Page 68 of Mess With Me

I laugh. Griffin’s lips curl up on one side, too, and now I have to look away. God damn that man’s spare smiles.

Griffin stands with his toes sticking out over the edge of the rock next to the deepest part of the water and takes a few bracing breaths.

“I could just push you,” I say. “If you’re scared.”

“You would not be able to push me.” He barely interrupts his weird breathing exercise to lob that one at me.

“No?”

“No. And if you try, be prepared to get wet.” He meets my eye. “You can swim, right?”

That sounds distinctly like a challenge. “I got a lifeguard certificate once upon a time.” Not that my mother let me do any lifeguarding. We also had a pool in the backyard, but I don’t mention that part. “Prepare to get dunked, buddy.”

“Buddy?”

“You heard me.” I begin tiptoeing backward into the dirt. The only way I’m going to get him to lose his balance is by getting a running start.

Once I get far enough back, I gear up, knowing he hasn’t jumped in yet because of me. He widens his stance.

Gotcha, buddy. He thinks I’m going to shoulder check him at the hips—that’s about how high I’m going to come bending over. I hold out my hands as if preparing to do just that.

I start running. But instead of pushing forward, I leap off my feet.

But just as I do, so does he, except he dives sideways, to the left. With too much momentum to stop, I shriek ungracefully as the ground disappears below my feet and I fly through the air, limbs windmilling. I arc over him just as he pops his head out of the water to watch, flipping his hair out of his eyes and grinning—actually grinning—as I land in the water with the world’s most ungraceful splash.

For a moment, I freeze. Like literally freeze—this water is so. Freaking. Cold. Then I remember my arms and legs and propel my upper half out of the water.

“THISISTHECOLDESTWATERI’VE EVEROHMYFUCKINGGOD!” I scream in one continuous shriek, madly front crawling back to the ledge. I leap out of the water just in time to see Chester burst back out of the trees, his eyes covered with his hand.

“Miss Sasha! Are you okay?”

I’m barely able to catch my breath. I stand there with my hands on my thighs, breathing hard.

I don’t feel cold at all, not out in the warm air. If anything, I feel exhilarated. Though I’m still trying to grapple with the shock. “Chester. You could have warned me this water’s a barely melted glacier!”

“Why d’ya think I’m not in it?” His eyes are still covered. I crawl over to Griffin’s pack and pull out a towel, wrapping it around myself.

“Coast is clear, Chester. I’m decent.”

“Miss, you’re always decent. It’s these old eyes that just aren’t accustomed to young people’s ideas of fashion. If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to let Griffin take you home. I found a squirrel nest I need to add to my map.”

I don’t pretend to understand that, just smile. “Okay.”

Chester waves and narrowly misses smacking into a tree. A moment later, he disappears into the woods.

I look back at Griffin, who’s hunched over the rock ledge, still half-submerged in the water. “Griffin, what’s wr—” I cut myself off as I see his shoulders shaking. He’s laughing.

At me.

“Oh, I see. The second time I see you laugh, and it’s at me.”

“It was…the legs,” Griffin says, his words coming out kind of choked. He waves his hand around, not looking up. “The arms.”

I drop the towel, fisting my hands on my hips. “I looked funny, did I? Guess who’s gonna look funny when he’s dunked?”

Griffin looks up just in time to see those same arms and legs running toward him. He attempts to dive sideways, but I adjust. I leap into the water, landing next to him in a perfectly positioned cannonball, whooping like a banshee.

It’s cold again, of course, but not the shock it was the first time, and now I have a mission. Griffin drops underwater, swimming away.

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