"I did that because you told me to." I pushed off from the wall, treading water. "You held my head there. You wanted it."
"I wanted—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I'm going to kill you."
"You're going to have to catch me first."
He dove in.
The splash hit me before I could move, and then he was underwater, a dark shape cutting toward me, and I scrambled backward with a yelp that was not dignified. His hand closed around my ankle and yanked, pulling me under, and I came up sputtering and laughing while he surfaced next to me with murder in his eyes.
"You think this is funny?" he demanded.
"Little bit, yeah."
He lunged. I dodged. We chased each other around the pool, Joel faster in the water than I expected but me slipperier, twisting away every time he got a hand on me.
"Stand still," he growled.
"Make me."
He cornered me against the pool wall and pinned me there with his body, his hands braced on either side of my head, water streaming down his face. "Caught you."
"Took you long enough."
He kissed me. Soft and slow, nothing like the frantic energy of a moment ago. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back, and the morning stretched out around us, endless and golden.
"Race you," I said against his mouth.
"What?"
"Ten laps. Loser makes lunch."
His eyes narrowed. "You can't beat me in the water."
"Guess we'll find out."
We lined up at the shallow end, hands on the wall. Joel counted down from three and we pushed off together, and for the next five minutes the only sound was splashing and breathing and the occasional curse when one of us pulled ahead.
He won. Barely.
"Lunch is on you," he said, smug and breathless.
"Best two out of three?"
"You're a sore loser."
"I'm a competitor." I splashed water at his face.
I made sandwiches, nothing fancy, but Joel ate his like I'd handed him a five-course meal. He kept looking at me across the kitchen island with his head tilted, studying me the way he studied footage of his own jumps.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He took another bite. "This is good."
"It's a sandwich."
"It's a good sandwich."
We spent the afternoon doing nothing. Joel lay on the couch with his head in my lap and let me run my fingers through his hair while some movie played that neither of us was paying attention to.
