AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m aware, Gwendolyn.” I thank the bartender and start to walk away, but she hollers after me.
“Where are you going?”
I motion for the empty loungers by the pool. “I was going to watch this cinematic masterpiece. Is that okay with you, Gwendolyn Shakes-Pierce?”
She scowls, and she won’t admit it, but I think she’s jealous I came up with that one before she did. She looks back at her papers, then up to the movie screen.
“Did you want to join me?”
Her eyes retrace their path. “No. I have work to do.” She turns and plops back down in her stool, and I find a lounge chair where I can see her just as well as I can see the movie.
Gwendolyn
Cassandra could feel it in her bones, this aching, yearning need to touch the water. To feel its power, and maybe to steal some for herself. She loved it and feared it, respected it and revered it. She wasn’t sure how often other people sat around thinking about which element was the best, but she knew without a doubt that it was water.
It powered cities and leveled them. It was vital for survival and could easily kill. It could heal and it could destroy. It could carve its way through rocks, and it could be still, serene. And, Cassandra knew, it could hold memories.
Theo busied himself with the blanket, the basket, his cell phone. Even when they were traveling, even when they were about to sit down for a picnic on the beach, even when he was presumably minutes away from pulling out the velvet box she’d glimpsed as they packed, work found him.
Or maybe he found work. Maybe he chose it in all these moments: Christmas Eve at her parents’ house, a dinner date with friends, intermission of her favorite show. Now, a few minutes before proposing.
Cassandra dipped her toes in the water. She wondered: if she walked straight forward into the crashing waves, beyond them where the water was deeper, over her head, would he even notice?
Austin. Austin would notice.
Sawyer
“I changed my mind.”
She drops into the chaise next to mine half an hour later, and of course I saw it coming, because she’s far more interesting than this movie could ever hope to be, and she’s kept my attention accordingly.
“I see that.”
“What’s happening?” she asks, jerking her head toward the screen.
I can’t tell her, because I don’t remember from the last time I watched it, and I haven’t actually been paying attention. “Not sure,” I admit. She cocks her head, and I add, “Fell asleep.”
“Sure,” she says, a knowing smirk spreading across her lips. “Sure.” She tucks her journal under her chair and sips at the piña colada she’s brought up with her. “It’s cold.”
The temperature has steadily dropped throughout the evening, and I’ve been grateful for the blankets the ship provides specifically for their movie nights. But with a low turnout and the movie more than half over, the attendant is gone and the extra blankets are locked behind a roll-up door. I offer Gwen mine.
“No.” She shakes her head. “That’d be rude, to take it from you.”
I snort. “You’re worried about being rude now? After your very telling little psychoanalysis over there?”
She laughs and shakes her head, and the moment is broken by her shiver.
“Just take it. It’s fine.” I’ve wrapped myself in pretty tight, because I’m not too afraid to admit that my legs are absolutely freezing, and I start to wriggle myself free.
Gwen eyes me and puts a hand to my forearm. Then metal screeches against the deck as she slides her chair closer to mine, curls up half on her chair and half on mine, and cocoons us both inside the blanket.
“This okay?” she asks, her chin quivering.
With her nestled at my side, there’s not much space, and I end up with an arm draped around her. “Yeah. This okay?” I ask in return.
“Yeah.”
Twenty minutes later, she shifts. “You’re hot, Sawyer.”
