wear a thong today, that the chlorine probably won’t do her bra any favors, that she’s maybe three pounds heavier than the last time Owen saw her mostly naked, but she’s still pretty tan, so—
Owen isn’t looking. He’s the first one in the water, cannonballing in with a splash.
“Go!” Ryan is yelling. “Go go go go!”
Cass dives in, smooth and easy, and Lulu watches her body disappear into the water. She follows her there.
She understands why Ryan wanted them to do it fast as soon as she’s in. The pool is not heated.
The pool is fucking freezing.
“What the hell!” Owen heaves himself over the edge and onto dry land to tackle Ryan, who’s laughing too hard to get away in time. “See, asshole, now you’re all wet too!”
Owen is holding Ryan fast and flinging his hair around, trying to get him as damp as possible.
“Hey!” Kiley says, twisting from the spray. She didn’t jump in either. In fact, she’s still fully clothed. “O, come on, my hair!”
Owen lets up, and Ryan takes the opportunity to go after Kiley.
“You think you’re exempt?” he says, wrapping his arms around her and butting his damp head against her neck. “You think you’re too smart for me, Kiley?”
Kiley uses her elbows to keep him away from her head, but it just means he ends up with his face in her boobs.
Lulu looks at Owen, waiting for him to break it up, but that’s not Owen’s style. He doesn’t get bent out of shape about what things look like. He’s not gonna make a big deal out of some roughhousing.
Cass appears at the pool’s lip, wrapped in a towel and carrying another. “Lu,” she says. “Here.”
Lulu swims to the edge and lifts herself up. Cass wraps the towel around her shoulders, her arm lingering as Lulu grabs the edges and pulls them tight. She can see the blue of the veins under Cass’s skin.
“See,” Ryan yelps from where he’s allowed Kiley to maneuver him into a headlock. “There were other surprises! You animals!”
“Where did you find those?” Owen asks
Cass points to a pile in a lounge chair, and Owen proceeds to wrap himself in four towels: one for each leg, one around his torso, and another around his shoulders like a cape.
“Nice look,” Ryan says. “But also, the pool’s not the only thing that got an upgrade. The rooms are ready too.”
* * *
The lobby is still mostly empty, but Ryan really has set up rooms for each of them: robes in the closets, chocolates on the pillows. There’s no shampoo in the shower, though, let alone conditioner. Removed from the thrill of the moment, Lulu thoroughly regrets getting her hair wet. There’s no way it’s going to dry presentably. Her makeup is a lost cause.
At least the water pressure is strong, though, and the spray comes out hot. She stands under it and tries to adjust to this latest version of The Hotel. It’s not like Cass didn’t warn her that it was always changing. It’s just that she wasn’t entirely ready for this iteration, for it to stop being a safe, in-between space and start looking like everywhere else in the world.
She startles when someone knocks on the shower’s glass door.
Cass is standing on the other side, looking uncertain. “There’s a drought on,” she says when Lulu opens it. “I didn’t want to waste—”
“Come in,” Lulu says. “Come in.”
* * *
Afterward they can’t stop laughing. Lulu doesn’t know what’s so funny, only that everything is: this improbable girl in this improbable place, the late afternoon light slanting through the window, Cass’s stick legs and knobby wrists poking out from the ostentatiously fluffy robe she’s wrapped in, the shape of the spot her damp hair leaves on the pillow.
Cass eats Lulu’s chocolate and kisses her when Lulu complains. We could do this, Lulu thinks. We are doing this. Something in her stomach zips tight, and she has no idea if it’s excitement or fear.
Because she’s done this before—with Owen, who’s probably kissing Kiley right now, too serious to laugh about it. Because she did this with Owen and then he got tired of her and she got tired of him, and there’s nothing there anymore. Or not nothing. But not enough.
She’s never done this with a girl before, and it’s different, and it’s so good.
“Cass?” Ryan calls in the hall. “Cass, where did you go?”
Cass knows better than to keep Ryan waiting. She goes to the door and pokes her head out. “Here!” she