“The neighbors used to get so mad!” she says laughing. “They would complain all the time to my parents. I would stay up practicing until four in the morning sometimes!”
“What would your parents do?”
She giggled. “My dad would always shrug and say, ‘If you think you can convince her to stop, go right ahead.”
“And? Did anyone convince you?”
“Of course not!” she said, laughing.
“You don’t like doing what people tell you, do you?”
She looks coyly at me and says, “Depends. In the right circumstances, I could submit to authority.”
A thrill runs through me and I once more have to fight the urge to turn around and take her to the nearest hotel.
I keep it together, however and we soon reach the lake. The moonlight glistens on the water and from a distance a cricket plays its symphony. It’s a picturesque scene but not nearly as picturesque as the girl skipping out of my truck down to the shore.
She reaches a posted sign that says NO SWIMMING in big bold black letters. She turns back to me and says, “Do you want to swim?”
I laugh and say, “No, Lyric, I don’t feel like breaking the rules tonight.”
“Come on!” she whines. “It’ll be fun!”
“It’s not nice to break the rules,” I reprimand gently.
She makes a pouty face that is at once infuriating and adorable. After a second, she arches her eyebrows and says, “Well, I’m going in.”
Before I can stop her, she rushes toward the lake, stripping out of her clothes on the way so she is completely naked by the time she reaches the water.
I follow closely but not too closely because I don’t want anything to obscure the view.
“Lyric!”