughter. “What’s a red junglefowl?”
“It’s a chicken before they were domesticated. Basically a chicken with better plumage.”
“Why do you know that?”
He gave his sopping hair another shake. The water weighed it down, straightening the curls. It felt oddly intimate to see him like this, like he’d been transformed by the water.
“I know everything.”
“Okay, bro.” I rolled my eyes. “If you say so.”
We swam for half an hour, bobbing and floating. Our conversation was scattered and lazy and easy. I kept telling myself I didn’tlikeEthan Barbanel, but I knew if he hadn’t been my father’s assistant, I would have liked him a lot.
Eventually we headed back to shore and toweled ourselves dry. “Do you usually come swimming in the morning?” I asked.
“Nah, not really.”
“Just feeling inspired today?” When he hesitated, I realized my earlier snark about watching out for me had been spot on. “Wait, were you checking up on me?”
“Definitely not.”
“Oh my god. You and my dad. I’m completely competent, you know.”
