Chapter 18 #2
Jake was the flagbearer while Chloe and their dad marched proudly behind him.
Trailing at the back, Marion was doing more of a trudge than a march, her chin up and her mouth flat.
The Dawgs was a name Jake had picked to impress Chloe—misspelling and all—and Marion clearly hated every letter.
Aspen had overhead the team vote one table over.
Marion had proposed Les Invincibles, lost four to one, then, as a compromise, proposed that they at least spell Dogs correctly. She lost that too.
“Next up, we have The AMAZONS! March on over ladies!” Bunny called out.
Lena was the flagbearer for the Amazons, with her daughters and Grace trailing behind her.
The name checked out, Lena and her daughters looked like they’d all been carved from the same ancient warrior goddess bloodline.
Then there was Grace who, standing beside them, looked like a forest nymph with excellent posture.
“The GHOST PEPPERS!” Bunny called next.
Noa’s family marched toward the platform—Bella as the flagbearer, followed by Mia, Carmen, and Hector.
“The TAILGATERS!” Bunny flung out an arm with a flourish.
Jake’s family marched—Hank as the flagbearer, followed by Diane, Jake’s younger brother Elijah, and Jake’s cousin Jaden—all with beers in hand.
“The OH G’s—yes, yes, you may remain seated, ladies, your dignity is noted. And, last but not least—“ a flourish toward Maisie, who was now bouncing—“the SHARKS!”
Sadie cheered from somewhere off to the side. “Go Noa!”
Aspen followed the others at the back of the line, just behind Maddy. When they came to a stop in front of the platform, Aspen leaned in. “You’re doing so well,” she murmured, barely moving her mouth.
“I’m going to need a palette cleanser before tomorrow.” Maddy spoke low, so only Aspen could hear.
Aspen smiled. “I have just the thing to turn that brain off for a few hours tonight.” And then she straightened, not wanting to push her luck of getting Maddy to flirt with her in public.
Bunny set the megaphone down on the platform, which she only ever did for one reason, and the beach started to quiet on its own.
“Now,” Bunny said, her big voice gone gentler. “As always—before we light the torch, let’s take a moment to remember why we’re here.”
And Aspen’s stomach dropped, because she’d forgotten to warn Maddy about this part.
Bunny started talking about James. The man who’d started all of this with a single backyard barbecue and a stopwatch and a refusal to let anyone, ever, opt out of fun.
How the Cup was his. How every game on this beach had his fingerprints on it, and how this weekend was as much a celebration of his life and the thing he’d built as it was about the games themselves.
She glanced sideways. Maddy had gone very still, eyes forward, her whole face carefully blank. Aspen had fourteen years of this ritual. She’d heard the James speech every July since the year after Maddy left.
There was nothing Aspen could do. Not really. Not here, in front of everyone, where she wasn’t allowed to put an arm around her or pull her in or any of the things she wanted to do.
So she did the only thing she could.
She took a tiny step closer to Maddy and let the backs of two fingers drift against the back of Maddy’s hand where it hung at her side, hidden between their bodies. Just a small gesture to let Maddy know she was there for her.
Maddy didn’t move, but she didn’t pull away either. She let the contact sit there, and for Maddy—down low, not-in-front-of-people Maddy—Aspen knew exactly what that small allowance meant.
Across the clump of bodies, Aspen caught her dad looking over at Maddy.
His face had gone tender and a little sad.
He had loved James—four years of best friendship cut brutally short.
And now he was looking at James’s daughter with a whole lifetime of I’m sorry and I’m proud of you and please don’t hate me in it, and she saw Maddy meet the look, hold it for one beat, and then turn her eyes back to Bunny.
And Aspen, who loved her father and was falling fast for the woman currently furious at him, sent up a small selfish prayer to nobody in particular that two of the most important people to her on this beach would find a way to work out their differences before the weekend was over.
“Now. It is with great honor,” Bunny said, lifting a long lighter, “that I light this torch in James’s memory, and kick off his favorite weekend of the year.”
She touched the flame to the torch. The wick caught and flared. Then Bunny snatched the megaphone back up, because Bunny could only hold a tender moment for so long before the showman came roaring back, and bellowed: “LET THE GAMES BEGIN!”
And the beach detonated. Cheers, applause, Maisie screaming and running in circles, the Dawgs breaking into some sort of deep, low “woof, woof, woof” chant—sans Marion.
The whole heavy beautiful weight of the remembrance lifted off in one second and the joy came flooding back.
Grief for the man they lost who brought them all together and a mosh pit of celebration in the same ninety seconds.
That was the Cup. James would’ve loved it.
Beside her, Maddy let out a breath, and her hand brushed Aspen’s once more, on purpose this time, before she stepped away to join Maisie and Noa.
* * *
The water balloon toss was first.
Pairs lined up facing each other in two rows, lobbed a balloon back and forth, and after every successful catch both lines took a step back. Drop it or pop it, you were out. Last pair standing won the round.
She and Maddy took one of the Sharks’ two spots. Maisie and Noa took the other.
“Don’t squeeze it,” Aspen called across the gap as the first balloon came her way.
Maddy rolled her eyes from across the gap. “I know how to catch a balloon, St. Claire.”
Aspen tossed it back, easy. “I’m just saying, you’ve got a real grip-it-and-control-it energy, and that’s not the move here. You have to let it land soft.”
“Are you,” Maddy said, lobbing it back in a gentle arc, “psychoanalyzing me through a water balloon.”
Aspen grinned. “Little bit, yeah.”
Aspen caught it, hands cupped wide and giving. The balloon kissed her palms and held.
They stepped back.
Every toss, Maddy’s eyes came up and found Aspen’s across a gap that kept widening, and held, and let go right at the last second, the balloon arcing up between them, gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
Around them, the field thinned out fast. Zoe caught one too hard and wore it.
One of the Howells double-clutched and lost his.
Jake and Chloe made it impressively far before Jake, attempting something show-offy and over-handed, nailed Chloe square in the chest, which Aspen suspected he would be apologizing for in increasingly elaborate ways for the rest of the weekend.
Pair by pair, the pop and the groan and the laughing, until Aspen looked around and the only two duos left standing were Maisie and Noa, and her and Maddy.
The Sharks were going to take the whole round either way. She and Maisie had practiced this exact thing at the beach all year, and it clearly paid off.
They were a solid thirty feet apart now. Maddy wound up, grinning, and sent the balloon up in a high, lazy lob, and Aspen tracked it against the sky, shifted, got under it, cupped her hands—
—and it came down a hair faster than she’d judged, slipped through her fingers, and exploded directly into her face and chest.
The cold of it punched a shriek out of her. She stood there blinking and dripping, hair plastered to her cheek, and across the sand, Maddy was bent fully in half, hands on her knees, laughing so hard no sound was coming out.
“You did that on purpose,” Aspen called out, wiping her eyes.
Maddy straightened up just enough to wheeze, “I did not, you just have terrible hands—”
“You know damn well my hands are ex—” Aspen caught herself from saying something that would have ended the downlow on the spot. She snapped her mouth shut.
Maddy’s eyebrows shot up, delighted. She had heard exactly where that sentence was going.
Aspen grabbed the hem of her shirt and yanked it over her head, leaving her in her just bikini top. Maddy’s laughter faded as her eyes dropped to Aspen’s abs. Aspen grinned and used her crumpled shirt to wipe her dripping face.