Kat
Silas heaveshimself out of the pool, and I look back at the book open in front of me so I can pretend I haven’t been ogling him for the past fifteen minutes. At least I’m wearing sunglasses, and he’s been busy hitting a beach ball back and forth with some kids, so he probably hasn’t noticed that I haven’t turned a page in a very long time.
Fifteen seconds later a shadow falls across my feet, and I look up.
“You gonna come in?” he asks.
I put one hand on the top of my hat and gaze up at Silas, dripping wet in nothing but blue swimming trunks with bright pink flamingos, the early afternoon sun lighting him up like it was created for exactly this purpose. He’s smiling down at me, running a hand through his wet hair, and I fight the urge to look behind myself to see who he’s really looking at.
“I’m not really a… wet kind of person,” I tell him, honestly.
“You could change that.”
“I’m having a very nice time being dry, is the thing,” I say, and cross my ankles, holding my place in the book with a finger. “Due to being, you know, dry.”
“Hmm,” Silas says, and nods, then glances around for a moment before looking back at me, arms folding over his chest. “Well, the thing is that it’s better if you go in voluntarily.”
My heart kicks, the soft wings of anxiety unfurling in my chest. I freeze and can’t help but glance around the crowded pool, at the dozens of people who’d be watching me make a spectacle of myself if Silas threw me into the pool.
Before I can say anything, he’s sitting sideways on the end of my lounge chair, leaning back on his hands, still sunlit as anything.
“Sorry. Kidding,” he says.
“Good,” I say, trying for a lightness I don’t quite feel yet and pull my feet back so he’s got more space, curling one under me and propping one up.
Still leaning back, Silas grabs one foot and strokes his thumb over the knob of my ankle, and even though it’s hot as anything today, a shiver runs up my leg.
“You really should come in, though,” he goes on. “It’s refreshing.”
“I’d be blind as a bat,” I point out, because pools and glasses don’t really mix.
“I’ll hold onto you.”
It’s not unappealing.
“Maybe in a while,” I demure, and for no reason at all I extend my leg until my toes are touching his side, right under that long scar he’s got across his ribs. I wiggle them and his smile gets wider.
“What are you reading?”
I hold up the book, finger still stuck in the middle.
“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?” I say, making it a question for some reason. “My sister’s been after me to read it.”
Silas nods.
“Is that good?”
“It’s odd,” I say, flipping it back around so I can look at the cover. “And sort of… soothing? I don’t know.”
We both sit in silence for a moment, my toes against his hip, his thumb still stroking my ankle.
“One of the characters spends a lot of time sitting at the bottom of a dry well. It sounds kind of nice,” I admit.
“Why are they in a well?”
“It’s complicated.”
Silas doesn’t answer. He tilts his head from side to side, like he’s getting the kinks out of his neck, then tilts his face back into the sun. The light gleams off his hair, off the divot in his throat, off the slippery muscles of his arms and chest, the hair there slicked down from the pool until it disappears under his swim trunks.