AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Get ahold of yourself, Matty.
“Such passion, Ciaran. I never took you for a violent person.”
“You mean to say you don’t know everything about me after being in my company for all of twenty-four hours?”
I shoved him playfully. “Sarcastic little shit.”
“I’m eighteen, what do you expect?” He splashed back from the next swim lane.
“Barely, and trust me, I don’t need the reminder,” I grumbled. “You drank too much last night and got into a fight at the beach party. I brought you back to the guesthouse.”
“Who’d I punch?”
I considered lying but decided against it. “Me.”
“Damn,” Ciaran said, whistling through his teeth. I thought he was going to apologize. Well, I thought wrong. “I wish I remembered it.”
I let out a bark of laughter and it echoed throughout the basement.
“Why’d I punch you?” he continued.
“I prevented you from getting more drunk. You didn’t like that.” Ciaran took in the information without comment, so I finished, “So now that you know what happened last night, I dare you to show me what you got.”
I jerked my head down the swim lanes.
“I don’t do dares, remember?” Ciaran crossed his arms across his chest.
“Or promises. Yeah, so you’ve been telling me. I don’t get the big deal.”
“The big deal is that it’s usually one-sided. You’d get to dare me, but I won’t get to dare you. Same with promises. They’re never equal. That’s been my experience, at any rate.”
He added the last part as an afterthought and I wondered if someone had abused him in some way by couching actions as dares or promises.
I’d have to tread carefully here.
“I’ve never given it much thought before,” I admitted, “but I think you have a point. Someone always seems to have the upper hand. How about this: we take turns on the dares, and they are of equal value.”
“Like, you can’t dare me to swim down this lane and then I dare you to rob a bank?”
“That’s far-fetched, but yeah.” I watched Ciaran split into a shit-eating grin. “You were being flippant, got it.”
“It’s so easy to get under your skin, Matty.”
I was going to heartily disagree with him, but when he called me Matty, a warm feeling spread deep in my chest. What the hell was wrong with me?
“If you swim a few laps with me, then I’ll do something you want.”
“Take me for a spin in your Ferrari.”
It was less a dare and more a deal, but I could accept that.
“Too easy. Now…swim.”
I slipped under the water and watched him from a few feet below the surface, holding my breath as I swam parallel. Ciaran’s form was excellent as his muscles rippled in the water. He was light, fast, his movements smooth, almost like he was dancing under water. He was only three years my junior, but his kicks were already very powerful, his coordination synchronized.
We weren’t timing ourselves, but I’d guess he completed the fifty meters in roughly fifty seconds. For a first lap after a night of heavy drinking, that was an amazing time.
“Were you watching me?” he asked when we came to the end of the lane. He ran his hands through his wet hair, slicking it back.
