Page 38 of Crazy Thing

I feel a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Aww. This situation won’t last forever, Zig. Maybe just have some fun while you’re at it,” Emma says with a laugh. I glance up to find her waggling her brows. “You know you could use theaction…”

“Ouch!” I bump my shoulder into hers. She’s not wrong, though.

I’m sex deprived. Severely.It’s probably why I’m still daydreaming about a totally PG-rated kiss that happened over twenty-four hours ago.

Meghan sighs deeply and gives my hand a squeeze. “If it were any one of us coming to you for advice, you’d encourage us to keep an open mind. I think it’s only fair that you apply that same advice to yourself, hun.”

When the girls say goodbye, I’m left alone with my thoughts. A dangerous place to be.

Because I also once thought Darius was a good guy. I once thought he was a good friend. I once thought that we had something special that summer when we used to hang out down by the waterfall.

I didn’t have a lot of friends back then. Everybody at my school just called me the weird girl, the loner, the loser hippie who liked nature way too much.

That’s why my secret friendship with Darius meant more to me than I could ever explain.

On that daylike so many others that summer, Darius and I were out by the waterfall. It was late in the afternoon, and I’d spent the better part of the day wandering through the forest, with Darius tagging along.

He’d been hanging onto my every word as I taught him the fascinating medicinal uses of the plants and herbs all around us in the woods.

He didn’t even turn away when I made him taste-test thedifferent wild berries, cattails, and nettle that we came across. In fact, I think he was more into it than I was at times.

“Can I eat these?”

“What are these called?”

“Do I just pull this off the top, and eat it like this?”

My heart had thumped double time when he made me feed him a ripened blackberry. Especially when my finger had accidentally brushed his mouth.

Everything was going perfectly until Darius got a little too adventurous in his herb exploration and ended up grabbing a poisonous plant.

“Oh my God!” I’d screeched. “Drop it! Drop it now!”

He did.

And I’d watched in shock as he immediately started scratching at his hands and forearms.

“It itches so bad!” he’d said, his voice panicked.

“No, don’t scratch. You’ll make it worse.” Now my heart was beating even faster. “Let me just look around and see if there’s any jewelweed. That’ll help soothe—”

I didn’t even get to finish. Because Darius sprinted across the forest floor and dove right into the water.

Meanwhile, I stood on the bank of the waterfall, telling him he’d be fine and trying—but failing—not to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I tried to hold it back. But he was being so ridiculously dramatic, thrashing around and rambling a bunch of nonsense.

“You’re laughing at me?” He’d coughed up a mouthful of water. “After I almost died of anaphylactic shock here?”

At that, I’d doubled over, laughing even harder.

Glaring daggers at me, he swam over, jumped out of the water and stomped toward me. Something in his mischievous eyes made me run.

Darius ran after me, chasing me around the forest. I laughed and ran and gasped for oxygen. It didn’t take him long to catchme, soaking me with his wet clothes while igniting a fire inside my belly.

But that wasn’t enough. He’d turned and jumped right back into the water, with me still in his arms.

I’d sputtered and splashed, wiping at my eyes. We were both completely and utterly drenched to the bone.

“Darius!” I was still in his arms, freaking out. I’d pushed at him. “Are you crazy? Don’t you know what everyone says about the waterfall?!”

---