by Box Set
Nathan returned from a hallway beyond the living room. He held a pair of green shorts in his hands. He moved to the door, bending his head to look down at me. “Want to come in?”
I made a face, pointing to my wet clothes. “I’m dripping,” I whispered.
“So am I.” He pulled the sliding door open further and beckoned to me. “There’s a bathroom right there. You can put the shorts on if you want.”
I nodded.
“Do you want a t-shirt?” he asked. “It’ll probably be big on you.”
I tugged at my blouse. “It’ll give time for this to dry.”
He smiled. “I’ll toss them in the dryer after you’re done.”
He pointed me toward the bathroom again and I stepped inside of it. There didn’t appear to be anyone else around. My parents would have killed me if they’d known I was alone with a boy in an empty house. As it was, my own mind was coming up with all the things my parents warned me about. Would he have me follow him to his bedroom? Would he pressure me for sex? Would I be interested? And why did I feel like I was betraying Kota, Silas and Victor by being here? Were they worried about me right now and wondering what was going on? Did they even care? Maybe I needed Nathan after all. If I messed up too badly with Kota and the others, maybe Nathan and I could be friends instead. Were we friends now?
The bathroom was big. There was a wide tub with a glass sliding door. Black stone tile covered the floor, and the counter was carved dark stone. The walls were white. Photos of helicopters lined the walls.
I was just putting on the shorts when there was a knock at the door. “I’ve got a shirt.”
I opened the door and he handed me a dark blue t-shirt with some writing in a language I didn’t recognize.
“Does your dad fly helicopters?” I asked. My voice was weaker. What little ability I had gained to talk was becoming lost.
“Yeah,” he said. I closed the door again. It sounded like he leaned against the door. “He makes trips between here and New York. Sometimes to Florida. He’s gone a lot.”
I picked up my wet clothes from the floor, holding them away from my body as they were dripping. I opened the door.
Nathan was against the door frame, leaning his head against it. He stood up straight as I took a half step out “It fits?” he asked.
The shorts were tied tight around my waist but the lower hem was down at my knees. The t-shirt was a couple of sizes too big and covered my butt. “I look weird.”
He laughed. “You’re actually kind of cute. You should totally wear that your first day of school.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but betrayed myself by giggling.
He took the wet clothes from my hand. “Go jump in. I’ll put these in the dryer.”
I crossed the living room, went outside and stepped up to the edge of the pool again. The smell of the chlorine was intoxicating. I wondered for a moment if he felt I was intruding on him for his pool. I had already interrupted his run. What other plans could I have been interrupting?
I did a shallow dive from one corner and took off across the water. Despite my worries, I wasn’t going to waste a moment of swim time if I had his permission. Holding my breath, I wriggled my body to make my way to the opposite corner on the far end. I wanted to check to see how long I could hold my breath before getting up on the other side.
I almost made it. I blamed jumping in first and being so excited as to why I couldn’t do it. I surfaced a couple of feet away, sucking in a breath of air and starting a slow breaststroke. When I reached the corner, I stopped for a moment and relaxed to slow down my breathing. I knew being calm under the water was important to being able to hold my breath longer. I pushed off with my feet against the edge of the pool.
I used my hands this time under the water to give me a little extra push, but most of the power came from the movements I made, almost mermaid-like. I cut through the water quickly, reaching the other side. I touched the far wall and popped up at the surface, taking in a breath.
“You could get faster,” Nathan said. He was standing on the edge of the pool in front of the house. I almost smiled at him, ready with a joke that I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear. I wanted to break the tension because he’d startled me. His face was serious. “Pull your hands to your chest.” He did the motion with his own hands. “Shoot them out above your head as you do that thing where you bring your head up. Then as you’re moving your feet, spread out your hands and pull like you’re crawling through the water.”
I watched his arm motions and then nodded. It didn’t look difficult. I sucked in a breath and kicked off.
While I wasn’t trying to go at my fastest speed before, knowing he was watching now, I threw my body into the motions. My body curved against the water and I tried the hand movement he’d shown me. It was more work forcing my arm muscles into sweeping motions, but he was right; the stroke was much more powerful and the effort was twice as effective.
I broke the surface at the far corner, hearing him hooting.
“You’re good,” he said.
I was breathless, but I smiled at him. I moved a hand to my arm, rubbing the bicep. It was going to be sore tomorrow if I kept up that pace.
“You should do some weight training.” He walked over to where I was against the edge of the pool and slid in to stand next to me. He tilted his head at me. “Are you going to join the swim team?”
I blushed, shaking my head. “I’m not much of a competitor.”
“You’re shitting me.”
I half laughed. “I don’t mind a short race.”
He blinked at me, smiling. “Should we race?” he asked.
Race him? He had to be kidding. “I’ll try,” I whispered.
“Should we bet on the outcome?”
My eyes narrowed at him. “You’ll win.”
“You don’t know that. You’re pretty quick. You’re smaller than me, too. You could probably move through the water faster than I could.”
“What do you want?”
He shrugged. “If you win, what would you want?”
I raised an eyebrow at him, unsure of his motives. Was this a trick to get me to do something else crazy? “I want to know the secret to getting into the back woods.”
His mouth broke into a wide grin. “I was going to show you that anyway.”
I made a face. I didn’t know what else to ask for. Then I pointed to the t-shirt I was wearing. “This?” When I said it, it seemed to be too much. Was he being serious at all about it though? Or was this just for fun?
He nodded. “If I win...” he paused, looking at my face like he was trying to read something from me. I got the feeling he was weighing out what he could get away with asking me. “If I win, you promise that if we end up with a class together, you’ll sit next to me.”
It was an odd request. I felt my brows lifting. I wasn’t sure if he was serious. “That’s it?” I croaked out.
“Hey, if I’m going to cheat off of someone, I’d like a willing participant.”
My mouth popped open and my fingers flutter to the base of my throat. “Nathan?”
He shook his head, laughing. “I’m kidding. I don’t cheat.”
I grinned. “I do.” There was no way I could win this race. I knew he wouldn’t let me. I positioned my feet up against the edge of the pool.
The smile remained on his face and he tilted his head toward me. “Really?”
Before he reacted, I shot away from the wall under the water, pushing myself against the resistance with what strength I had inside me. I managed to get past him and tried to widen the distance to be out of his reach. I used the arm movement he showed me, throwing my whole body into the stroke. If I was going to have a chance, I needed to get clear of him.
I was halfway through the pool when I felt a hand on my ankle. In one pull, I was sailing backward through the water faster than I’d ever moved at my own doing. Nathan flew ahead of me. His reddish hair broke the surface and in a few easy breaststrokes, he
was on the other side.
I made it over halfway again before I surfaced. I bobbed in the water, my chest heaving as I was laughing too hard. “Cheat!” I gasped out.
“You can’t cheat if you didn’t set rules.” He stood up, drips of water sliding over the muscles in his chest and stomach. I tried not to gape but it was hard not to be in awe of the power he had.
I made a face at him, sticking my tongue in his direction.
“Don’t go pulling that face on me. You owe me now.”
I laughed, splashing him. I didn’t think I would have minded sitting next to him in class, anyway. Although when I thought about it, I wondered how I would concentrate if I had someone like him nearby.
He smirked, sizing me up and positioning his legs against the wall. “I warned you about splashing.”
He caught me before I had a chance to move.
It was another hour before I crawled my way out of the pool, falling on my stomach on the concrete, gulping in air.
“Give up?” Nathan asked, coming up beside me and sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water.
“You play rough,” I wheezed out. Between all the races and him tossing me around the pool, I was dizzy.
He laughed and shook his head, rubbing a palm at his temple. “And here I thought I had my own little mermaid who could keep up,” he challenged.
I blushed. Was he claiming me? “You know she dies at the end of the original story.”
His eyes darkened and his lips twisted. “What? Why?”
“She sacrifices herself for the prince’s happiness.”
“That’s fucked up. Wasn’t he happy with her?”
“He was in love with another girl.”
“What an ass.”
I rolled my eyes and then flopped over until I was on my back, letting the sun warm me. There was a gentle breeze that flitted around us. I remained jealous of the pool he owned. Whenever I could own my own house, I decided I wanted one just like it.
His eyes focused on my body. I thought that he was being perverted for a moment as the shirt was sticking to my chest but I felt the breeze on my skin and then realized my side must have been exposed. The bruise near my butt was prominent.
“Where’d you get that?” His eyes focused in on it. He reached out as if to touch it but he only lifted the shirt a little to get a better look. He sucked in a breath and then reached for his other hand to pull down the fabric of the shorts, leaning in to get a closer look. “Jesus. What’d you do that for?”
“I fell,” I said softly.
“On to someone’s foot?”
“On to the concrete.”
“How the hell did it get that bad on your hip?”
“It was the angle, I think.” I moved a hand to pull away the shirt and stuff it down to hide the bruise. “It’s fine,” I recited. “Looks worse than it feels.”
“Probably not,” he said. “I’ve had my share of bruises. That’s a nasty one.”
I shrugged and swallowed to try to get some voice back. “I can’t do anything for it.”
He pushed himself up until he was standing and then reached a hand down to me. “I’ve got something.”
I wasn’t sure if this was another trick, but I’d gotten sort of used to his face. When he wore that serious look, he meant it. Then I hesitated, because he was asking me to touch him again. I reached up, feeling his hand wrap around mine and he pulled me up until I was standing.
He held on to my hand, walking around the pool and heading toward the large shed that was in the back. It made me blush that he was holding my hand. We’d just met. He was touching me. Was this normal to happen right away? I mean, friends hold hands sometimes. I was sure I’d read about it in books. It also happened when a guy liked you a lot and wanted to be your boyfriend. So which was it? Why did these things have to be so confusing?
“Wait here,” he said. “The floor is wood. I don’t want you to slip.”
“What about you?”
He ignored the question, or didn’t hear me that time, and opened the latch, pulling open the wide barn-like door. The inside of the shed did have a pine floor. The polish gleamed. There was black padding along the edges about a foot high against the wall and karate posters above them. There were a few belts in cases in different colors, dates etched into gold plates in the frames. A skylight at the top let in some natural light but he flicked a switch and two rows of fluorescent lights turned on.
I knew he said not to, but I couldn’t resist wanting to get a closer look at the belts and posters on the wall. There was his name, Nathan Griffin, etched into those gold plates with the various degrees of rank that I didn’t quite understand. There was a framed newspaper clipping with his name on it, too, and a picture of a much younger Nathan holding up a trophy. I sensed him stepping up behind me, looking at what I was looking at. “You do karate?” I asked.
“Kind of.”
I turned to face him, blinking, not understanding.
“It’s Jujitsu. And Taekwondo. And some other martial arts. Karate is just a different style.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s really cool.”
His face softened and he smiled at me. “I know.” He crossed the room to a small closet that protruded from the rear wall. He searched the shelves until he found what he was looking for and turned around. “Let me see that bruise again,” he said, coming back across the floor.
I stepped back out onto the pavement and he turned off the light, closing the door. He turned to me and I lifted the shirt to reveal the bruise. He held a crumpled white tube in his hand. He opened the top and squirted out a white cream onto his palm. He pressed his fingers to the bruise to lather it into my skin.
“What is this?” An acidic medicine smell made me crinkle my nose. The cream was greasy and while he was delicate as he rubbed, it did hurt as he touched me. Part of me wondered if it was because I was super sensitive that he was a boy I still didn’t know well, and he was touching a part of me that made me shiver.
“Arnica cream. It’s supposed to help with bruising and sore muscles.” He dipped his fingers down into my shorts to cover a little more of the area, then wiped his hand off on his trunks and closed the medicine. He handed the tube to me. “Put this on twice a day until it starts to turn green.”
I took the medicine and held it to my chest. “Thank you.”
He was standing close to me. His blue eyes fixed on mine. “You’re pretty nice for a girl.”
I half choked. “What?”
“You know,” he said, waving his hand around his head, being dismissive. “Girls are all ‘give me that’ and usually want to get all cute on the couch and not get their hair wet and... yeah, indoor types.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Girls don’t like wet hair?”
He laughed. “You’re totally missing the point.”
“Probably because I’m a girl.” I don’t know why but I felt defensive about being separated from other girls. Normal girls don’t like to swim?
He rolled his eyes, waving his hand again in the air, but laughed. An alarm noise sounded nearby and he raced over to where he had dropped his shirt near the pool. He pulled out a cell phone and answered it. I was trying not to overhear the conversation, but it was difficult not to. “Yeah? No, I was just swimming with Sang. She’s the... oh. You know her?” He turned, looking at me with his eyebrow raised as he listened. “Yeah, okay. We’ll come over.” He hung up.
I swallowed. Uh oh. That had to be Kota or one of the other guys. So they knew each other?
He checked the sports watch at his wrist. “Have to be somewhere?”
I considered what I should say. Should I lie and go home? No, I still had to ensure they didn’t try calling. I still wasn’t sure how to explain what happened to my voice or why they couldn’t do something as normal as call me. I shook my head.
Nathan’s head tilted toward the house. “Let’s get dressed. How’d you meet Kota?”
“Long story.”
<
br /> He smiled. “Tell me on the way to his house.”
* * *
I stood with Nathan on Kota’s front porch. My hair was still wet and my jeans were kind of dirty. I was grateful they were fully dry. I pulled my hair out of the mess on top of my head, untangling the clip. I held the clip with my teeth and twisted my hair again, clipping it back up in a quick movement. Drips fell on my neck as the tips of my hair spilled out from the top of the clip.
Nathan watched me as I did it. “Looks like shit,” he said with a teasing grin.
I made a face at him just as Jessica opened the door. She looked cute in a little pink flower dress. She peered out at us, took one look at Nathan, turned bright red and rushed away from the door, leaving it hanging open.
I lifted an eyebrow and turned toward him.
He looked perplexed at me and shrugged his shoulders. “She caught me sparring with a friend one day. It probably looked like I beat him up pretty bad. I heard Victor tell her one day if she didn’t get straight A’s like her brother, I’d come over and do the same thing to her.”
I was still laughing when Kota came to the door.
“There you are,” he said. He wore Calvin Klein jeans and a short sleeve, white dress shirt, buttoned to his neck. His slid his glasses up further on his nose, looking relieved. “What happened to you?”
I blinked at him. “You were looking for me?” I whispered.
His eyes focused on me. “What?”
“Her voice is gone,” Nathan said. “She can’t talk.”
Kota’s expression changed, his eyebrow raised. “It was fine yesterday. What happened?” His eyes were intense on me.
My heart was throbbing so hard that I wasn’t sure how to react. My lips moved, but I couldn’t figure out what to say.
He frowned. “I almost went over to your house. I wasn’t sure how to reach you. I tried walking by just in case you happened to look out. I wondered if you were in trouble.”
I pushed a finger toward my lower lip. “Sorry,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“What’s the problem?” Nathan asked, shifting on his feet and looking between me and Kota. “What’s going on?”