me, leaning in for a kiss. My lungs forget how to function and I’m frozen, wide-eyed in wonder as he leans in closer, closer, closer. His lips are almost brushing mine, and intention solidifies in his gaze. Accepting of my fate, I close my eyes for a kiss and he abruptly tilts me back until my hair is submerged. Icy water chases all the way to my roots.
I scream.
He laughs, setting me upright. “You ass!” I yell, slapping his arm. Nicholas laughs harder. My hair is the North Pole and I’m traumatized for life. “That’s freezing!”
“Imagine how I feel.”
“It’s not my fault you jumped in the water, you idiot.”
He turns and saunters away. “Shouldn’t have laughed at me.”
I snarl and jump on his back, bringing him crashing down to the ground. I’m not cognizant of what I’m doing, just that I must destroy this man. I reach out on either side of us and gather armfuls of dead leaves, furiously scooping them over him.
“What are you doing?” he asks, facedown as the leaves scatter over the back of his head. His chest seizes, and then I go bump, bump, bump, jostling up and down when he starts laughing. “Are you trying to bury me?”
“Shut up and stop breathing.”
Nicholas howls with laughter. I’m so upset that he’s not afraid of me and taking the end of his life more seriously that I hop up and down on him in reprimand.
Nicholas rolls and catches my hands before they can shoot out and strangle him. He laces our fingers together, grinning crookedly. “You should see what you look like right now,” he tells me.
A murderous Jack Frost, probably. The image ignites another bout of anger, and I wrestle for control of my hands. He doesn’t let go, tightening his fingers. “Stop stopping me from destroying you.”
Tears leak down either side of his face as he laughs, cheeks pink, breath pluming up in white puffs. It hits me how much I like his laugh. His smile. His smile is ordinary when taken in on its own, but combined with the adorable laugh lines, the light that glows in his color-changing eyes, it’s remarkable.
Some of the leaves I’ve been messing with have pine needles hidden in them, and they’ve prickled my palms, making them itchy. I rub my hands on either side of his jaw, using his stubble like a scratching post. Nicholas’s eyebrows go up in disbelief, more tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He stares and stares at me. “You’re bananas,” he says, not unkindly.
I snort. I have never heard him call anybody bananas. He’s called me ridiculous half a million times, but bananas is so silly a term that I start cry-laughing, too.
He grins wider. “What?”
“You’re a fopdoodle.”
We both laugh. “I saw it on the Internet somewhere,” I insist. “It’s a real word.”
“Your mom’s a real word.”
“Your mom’s a real bad word.”
He lets go of one of my hands so he can wipe his eyes. “Touché.” Then he asks, “What does fopdoodle mean?”
“I assume it’s a fop who doodles.”
“Naturally.”
I get off him. When he sits up, I shove him backward and hurry off to the house, cackling over my cheat of a head start. I know the first thing he’ll want to do when he gets inside is take a hot shower, so I beat him there. I’m stripping off my clothes the second I get inside, shaking like a leaf with my wet hair, and lock myself in the bathroom. Muah-ha-ha. Now he’ll have to wait. I’m going to take an hourlong shower and use up all the hot water.
The shower has just gotten hot enough to be pleasantly scalding when Nicholas unlocks the bathroom door and bursts inside. We’ve got one of those doorknobs you can pick by sticking a penny into the notch and turning it. I use this trick whenever I need something from the bathroom and he’s shut himself in there to shave or admire himself in the mirror, but I don’t think I appreciate being on the other end of it.
“Hey!” I squeak, trying to cover all my interesting parts with my hands. The glass shower door is all steamed up, so I’m probably just a flesh-colored blur to him. “I could’ve been going number two in here.”
“With the shower running?”
“You never know.”
My eyes are as big as pumpkins when he peels off his dripping coveralls and rips a flannel shirt over his head. Stomach. Chest. Arms. So much bare skin going on here