Instead, I follow her.
“Why are you like this?” I ask.
“Like what?” She’s directing traffic now, pointing contractors away from the sprinkler zones with the efficiency of an air traffic controller.
“Aggressively cheerful. It’s unsettling.”
“Why are you aggressively grumpy? That’s equally unsettling.”
“I’m not grumpy. I’m realistic.”
“You want to murder happiness itself.”
“Happiness woke me up with a power drill.”
She laughs—full-on laughs. “God, you’re such a drama queen.”
“I’m a drama queen? You rented chandeliers for toilets.”
“Luxury toilets.”
“That’s not better!”
We’re standing too close now. I don’t know how it happened. One second we were walking, and the next we’re toe-to-toe on my lawn, her looking up at me with those stupidly blue eyes, me looking down at her glitter shirt and trying not to think about what’s underneath it.
“Dean?” she says.
“What?”
“The sprinklers.”
And that’s when the water hits.
It’s like being attacked by a thousand tiny ice bullets. The sprinklers don’t just turn on—they explode, sending jets of freezing water in every direction.
“Shit!” I try to shield her, but it’s too late. We’re both soaked in seconds.
She shrieks, then laughs, then shrieks again. “It’s so cold!”
“I told you seven-thirty!”
“It’s seven-twenty-one!”
Leave it to her to be precise.
We run for cover, her grabbing my arm to steady herself, me trying not to notice how her tank top is now basically see-through.
We make it to the porch, dripping and breathless.
She’s still laughing. Hair plastered to her neck, mascara starting to run, her glitter shirt now a contender for a wet T-shirt contest.
“Your sprinklers are broken,” she accuses.
“Your timing is terrible,” I counter.
“Your lawn is a death trap.”
“Your whole existence is a death trap.”
