Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
By nine in the morning, everyone was back at the beach preparing for day two of the Cup.
Maddy was working on her second coat of sunscreen when a shadow fell across her, and Aspen’s voice came from behind her, close to her ear. “You’re missing a spot.”
“I am not.” Maddy kept rubbing the sunscreen in. “I have a system.”
“You’ve got a system for the parts you can reach.” Aspen reached around her and took the sunscreen bottle from Maddy’s hand.
Maddy heard the squirt of sunscreen being squeezed into Aspen’s palm, and then her hands were on Maddy’s bare shoulders, smoothing down across her back. Maddy focused on a seagull twenty feet away.
Aspen’s thumb pressed a slow line along her spine. Her fingers spread wide and deliberate over the small of her back, then up her sides, and grazed her underboob. Maddy subtly glanced around. No one was paying them any attention.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Maddy kept her voice low.
She could feel Aspen’s grin between her shoulder blades.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Aspen worked a thumb under the strap of Maddy’s swimsuit. “I’m just being a good Samaritan. Helping a friend in need.”
Maddy fought a smile she was glad Aspen couldn’t see. “The friend is fine. The friend’s back is extremely well-moisturized. You can stop helping.”
“I’m being thorough.” Aspen’s hands settled at her sides, fingertips just barely curling toward Maddy’s stomach, and held there as she leaned into Maddy’s ear again. “As a medical professional, I’d be negligent to leave a single inch unprotected.”
Maddy suddenly felt very hot, and it had nothing to do with the sun. She stepped out of Aspen’s hands. “Consider me protected.” She shooed Aspen with one hand. “Now go away.”
“You’re welcome.” Aspen capped the bottle with a smug grin and did not go away. Her eyes dropped to Maddy’s boobs and her grin grew.
Maddy rolled her eyes and shoulder-checked Aspen as she brushed by.
She saw Noa and her date, who was notably not Sadie, over by the tents and decided to greet them.
She clocked the scoreboard on the way and felt the small flare of satisfaction she had not felt since she was seventeen, at the sight of her team, THE SHARKS, sitting at the very top.
Yesterday was just the warm-up; today was the main event: seven challenges spread over approximately eight hours, with two teams eliminated at the end of the day.
Tomorrow morning, the top four teams would square off in a beach volleyball tournament as the semi-finals, and the two winning teams of that would progress onto the finals—the tug-of-war challenge.
“Hey...” Maddy said carefully as she approached Noa and her date, unsure of how to greet the woman without putting Noa in hot water.
The woman looked like a real-life Barbie doll in head-to-toe pink.
Pink romper, pink visor, pink-rimmed sunglasses, and a pink posterboard sign she’d clearly made herself, because it said TEAM NOA in puffy paint letters with a heart dotting absolutely nothing, since there was no letter that needed dotting.
“Hey. Holli, this is Maddy. Maddy, this is Holli.” Noa tipped her chin at each of them in turn.
“With an i.” Holli beamed and bounced the sign as if Maddy couldn’t read it from a mile off. “Are you on Team Noa?”
Maddy shot Noa a look, who was clearly enjoying herself. “I am. Although our team name is actually The Sharks.”
“Whatever. Noa’s gonna win the whole thing, aren’t you babe?” Holli turned to Noa with an enamored smile and rubbed a hand up Noa’s bare bicep.
Noa shrugged at Maddy with her cocky grin, and Maddy rolled her eyes. She still didn’t know what had turned the world’s biggest hopeless romantic into a revolving door of women.
Jake wandered up with a breakfast burrito the size of a newborn and clocked the sign immediately. “Oh, hey Wendy.”
Holli’s hand froze on Noa’s arm. “It’s Holli.”
“Sure it is.” Jake took a bite, chewed.
Holli’s attention caught on the sidelines where the Peepin’ G’s were lining up their chairs. “I’m gonna go snag a front row spot before they’re all gone so you can see my sign.”
The second she was out of earshot, Jake leaned in to Maddy and dropped his voice. “I call them all Wendy.”
Maddy chuckled. “I gathered. Why ‘Wendy’?”
Noa dropped her head back with a groan. “Here we go.”
“They show up, all swoony and starry-eyed over all that,” Jake gestured vaguely toward the whole concept of Noa.
“Then by the end of the night, they just get carried off by the wind, and a new one drifts in like the last one was never there.” He took another bite, completely at peace with his system.
“Not worth learning the names. By the time you’ve got it down, she’s gone and you’ve gotta learn a new one.
I tried for like a year and finally gave up.
” He shrugged around the burrito. “So they’re all Wendy. ”
Maddy watched Jake take down another third of the burrito with a single bite. “That is deeply efficient and also a little dark.”
Noa let out an exasperated sigh and spread her hands. “What can I say? I’ve got a large fanbase.”
Bunny’s megaphone crackled to life from her tower. “PARTNERS ASSEMBLE! Everyone to the starting line for the three-legged race! I want pairs, I want strategy, I want commitment!”
Aspen appeared at Maddy’s side. “That’s us.”
Maddy looked at Noa. Noa raised both hands and backed off a step. “Don’t look at me. Maisie called dibs.”
Maddy sighed and followed the two of them over to the starting line. She had planned to put a little distance between her and Aspen while they were in public, not literally be bound together.
It would be fine. They were on the same team, everyone would be bound to a partner, nothing suspicious about it.
Aspen knelt in the sand at their feet and looped a bandana around their ankles, drawing it snug.
Her fingers worked the knot, brushing the inside of Maddy’s ankle and lingering there.
Maddy looked down at the top of Aspen’s head and decided she was going to win this race purely out of spite at how unfair the whole situation was.
Maddy shifted her weight, testing the give of the bandana. “Don’t tie it too tight, I need circulation—”
“It’s tied perfectly.” Aspen stood, slung an arm around Maddy’s waist, and pulled her in hip to hip until there was no space left between them. She looked over at Maddy with a smug grin. “Hi.”
Maddy tried not to smile back and lost a little. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
Aspen’s smile widened. “Come on, arm around me. We have to move as one unit. Don’t fight me on the count.”
Maddy reluctantly settled her arm around Aspen’s waist and tried to look like she was nothing more than a cooperative teammate.
“Racers ready!” Bunny called through the megaphone.
Aspen’s grip tightened on her waist.
“On your mark. Get set. GO!” Bunny bellowed, and the line surged.
The second the word go hit the air, instinct took over. Maddy lurched ahead on the bound leg, and Aspen pitched sideways. They nearly went face-first into the sand four steps out of the gate, the two of them staggering like a drunk animal.
“Maddy.” Aspen’s arm clamped tighter around her, hauling her back upright, her voice breathless and laughing. “You can’t win this one by yourself. Match me. Just—match me.”
She wanted to argue, but Aspen was right; they had to move together.
Maddy stopped trying to pull ahead and made herself feel Aspen’s stride instead.
Inside leg, outside leg. Aspen’s hip against hers, setting the tempo.
She stopped counting her own steps and started counting theirs, and the second she did, they flew.
They caught the front of the pack in a few long synced strides, passed the other teams, and crossed the finish a full body-length ahead of Jake and Chloe, who came in second in a tangle of their own, Jake catching Chloe by both arms before she ate sand.
“AND THE SHARKS TAKE IT!” Bunny howled.
They cheered and then Aspen raised her brows at Maddy. “See what happens when you listen to me?”
“Whatever.” Maddy gave Aspen a shove as she bent to untie their ankles, sending Aspen toppling into the sand. But Maddy hadn’t accounted for the fact that they were still connected, and went tumbling down on top of her.
They burst into laughter, and it took a full twenty seconds before Maddy realized there were several pairs of eyes on them and rolled off.
Bunny gave them about three minutes to recover before the megaphone started herding everyone back to the line for the wheelbarrow race.
Maddy went, brushing sand off places sand had no business being. She was locked in now. The Sharks were on top of the board, and Maddy fully intended to keep them there.
The pairs reshuffled. Aspen took Maisie. Maddy got Noa, which put Maddy in the wheelbarrow, palms in the sand, Noa gripping her legs somewhere well north of where they should be.
Maddy turned her head out to glare up the length of her own body. “You’re holding them too high.”
“I’m holding them at the optimal aerodynamic angle.” Noa hiked her higher, up around the backs of her thighs, and Maddy’s whole center of gravity pitched forward until her arms were the only thing between her face and the beach.
Maddy’s elbows were already shaking. “Noa! This is not aerodynamic, you have me at a forty-five degree angle, I’m going to plow this beach with my chin—”
“The beach could use a good plowing. Hey Holli!” Noa called out. “Take a photo!”
“No!” Maddy squealed with laughter.
And then Bunny yelled, “Go!” And Noa pushed forward.
They made it maybe halfway before Maddy’s arms folded.
She went face-down, Noa came down on top of her, and the two of them lay there in a heap, wheezing, while the entire field trundled past them, with the exception of Hector and Carmen, who had gone about ten feet and then stopped so Carmen could fix the collar of Hector’s shirt, and hadn’t started again.
They crawled on their hands and knees across the finish line, still wheezing with laughter, and collapsed.