Chapter Six #2
I’d resented him, just a bit, for not having seen it coming. For not noticing the ways I’d been pulling away over those final few months. As I looked at him now, dimpled and sun-kissed and so familiar, I wasn’t sure if that had been fair.
But it didn’t change anything.
“Did you love him?” Steph asked, dragging her toes along the surface of the water.
“I wanted to,” I admitted, before I could stop myself. I was still watching Wes. “But no. I don’t think so. Not in the way he loved me, at least.”
Steph was quiet for a moment, and I found myself getting nervous that I’d said the wrong thing.
That I’d given too much of myself away, before knowing what she’d do with it.
We’d just met today, and, already, I was talking to her like we’d known each other for years.
I was telling her secrets that I’d barely been able to admit to Chelsea, or even myself.
She slid an inch closer so that our legs were touching. “You know, it’s okay to want something bigger. And there are big things in your future. I can sense it.”
At the time, bigger wasn’t the word I would have used. Just different. I thought about Trevor’s words in my ear, his arm resting easily on the back of my chair. How good he’d smelled. That he’d seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him. Here’s to not being tied down.
Bigger was a scary word. One I didn’t know if I was ready for yet. But Steph dropped her head against my shoulder, and I felt our friendship take root, then and there. If she was bigger, then yes. Bigger was what I wanted, after all.
—
As the sun dipped below the horizon, we got tipsy and sleepy, sprawled out on the dock.
Margo and Chelsea found us outside, a pilfered bottle of champagne from behind the bar with them—Chelsea was grinning at Margo like they’d just pulled off the world’s most elaborate heist, though not an hour ago my mom had told me that we’d way overordered.
I didn’t say anything; I liked seeing this side of Chelsea. I liked that Margo and Steph seemed to be having a similar effect on her—making her a little bit bolder. Bold would be good for her.
Before too long, the party wrapped up. We had a noise curfew out here in the woods, and though it wasn’t strictly enforced—Sheriff Ramon was nursing a beer inside, last I checked—my mom was a stickler for the rules.
We heard the noises of car doors closing from a distance, the final noises of the party drifting into the night.
The boys had inched closer and closer to us with each throw of the football, until Trevor practically stepped in Margo’s lap. She took it in stride, wrapping her hand around his ankle in a vise grip that caused him to almost fall into the lake.
My eyelids were growing heavy from the heat and the exhaustion.
I was about to ask if they were ready to call it a night when Steph cleared her throat.
“I have the best idea,” she said, and we all turned to look at her.
Like the moon was a spotlight shining solely on her, she pulled her dress over her head, leaving her standing in a thin, cotton bra and matching underwear.
“I knew you were going to say skinny-dipping, I knew it.” Margo smirked before ripping her own dress over her head.
Trevor and Garrett were hooting and laughing and cheering them on, while Wes was squinting up at the moon as if it were far more interesting than the two practically naked girls on the dock.
Steph and Margo grasped hands, about to jump, before Steph turned back to me and Chelsea. “Come on, y’all, no excuses! Strip.”
Chelsea and I looked at each other. Her eyes were wide and unsure, and I felt the smallest pang of guilt.
“You don’t have to,” I promised, and I meant it. But I was already pulling my own dress up, over my head.
Wes and Trevor were both watching me with such an intensity that I wanted to jump out of my skin. Wes, ever the gentleman, looked away so fast he might have sprained his neck, but Trevor’s eyes rested on mine for a long beat. That perfect moment last summer, repeating itself with everyone around.
I was invincible, weightless. I wondered if, when I stepped off the dock, I’d land in the water or if I’d start floating away.
Garrett had already jumped into the lake and was hollering about how cold it was.
“You’re a wimp,” Trevor said, before diving in after him.
I reached for Steph’s hand, and she squeezed mine once, twice, as if she were saying, I knew you could do it.
Steph started her countdown, but Margo clicked her tongue to stop her. “Your turn, Chelsea. It’s a requirement. If you want to be in our cabin, you have to jump, too.”
At the time, it felt like an invitation. Later, I wondered if it may have been a taunt.
But it had the desired effect—I don’t know what was in the air that night, but, to my absolute jaw-dropping shock, Chelsea Riggins stepped out of her pink sundress and reached out a trembling hand.
From somewhere in the water, there was a wolf whistle.
She gave me a guilty smile, and I squeezed her hand the same way Steph had squeezed mine.
“On the count of three,” Steph said, and I braced myself for the cold. “One, two, three.”
I didn’t even close my eyes as I stepped off the edge. I wanted to see it all.
It was magical, out there beneath the stars, and it was then that the rest of the summer seemed to crystalize around us. We all stayed in the lake for at least an hour, our fingers and toes pruning, and I smiled until my cheeks ached.
That was the night I fell in love with Steph Bennett and Margo Pierce. I fell in love with all the possibilities, endlessly stretching out before me. The way that the world felt so much bigger with them around.
I sensed Chelsea’s gaze burning a hole in me, every time I put my head to Steph’s in a laugh, or returned one of Margo’s smirks, but we both knew that even she wasn’t immune. She’d jumped in, too, after all.
Everything that’s happened since can be traced back to what I decided that night, out there in the water: That I would do anything, anything at all, to be like them. To keep being seen by them. To be in on the secret.
That I’d sell my soul for it.