Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Bower
I’d seen the caravan of new guests arriving from where we’d been fishing on the lake, right before Dean had shot a hole in the bottom of the boat.
It was amazing how fast that thing had sunk.
Luckily we hadn’t been too far offshore, or I would’ve gotten some serious swimming in.
I’d jumped off the boat, leaving Dean to try to pull it ashore.
Knowing him, he’d probably already given up and sacrificed the boat to the lake.
Mia was finally here. I’d waited all summer for this week—all year. I didn’t have any way to contact her. She still didn’t have a cell phone, and my teachers had called my handwriting “unreadable.” Not that I’d sit down and write a letter anyway.
Just another thing on a long list of my missteps.
There was always something I was doing wrong or just not right enough.
I was the troublemaker at school, and home wasn’t any better.
I figured my grandparents held their breath every evening when I walked through the door, bracing themselves for what I’d look like or what I’d fess up to.
At least I wasn’t a liar—the one thing I wasn’t.
But it wasn’t like I had much of a choice in this small town.
The truth would inevitably get back to them, and then I’d be in even more trouble than if I’d just told them the truth about something to begin with.
When Mia was here, my grandparents were happier, definitely less stressed. They smiled when I walked through the door because they knew Mia kept me busy and out of trouble. Instead of lectures each night, I would sit down at the kitchen table with them and we’d talk, even joke around.
It was nice having Mia here, even if our only connection with each other was this week.
After I’d hosed off, I’d hardly recognized the girl sitting at my kitchen table.
She’d grown in the past year—in a good way.
Her blonde hair was longer, her lips were redder, and her breasts were… I’d had to pull my gaze away quickly.
It wasn’t like that with her. We were close—just friends.
Suddenly the plans I had for us this week seemed immature. I was going to take a girl like that fishing?
She deserved more than that.
But she liked that stuff too, right? That was why she always came to find me every year. She wanted to do those things.
We’d start with fishing. After that, I’d figure something out. Do something that would impress her.
Mia was quieter than she’d been last year.
Maybe it’d been the interaction between me and my grandma that’d scared her.
I’d watched her sink lower and lower in her seat as she’d watched me and my grandma go back and forth.
She never saw that side of me. When she was here, I was always on my best behavior—I never wanted to get her in trouble or mess up the short time she had here.
But maybe it was the rifle that’d scared her. Yeah, it was probably that.
We paddled out onto the lake, Mia at the front and me steering in the back.
She wore her hair tied up in a ponytail like she always did, but this time the tip of her ponytail brushed below her shoulder blades—accentuating the way her waist dipped in before her hips flared out.
She was in those bike shorts she always had on, and I had to pull my eyes away from the way the canoe’s seat pushed the top of her ass up.
Mia was the same girl I’d always known, just in a much more attractive package.
Looking back, she really hadn’t changed all that much.
Or maybe I was just now noticing how attractive she was.
Dean always gave me shit for being a late bloomer.
Maybe I was. Guys had probably been drooling over Mia for years.
I dragged the paddle in the water, slowing us down once we got to a spot I knew was good for bass. She already had the tackle box open by the time I laid my paddle on the bottom of the canoe.
“Would you like any help?”
Mia had a knife out and was cutting the fishing line. She shook her head. “It needed a new hook.”
I watched as she dangled the line with the bent hook between her fingers, dropping it into the bottom of the tackle box.
At first, it’d surprised me that Mia enjoyed fishing, especially since so much of it was slimy, wet, and sometimes sticky. But there was a lot to enjoy about fishing that didn’t involve getting dirty.
She held out her newly tied hook, sporting the same knot in the line that I’d taught her to tie last year.
I couldn’t help but smile. I took the hook, my fingers brushing against hers before she let go.
My eyes bounced from the hook I was baiting back to where she sat, holding the rod in her hands.
There was a smile on her lips—there she was, the Mia I knew.
Now we could forget what had happened earlier, and we could be just regular Bower and Mia again.
Both of our lines were in the water, and our bobbers were barely moving on the still lake. With a flick of my wrist, I tapped the tip of Mia’s rod with mine.
“Hey!” she yelled, taking her rod and hitting mine in retaliation.
I gave her my best serious face. “We aren’t going to catch any fish with you acting like that.”
“You’re a terrible actor, Bower,” Mia said through a smile.
I scoffed, “Me? An actor?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I swear, even my theater teacher would tell you I’m a terrible actor.”
The canoe rocked a bit as Mia resituated herself. “Speaking of school…”
I frowned. Apparently fun time was over.
“What are your plans after you graduate?” Her sister, Ruby, had graduated in the spring. I’d follow suit the next year.
“I don’t have a plan yet.” It was the truth; I hadn’t really thought about it. My grades were mediocre at best. School wasn’t a priority for me.
Mia gasped.
I opened my mouth to explain my situation further but then realized that it wasn’t my dislike of school that had Mia in shock, it was that her bobber was being aggressively pulled beneath the water.
I didn’t have to say anything. I just sat at the ready, holding on to the net I kept in the bottom of the canoe and watching her expertly reel in the fish. It had to be big based on the way her rod bowed down toward the surface of the water.
“Hold steady,” I called out as soon as I saw the scales of the fish glistening near the side of the boat. I dipped the net into the water, scooping the fish and lifting its flipping body out of the lake.
I pushed the net toward Mia. “Nice catch!”
She smiled, admiring the fish from a distance. “I’m not touching it.”
I grinned because I already knew that. I knew her. “I’d never ask you to.”
I set the net and the fish down in the bottom of the canoe and grabbed its jaw with one hand and its belly with the other, then lifted it up to show Mia. It was a big one.
Too bad neither of us had a phone to take a picture—to remember this moment forever.
This was the week that went by the fastest each summer.
Mia and I did everything together, including every activity the resort offered.
We competed in the crayfishing contest and bingo by the pool.
There was a medallion hunt that we’d never been very good at, but she never complained and always seemed to enjoy looking for it even if we didn’t win.
Today the activity was tie-dying. My grandma stood in front of the group, demonstrating how to twist the white shirts into perfect spirals.
Mia sat next to me, her fingers easily manipulating the shirt into a spiral identical to my grandma’s.
I struggled to get the shirt to fold correctly, my spiral looking more like the bottom of the lake, a mess of uneven elevations.
A rubber band hit my cheek. I looked over to find a young kid snickering with his buddies. Mia bit her lip as she watched. If she weren’t here, I might’ve said something to the little shit, but that would’ve just gotten me into trouble.
I glanced around the tie-dying group—we were the oldest “kids” here.
We both sat waiting for the next set of directions while everyone around us was still completing the first set.
Were we too old for this? I looked over at Mia, who was patiently waiting, surrounded by kids who were having more fun braiding rubber bands together than tying T-shirts.
Was she bored? Maybe she’d outgrown the resort activities.
My friend’s parents had left for some cruise in Europe—leaving the house and their son unsupervised. A rookie mistake. If Mia had outgrown these activities, I wanted to show her what a real good time on the lake was.
“Hey, there’s a party on the lake later tonight,” I whispered to her. “Do you want to come?”
Mia glanced over at me. “A…party?”
“Only if you want to,” I was quick to assure her. “It’ll be pretty chill.”
She nodded, thinking it over, then smiled. “Sure, that sounds fun.”
Grandma picked up a bottle of dye and demonstrated how to make colored triangles on the rubber-banded spiral so our shirts looked like a rainbow pie.
“Pick you up at nine?”
Mia picked up a bottle of red and began squirting it onto the shirt. “It’s a date.”