Page 27 of One Last Summer
“One point for me; thank you, Linus.” Mack dragged a hand through his hair as he took a few steps backward toward the water.
“I’m just in very comfortable sweatpants that I don’t feel like taking off right now,” I insisted, following him. “I could beat you, easily.”
“Wow, you really have gotten soft,” Mack taunted as he unbuttoned his jeans, kicking them off at the ankle as my eyes immediately followed, betraying my good intentions again. “I guess that’s what happens when the city girl can’t drive the three hours to get up here once a year.”
“You really think you’re going to get me to swim by calling me a ‘city girl’?” Irritation warmed in me like a fever. “Okay, camp counselor.”
“Come on, Millen, do it for the Wi-Fi password at least.” He stretched a long arm overhead, moving with such effortless, calm ease. “And I’m the waterfront director, and winter caretaker, not a counselor. Get it right next time.”
Mack was practically naked now, watching me as I stood there flustered. I don’t think I’d ever used the word “languid” in a sentence before, but I remembered it from SAT prep in high school, and it was exactly how I’d describe Mack at this moment, standing there in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. The air around me felt fuzzy and warm, even though we were down by the water’s edge, away from the fire.
I hadn’t slept with anyone since Charles and I had split, and clearly the presence of a half-naked man was making my libido misfire.
“Okay, sure. Fine,” I said with a huff, though there was a part of me craving the frigid water, in the hope that it might stamp out this crackling heat that kept rising inside of me. “One race, just to shut you up.”
I was annoyed at his ridiculous challenge, and I rolled my eyes one more time just to let him know. But there was another part of me that felt eager and alive, open to possibility. Like a wish boat, about to be set out on the lake.
Maybe everything I wanted was really out there, just waiting for me on the other side.
13
“OH, IT’S ON, Millen.” He gave me an eager smile, rubbing his hands together and jogging in place to get warm as I tossed my sweatshirt into the clothing heap growing by my feet. I had nothing on but an old wireless bra and some dingy pink underpants faded to gray from years of washing. But something in Mack’s face twitched, just for an instant, as he glanced at me.
I pointed at him, about to issue some sort of challenge. But before I could he made a dash for the water. And just like that he morphed from relaxed, beach bum, boathouse-living Mack to the cunning competitor that I remembered as a kid, shapeshifting into a blur of black boxer briefs hitting the lake.
“Goddamnit!” I shrieked, scrambling to catch up.
“Come on, Clara!” Sam hollered somewhere behind me.
The water was shallow off the beach, barely past my knees, but that didn’t stop me from diving right in. The chill of the lake hit me like a brain freeze after a bite of ice cream, cold and sharp. I didn’t care. Instead, I kicked furiously, driven by the urge to win, as if beating Mack right now could somehow make up for all the other parts of my life that I was failing at.
Arms tearing through the water, I was soon behind him, then next to him, and then, somehow, miraculously, reaching a hand onto the faded wood of the diving raft before him.
Seconds after my fingertips grazed the smooth planks, he was there, panting, mouth open, water tracing wet lines down the curves of his cheekbones.
“Jesus Christ, Millen,” he huffed. He sounded stuck between annoyed and impressed and gave me a befuddled, awed look.
It was impossible not to smile.
“I told you—no ties.” My voice was choppy as I caught my breath, enjoying this opportunity to gloat. “Looks like you’re a little rusty. Which is weird because you literally live on this lake year-round, and I—as you pointed out so kindly—haven’t made the three-hour drive up here in years.”
He laughed as he shook the water from his hair, his moves registering somewhere between a supermodel and a golden retriever puppy. I stuck my tongue out at him and then dove toward the ladder on the other side of the floating wooden dock, hoisting myself up onto the platform. It bobbed in the water under my weight, the night air hitting my skin with a slap.
The diving dock was huge, complete with the high-dive tower that I’d been too scared to jump off as a camper. Sitting here under it, I could see why—it seemed even taller and more terrifying than I’d remembered.
I sat down, knees bent, waving at my friends on the shore. They were tiny versions of themselves, shrunk by the distance, but the lake carried the echo of their cheers across the water. Then Mack was next to me, standing, hands on his hips, bent over and out of breath. I tilted my head up toward him, a sassy comment on the edge of my lips, until he caught my eye with a look so sultry all words evaporated on my tongue.
My face was now precariously close to every spot on his body I swore I would stop thinking about. But I couldn’t, not when I could practically reach out and nip his hip bone with my teeth. My heart pounded against my rib cage, beating blood into every vein as Mack leaned forward, turning the distance between us into mere millimeters.
He reached a hand toward me, fingers soft against my shoulder, gliding up the back of my neck. My heart was good and gone now, leaving my body, falling into the water, dropping straight to the bottom of this lake. His fingers twisted in my hair—and just as I was sure I’d completely lost my ability to breathe, he stepped back, a rust-colored leaf dangling from the tips of his fingers.
He twirled it for a moment, his eyes still on me, completely unreadable.
Then, without a sound, he walked to the edge of the raft and did a flip-dive into the water. He could go from smoldering to utterly ridiculous in an instant, but these two sides of him pulled at me equally. That duality was all Mack, and I’d forgotten the spell it put on me.
But now? Now I remembered, and it took me a moment to regain my composure and rediscover my pulse. Leaping to my feet, I backed up to the far edge of the raft and took off running, as if this jump into the water could prove that he didn’t just knock the wind out of me.
“Cannonball!” The words barely made it out of my mouth before my body smacked into the lake. I sunk into the blackness, a brief escape from the heat bubbling between us. When I finally made it to the surface, he was already climbing back up onto the platform, hanging on to the ladder as he watched me move through the water. Seconds later he was diving in again, and so I followed.
