Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,117

peeking through his fingers. The pool area is almost empty. There are a few people milling around, but mostly everyone is still in the locker rooms. We pass another guy from the team as we walk toward the diving blocks, and Asher nods his head in greeting.

Asher sits on the edge of the pool and smacks his hand down on the tiles next to him. I should sit, but I’m in shock. Asher has only spoken to me once since our run together. And even then, it was a few sentences about swimming. He looks up at me impatiently, and I know if I don’t sit down he won’t stay. I’m on borrowed time. Borrowed patience, probably. I lower myself next to him, leaving half a foot between us. I don’t know if it’s him or me that can’t be trusted to touch, but I’m not risking it either way.

“Are you nervous?” He says it casually, like we’re two normal people, and not us. And I know without him saying anything that he’s talking about the meet, not us.

“What do you think?” I flutter my feet nervously in the water. “I feel like a tiny bomb, like once I get in the water I’ll explode—maybe in a good way, maybe not.”

He smiles. “That’s what I figured.” He opens his hand and reveals a small glass bottle. It’s pretty, like something I could see his mom having on a shelf somewhere, and it has a little black rubber stopper. He shakes it in the air in front of him.

“I’m sort of afraid to ask what’s in there.”

“We’re christening the pool. Turning it into your happy place.” He pulls the black stopper from the tiny bottle and holds it in front of me.

“Is that…” I swallow back the lump forming in my throat and take the bottle. “Why do you have this?”

He shrugs. “Sentimental pack rat, remember?”

I take a quick look around the pool to see if anyone is watching us, and hold the little bottle of lake water in front of my knees. Slowly, I pour it into the pool. “Are there magic words we’re supposed to say?”

Asher laughs, and the sound unwinds something I didn’t even realize was coiling in my chest. “This is my first pool christening, but just imagine I’m in the boat next to you. You always swam like a beast across the lake.”

“That’s because you were chasing me. I was sure you were going to hit me with the boat.”

“Hm.”

I look down at my bare toes under the water, at the dark pink polish I put on last night. “This is really nice.” I don’t deserve it. I never deserved him—sweet, perfect, hopeful Asher—and I certainly don’t now.

“I’m just being a decent human who doesn’t want to see another person die.” It’s exactly what I said to him that night at the lake, when he was drunk.

“How am I going to die?”

“Well, you could drown.” His voice is deadpan, his face serious. “You’re not that great of a swimmer.” He smiles and I poke him in the side with my elbow. We haven’t been this close in what feels like centuries. That old feeling is back, the buzzing nervousness of him being close to me, able to touch me at any moment. But he’s not going to touch me at any moment, I remind myself. He’s trying to be a friend. Because I asked him to.

“I thought I was a beast.”

“You could get so nervous that you take the angle all wrong on your dive and crack your head open.”

I let out a sharp laugh. “Wow, that’s dark. I thought you were supposed to be helping me with my nerves.”

He shakes his head like I’m being ridiculous. “You’re not scared you’re going to crack your head on the bottom of the pool.”

Of course I’m not. Now all I can think of is the fact that Asher and I are sitting here, talking and teasing, just like we used to. That we’re only inches away from touching. That for these few minutes, it’s felt—for the first time—like we might make it through this unscathed. He must register our proximity, too, because in one smooth move his arms cross over his chest. He angles away from me and back to the pool.

“Why did you get so drunk that night? Why’d you kiss me?” The words pour out of me like the lake water now in the pool. I’ve always wanted to know, but was too scared to ask.