Page 97 of Puck Your Feelings
"Forty-two seconds," Wall announces from the dock, phone in hand, looking disappointingly unsurprised. "Pathetic."
"I'd—" cough, "—like to see—" more coughing, "—you do better!"
Wall pockets his phone with the kind of casual smugness that makes me want to drown him. "I just did. Two minutes, fifteen seconds."
"He's a freak of nature," Petrov calls from where he's lounging on an inflatable flamingo that's seen better days. Possibly better decades.
I flip Wall off, which loses some of its impact when I'm still wheezing like an asthmatic accordion.
Coach surprised us this morning with a day off—an actual, honest-to-god day off where we're not running drills or watching analysis videos or pretending to enjoy protein shakes that taste like depression, so naturally here we are, acting like unsupervised children.
The lake itself is gorgeous in that postcard way that makes you wonder why anyone lives in cities. Water so clear you can see the rocky bottom near the shore, surrounded by pine trees that smell like Christmas fucked summer and had a beautiful baby. Mountains in the distance doing their mountain thing—being tall, looking majestic, probably judging us.
"Babe, hold still," Mateo's voice cuts through my wheezing recovery.
I turn to find him aggressively applying sunscreen to Groover's face.
"Babe, I'm fine—" Groover protests, trying to duck away.
Mateo's not having it, already slathering another handful of SPF 50 onto Groover's nose. "Melanoma is not fine."
Ace, floating nearby on a pool noodle, makes the fatal mistake of laughing. "You missed a spot."
Mateo's head whips around like a horror movie villain. "Come here, Ace."
"I'm good!"
"Get back here!"
Ace abandons his pool noodle and starts swimming for his life, Mateo in pursuit with the sunscreen bottle raised like a weapon. Petrov's filming the whole thing on his phone, cackling so hard he nearly falls off his flamingo.
"Let the man moisturize!" Coach Martin shouts from his beach chair, not looking up from his magazine. He's wearing flamingo swim trunks that match Petrov's floatie, which raises questions about their shopping habits I'm not sure I want answered.
I scan the shoreline and spot Kane sitting on the dock, fully clothed in a t-shirt and board shorts, watching the chaos with that careful expression he gets when he's trying not to look too interested in fun.
He's also watching me. A lot. Every time I glance over, his eyes are right there, tracking my movements like I'm a play he's studying.
I swim over, water warm as bathwater in the August heat. "You planning to actually get in, or just supervise?"
He looks down at me, and there's something different in his expression today. Lighter, maybe. Like someone loosened a screw that's been too tight for too long. "Assessing the situation."
"It's water, Kane." I rest my arms on the dock, tilting my head back to look up at him. "Or are you worried about your robot parts malfunctioning?"
His mouth does that thing—not quite a smile, but close enough that I'm counting it as a one. "Rust is a legitimate concern."
"ATTENTION!" Wall's voice booms across the lake. He's standing at the end of the dock, hands on his hips like a superhero about to make a terrible decision. "I'm doing a cannonball."
"You'll create a tsunami!" Petrov shouts, paddling his flamingo to safer waters.
"That's the point."
Everyone near the dock starts swimming away, yelling variations of "WALL, NO—"
Wall's already jumping.
The splash is biblical. A wall of water erupts from the lake, drenching everyone within a fifteen-foot radius. Including Coach Martin, whose magazine is now a soggy papier-mâché disaster.
Wall surfaces, grinning like he just won the Stanley Cup.
