Chapter 15
Fifteen
CLARA
I was quickly reminded that Samuel was a teenage boy rushing a fraternity trapped inside the body of a man in his mid-thirties. And much like a frat boy, he always had the stupidest ideas.
The problem was, nobody close to him seemed brave enough to call the ideas that came out of his mouth stupid, and so we all ended up having to go along with it.
We were having a pleasant enough time basking in the heat of the afternoon, slightly too full on food, and sipping on a rum punch that my mum had made. I stole the book Rachel had long discarded for her phone, but I could barely make it through a chapter because I was so distracted by the way the hem of Jesse’s trunks was straining against the muscles of his legs. He seemed to be having more success reading his own book. The twins were sunbathing, and our parents were still sitting around the outdoor table.
Samuel, Gavin, and Danielle were in the pool, idling about.
Everything was perfect until Samuel shouted, “Let’s play Gladiator!”
We all looked at him, and the silence his request was met with lulled me into a false sense of hope that someone might say, ‘That’s stupid, let’s just keep chilling.’
Instead, a matching New York accent sealed our fate.
“I’m down.”
If Gavin was in, that meant Becky had to take part, which meant?—
My book was plucked from my hand by someone now standing at the top of my sun lounger. I didn’t need to look up to know who it was, but I did.
“If I have to play this, then so do you,” Becky said, an eyebrow raised in a challenge.
“I don’t have a partner,” I tried weakly. Becky flicked her eyes over to Jesse.
“I think he’ll do,” she said as she walked away, Rachel’s book still in hand.
From the edge of the pool, Samuel started calling out orders.
“How about me and Danielle against Gav and Becky? Winners play Clara and…sorry I forgot your name?”
A lie. Samuel prided himself on the fact that he never forgot a name or a face.
“Jesse,” Jesse supplied as he closed his book and put it down beside him.
Samuel nodded. “Right yeah, of course. Winners play Clara and Jesse.”
“Oh no, what a shame Lucy and I don’t exist,” Rachel muttered from beside me, not looking up from her phone.
“You want to take my place?” I offered quietly. Rachel looked over at me.
“What, you don’t want your legs wrapped around that man’s head?”
I spluttered. Rachel smirked and looked back at her phone.
I turned my gaze to the pool. Becky still wasn’t in. Not completely, anyway. She had her legs dangling in the water but was in the process of tying her hair up in the most precise bun of her life. It was close to two minutes before she deemed it acceptable, and the people in the pool had started to get restless.
As Gavin got Becky settled on his shoulders, she rolled her shoulders back and stretched her neck out and I knew I was screwed. Becky was in full game mode. And when she was in this kind of mood, she didn’t lose.
Which was annoying for me because I wanted to take on Danielle, mostly because I knew I could beat her. Beating Becky wasn’t such a sure thing.
Danielle lasted less than five minutes. There was a brief moment where it looked like Becky might lose, but then she adjusted herself, and it became a one-sided fight. Danielle screamed as she fell into the water. Becky looked over at me, a challenge in her eyes, while Gavin carefully placed her down in the water.
“Looks like we’ve got a Becky-Clara showdown!” Samuel shouted as he made his way out of the pool, Danielle close behind.
I looked at Jesse.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. He turned his head and smiled at me as he got off the lounger.
“It will be fine,” he replied, and then he dived into the pool.
I followed Becky’s approach and took my time as I sat at the edge of the pool, took the hair tie Becky offered me, and tied my hair up.
“You know you might both be better off if you back down now,” I said as I pulled my curls up into a ponytail.
“Both of us, who?” Gavin asked.
“You and Jesse. For the sake of your shoulders,” I clarified as I tried to secure the hair tie around my hair. It wasn’t big enough, so I just secured as much hair up as I could and left the ones that refused to be restrained.
“We can carry you,” Gavin shot back, sounding indignant.
“I don’t doubt that. But Becky and I have known each other for years. We know how the other one thinks and moves. You could be here for a while.”
Jesse waded over to me. I watched a random drop of water fall from his hair and land on his collarbone, now free of his chain. It then made a path down the centre of his chest and through the valley of his stomach muscles before it rejoined the water. The feel of his hand wrapped around my calf alerted me to just how close he was, and he winked when he felt me jump at the shock of his touch.
“We’ll be fine,” he said before he let me go.
“No boob or face shots,” Becky said to me as I slid into the pool.
“No scratching,” I added. Becky nodded, and then she was up in the air on Gavin’s shoulders.
I could feel Jesse standing close behind me and a prickly kind of heat washed over me.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I just nodded in response. That seemed to be good enough for him because he took a breath and disappeared under the water. I knew it was coming, but there was still a jolt of surprise that made my knees feel weak when I felt his head slot in between my legs, pinning my thighs against his shoulders before he came back to the surface, and I surged into the air. I readjusted myself, and Jesse’s hands moved from my lower to my upper thigh and gripped on.
I’d spent most of the day aware of Jesse’s hands in some way. The weight of his palm in mine on the flight. The oddly comforting roughness of his slightly calloused thumb sweeping against the back of my hand as he tried to calm me down. The way his fingers curled around the gear stick and then later around my wrist with a careful gentleness.
As they held onto my thighs, I became aware of his hands in a different way. They were big. Huge, really. They comfortably covered my entire thigh. His grip wasn’t too strong, but it was strong enough that I could feel each finger pressing into my muscles. Even when he was trying to keep me on his shoulders, he seemed incapable of not sweeping his thumb up and down my outer thigh.
I was thankful that I could blame the change from water to air for the goose bumps erupting over my entire body.
“You ready?” Becky asked, amusement thick in her voice. She knew I wasn’t okay.
“Ready as I can be,” I said, voice steady as Gavin and Jesse walked us closer to each other and the game began.
Becky and I could read each other like our favourite books. Every time she made to grab the top of my arms, I intercepted her and pushed her arms wide, trying to throw her off balance. Every time I tried to aim for her waist and hit that part of her side that was ticklish, she curled over Gavin’s head and made it impossible for me to get the touch in.
I was so lost in trying to beat Becky that everything else fell away, and it was just me and her grappling in the air.
Then one of Jesse’s fingers brushed against the edge of my bikini bottoms, and I realised how high up his hands were on my legs, and suddenly, every nerve ending in my body was alight.
The surprise of his touch so close to my centre made my concentration break, and I slackened. I thought the lapse was momentary, but this was Becky, so even though it was quick, it was still enough for her to weaponise. Before I knew it, I was falling backwards into the pool. Jesse’s rough fingers ran along the entire length of my legs as I fell.
I spluttered to the surface, and before I could even try to find the bottom of the pool with my feet, Jesse’s hands were on my waist, pulling me towards him and solid ground.
“And we have a winner! You’re a savage, Rebecca!” Samuel shouted, and Gavin lowered her into the pool with control.
“Not a savage, just took advantage of a moment of weakness,” Becky said with a sly smile thrown in my direction before she went to climb out of the pool.
“You okay?” Jesse’s voice was a deep rumble in my ear. His hands were still on my waist, his pinkies tracing the waistband of my bikini bottoms.
I was suddenly desperate for his fingers to dip down lower and lower until he reached where I was now starting to ache. No one would have to know. The water would distort everything…
I shook my head before I could let that thought go any further. He was close enough that he would notice if my cheeks started blushing, and I didn’t want to explain why that was happening.
“I’m fine. Just wet.” I heard it as soon as I said it. I wanted to clarify that I meant because I had just gone underwater, but Jesse’s eyes shifted, and the words got stuck in my throat.
“Sorry we lost,” he said roughly as he dropped his hands.
I managed to mask the whimper I made at the loss of his touch as a half-hearted laugh, and then, because I didn’t trust myself to say anything else, I took a deep breath and sank underwater.
The echo under the surface calmed me down like it always did. Until I made the mistake of opening my eyes, and I was now eye level with the slight bulge in Jesse’s trunks. I should have closed my eyes again, if only to stop them stinging with all the chlorine, but I didn’t. I watched Jesse and that bulge retreat out of the pool.
As Jesse exited the pool, Becky stuck a hand under the surface and started pointing up and then left. The opposite direction to where Jesse had just exited.
I felt bad about leaving him, but I swam to the left as directed.
Becky and Lucy were on the left side of the pool by the time I got there.
“You let me win,” Becky said the moment I resurfaced.
“No, I didn’t,” I assured her.
“Then what the fuck happened? You were in it, and then you weren’t.” Becky loved winning, but she only liked it when she felt like she had been adequately challenged in the first place. I went down too easy for her, and it wasn’t for that good a reason.
“His hand moved,” I said quietly.
I was met with nearly identical looks of confusion.
“Come again?” Lucy asked.
Becky didn’t need the clarification. She knew.
“Clara over here was turned on,” Becky said, amusement lacing her tone.
My instinct was to deny it. If I had been talking to anyone else, I would have denied it, but there was no point with these two. I could maybe get away with spinning the truth.
“It was a momentary lapse. I’m pretty sure I’m ovulating or something,” I said.
Becky barked out a laugh. “Clo, you went completely slack. Boneless. I hardly even pushed you, and you went down like a house of cards. That was more than just hormones. I don’t blame you, he’s very attractive.”
“Yeah, we don’t call him ‘hot neighbour’ for nothing,” Lucy said. That was news to me.
“You do?” I asked.
Lucy shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, objectively, he is a very attractive man. I like looking at him. I doubt I would get that worked up about his hand brushing up against my leg, though.”
“It wasn’t brushing . It was pressed into the crease of my thigh!”
That was the wrong thing to say. Twin smiles broke out on their faces.
“Oh, you are so fucked when he actually gets his hands on you with intention. Le petit mort indeed. It’s been nice knowing you, I guess,” Becky said as she pushed herself out of the pool.
“What do you mean when ? There isn’t going to be a when!”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Becky laughed as she walked away.
“Nothing is going to happen,” I reiterated to Lucy.
“Tell me that again after you’ve slept in the same bed for a night,” she said before she got up and followed her sister.
“Nothing is going to happen,” I said out loud to myself.
I couldn’t bring myself to believe it, though.