Page 98 of Puck Your Feelings
Coach sets down his ruined magazine with the calm of a man who's given up on dignity. "Wallace."
"...Yes, Coach?"
"That's ten lap tomorrow."
"Worth it," Wall says, and honestly, based on the look of pure joy on his face, I believe him.
Kane's still sitting on the dock, somehow having escaped the splash zone. But now he's pulling off his shirt, revealing a torso that has no business existing in nature. Muscles that look like they were designed by someone who really, really likes their job. A dusting of dark hair that trails down past his navel and disappears beneath his waistband.
My brain takes a brief vacation to a place where thoughts go to die.
He dives in—clean, precise, barely a splash—and surfaces a few feet away, water streaming down his face.
I'm staring. I'm definitely staring. I should stop staring.
I don't stop staring.
Petrov, apparently having a death wish, swims up behind Kane and sends a massive splash directly into his face.
Kane sputters, whipping around. "What the—"
"Initiation!" Petrov's already swimming away, cackling.
"That's not a thing," Kane calls after him.
"Is now!"
What follows is possibly the most entertaining chase I've witnessed all summer. Kane cuts through the water like a torpedo, closing the distance with the kind of speed that reminds me he's a professional athlete who takes his cardio seriously. Petrov's shrieking, flamingo abandoned, and when Kane finally catches him, he dunks him underwater with the efficiency of a mob enforcer.
Petrov comes up sputtering. "Betrayal!"
"You started it," Wall observes from where he's floating on his back.
"Whose side are you on?"
"Chaos."
I'm laughing so hard my stomach hurts, and when I look over, Kane's laughing too. His whole face transforms when he laughs. Less robot, more human. More like someone I want to know everything about.
The afternoon dissolves into that perfect kind of lazy chaos where time stops feeling linear. The sun climbs higher, turning the lake into a sheet of hammered gold. Someone finds a volleyball, and a game breaks out that has rules no one can agree on. Ace executes a dive that's more belly flop than anything else. Groover, having somehow escaped Mateo's sunscreen tyranny, gets immediately burned, prooving Mateo right.
Eventually, the energy mellows. The volleyball gets abandoned. People drift into smaller clusters, floating in thesun-warmed water, talking shit in that easy way that only happens when everyone's too relaxed to maintain their usual personas.
I end up on my back, floating, eyes closed, letting the sun bake into my skin. The water laps gently around me, and I can hear the distant sounds of my teammates—Petrov arguing with Wall about something, Groover's laugh, Coach's occasional commentary from the shore.
I feel someone float up beside me. I don't need to open my eyes to know who it is—I've developed this stupid sixth sense where I can tell when Kane's nearby, like my body's installed some kind of Kane-detection radar without asking my permission first.
I open my eyes anyway, and he's right there, floating on his back next to me, close enough that our arms almost touch.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi."
The word hangs between us, soft as the water sounds.
"This is nice," he says after a moment, so quiet I almost miss it.
"The lake?"
