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“Not I, said the fly,” he replied while touching an offended hand to his chest.

“Yeah? Then how did you know to find me here?”

“Besides the banshee call?” he asked and shrugged. “I happen to have eyes and a personal relationship with water-adjacent chaos.”

“You—” I exhaled. “No. You did this.”

Alvin tilted his head. “Did I? Or did the universe deliver a hefty serving of poetic justice straight to me?”

My hands curled. I hated how his tone made me sound like the crazy one. I hated that he had always had the kind of confidence I couldn’t borrow even if I asked politely. Which, unfortunately, was what I had to do next.

I looked down at myself—at the jacket that would take all afternoon to dry, the socks that would have my feet decaying within an hour in my lake-logged sneakers if I chanced putting them on, the shorts that I was pretty certain belonged to a family of frogs, and the tee that wrapped itself around the dock leg and was holding on for dear life.

My throat went tight. “I need⁠—”

“I know,” Alvin said. His grin was back. “You need clothes, baby boy. Because your closet is doing interpretive dance in the lake.”

“I need to borrow some.”

Alvin’s eyes widened theatrically. “You’re asking me for help? That’s… iconic. Progressive.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I, Mr. D’Angelo.” Alvin stepped closer, then leaned in as if sharing a secret. “I just use the serious voice when I’m being mean… or fucking you hard, of course. Now where’re your manners? I didn’t hear a single please.”

My cheeks warmed. I could feel everyone watching us. There was part of me that didn’t care while another part of me still felt like it was drowning in that lake.

“Please,” I gritted between clenched teeth, and Alvin made a sweeping gesture towards the cabin.

“Follow me. I know just the thing to bring out those pouty lips and years of repression…” he mumbled that last bit.

And I ignored it. Because he was trying to irritate the hell out of me, and I was trying to get through the rest of the day without killing him.

“Okay,” Alvin announced after a few moments of awkwardly digging through his brightly-colored wardrobe. “I have options.”

“You have anything that isn’t… so loud?” I asked, my eyes hinging on the coral shorts he’d slung over the doorknob last night.

Alvin laughed, pulling something out of the trunk next to the bed and holding it up like a trophy. A glitter skirt. With a ridiculous sparkle that caught the light and made it impossible to ignore. “Behold.”

I stared at it. Then at Alvin. Then back at the skirt, because apparently I needed the full loop in order to process what I was seeing.

“This is the only thing I have that will fit you, meathead,” he said, as if he could read the indecision on my face.

“It’s a… skirt.”

“It’s a skort,” he corrected.

My stomach knotted up on the inside. “That’s what you’re calling it?”

Alvin blinked. “I’m calling it the only thing in this trunk that doesn’t require a tailor and a prayer.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” I muttered.

“Oh, it’s not trying to be better,” Alvin said, flipping the skort in his hands. “It’s trying to save you from having to keep wearing the saddest wet shorts situation I’ve ever seen.”

I sighed and looked away, towards the lake, because if I kept meeting his eyes I was going to remember the kiss again. The way his mouth had felt against mine. The way the world had narrowed into nothing but sensation and that one shared secret.

And then Alvin, because he was Alvin, said my name like a question. “DeeDee, Just—” He shrugged, trying to play it off. “Just put it on. I’ll turn around. I promise not to stare… that much.”