Page 71 of Main Event

“It makes mountain sense.”

“That’s not a legal category.”

I reach her. She puts one hand against my chest, but she’s laughing now, and that’s the problem. Once she laughs like that, I am useless against it.

“You wouldn’t,” she says.

“I absolutely would.”

“I have my phone in my pocket.”

“No, you don’t. You left it on the blanket.”

Her eyes narrow. “You noticed that.”

“I notice everything.”

I bend and scoop her up. She squeals. Actually squeals. The sound is so startling and bright that I almost stop just to hear it again.

“You are not doing this,” she says, both arms locking around my neck.

“I am.”

“Luke, I swear⁠—”

“You swear what?”

“I will tell Mack.”

“He ordered this.”

“He did not order lake crimes.”

“He was vague.”

“You are impossible.”

“You love me.”

“I am reconsidering the terms.”

I walk deeper. The water climbs to my knees, then my thighs. Andi tightens her arms around me, laughing so hard she can barely threaten me properly.

“You’re going in too,” she says.

“That was always the plan.”

“No, the plan was for you to be sensible.”

“I don’t think that was ever the plan.”

She looks at me then, her face flushed from the sun and laughter, hair coming loose around her cheeks, eyes brighter than I’ve seen them in too long.

Something in me catches. I don’t fall right away. I hold her there for one more second because I want to remember her like this. Not braced. Not calculating. Not shouldering the whole brutal architecture of the world.

Just mine.

Just laughing in my arms on a late-summer afternoon.