Page 72 of Main Event

Then I say, “Hold your breath, baby.”

Her eyes widen. “Luke⁠—”

I let myself go backward. The lake closes over both of us. Cold. Clean. Sudden. We surface in a riot of water and laughter, Andi coughing and shoving wet hair from her face while keeping one hand hooked in my shirt like she plans to drag me under with her if necessary.

“You are a menace,” she says, breathless.

“I’m refreshed.”

“You look very pleased with yourself.”

“I brought you to a lake. Bought you peaches. Fed you ice cream. Improved your core temperature.”

“You tackled me into the water.”

“I carried you.”

“Into water.”

“Details matter.”

“They do, and that detail is the crime.”

She splashes me. I blink water out of my eyes.

“Oh,” I say. “That was a choice.”

She starts backing away, but water slows everything down, and she’s laughing again, already doomed. I catch her around the waist, careful of her knee because I’m not actually deranged, no matter what she says. She grabs my shoulders, and we go under again, less dramatic this time, more tangled, surfacing close enough that her forehead bumps mine.

For a few seconds, the world is water and sunlight and her hands on me. Then the laughter fades into something softer. She’s still smiling, but her eyes are different.

“What?” I ask.

She looks past me at the mountains, at the lake, at the oak tree shading the blanket on shore. “I forgot people could feel like this.”

The words are quiet. I don’t answer too fast. “How?”

She looks back at me. “Light,” she says. “I forgot people could feel light.”

I move closer, letting the water hold some of the weight neither of us can put down completely. “You do feel light.”

“Not usually.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to stop,” she says. “Even right now, there’s a part of my mind counting the hours back to Atlanta. Who needs what. What could shift while we’re gone. What Bill might find. Whether Mrs. Alvarez remembered to call the security company back. Whether Kelly is okay. Whether Deja will stay. Whether you’re really all right or just saying it because you don’t want me to worry.”

“I’m really all right.”

“You’re better than you were this morning.”

“Yes.”

“But not all right.”

I let out a breath. “No. Not all the way.”

She nods, as if honesty were all she was asking for. I take her hand under the water.