The Rom-Commers(81)

Charlie.

Charlie’s arm, to be specific. Clasped tight around my waist as all his other limbs propelled us through the water.

Huh.

Charlie was not panicking at the pool’s edge. He was underwater with me.

He really could swim.

As soon as we reached the surface, I coughed and sputtered and gasped, and Charlie rotated me onto my back and tugged me by the shoulders, his legs scissoring beneath us, to the steps at the shallow end.

He propped me on the second-to-top step and I draped over the pool rim, both of us breathing and coughing as Charlie clapped his hand on my wet shoulder, lacking any other way to help. We stayed like that for a few minutes, just trying to regulate our breathing. My side was stinging like hell from ankle to shoulder where I’d hit the water’s surface.

Heck of a way to sober up.

But I was alive. I should be good-and-drowned right now, not suddenly hyperaware of the wet smacks of Charlie’s bare palm as he patted my naked shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Charlie asked then.

I turned toward him. “I’m okay,” I said. “Are you okay?”

In response, Charlie coughed some more.

“Oh, god,” I said. “You’re half-drowned.”

But Charlie shook his head. “I’m fine.” As he settled, he turned to inspect my body. “But you really belly-flopped.”

“I side belly-flopped,” I pointed out, like that was better.

“You can break a rib hitting water from that height. You can—”

“I know, I know. Explode your internal organs. You told me.”

Charlie met my eyes. “Did anything explode?”

“Just my dignity.”

“Well,” Charlie said, a microscopic glint of affection in his eyes. “That’s nonessential.”

“Tell me about it.”

We kept breathing for another minute before Charlie said, “I knew this was going to happen.”

“Did you? I didn’t.”

Charlie tried to shake some water out of his ear. “I knew from the very first day you came here that some way, somehow, you’d make me go off that high dive.”

I frowned. “Did you go off the high dive?”

Charlie nodded.

“Just now? You jumped in after me? That’s how you wound up in the water?”

Charlie nodded again.

Why was that so touching? “I’m very impressed, Charlie,” I said. “High dives are scary even if you aren’t afraid of water.”

“I agree.”

“But you jumped in, anyway.”

Charlie was looking into my eyes now.

“That was genuinely courageous,” I went on. “You saved my life. You performed a water rescue.”

There was something electric about it all. The way he was leaning in close, and examining me, and dripping wet—but somehow so aware of me he didn’t even seem to notice. Focused on me like he couldn’t see anything else.

“Thank you,” I said, and I really meant it.

But it was all too intense. Charlie had to break the moment. “Couldn’t you have tried to die in, like, any other way?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I prefer the worst possible way. That’s just my style.”

Charlie shook his head at me. “Anything except water next time, if you don’t mind.”

“But,” I pointed out, “I did give you a chance to conquer your aquaphobia.”

Charlie smiled and looked down. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

“What I’m hearing,” I said, “is ‘thank you.’”

At that, a breeze came through the yard and Charlie saw the shivers on my arms. “You’re cold,” he said.

He looked a little blue himself. “So are you.”

“Come on,” he said.

“Where?”

“Inside. To dry off.”

As he said it, he brought his arms around to gather me up and hoist me out of the water like he was some drenched, bedraggled, corduroy-clad superhero.

“This feels like something we should be writing about, not doing,” I said into Charlie’s neck as he carried me up the steps and back to dry land.

But Charlie just said, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Charlie carried me straight to his room, wrapped me in a towel as big as a sheet, and sat me on his bed while he rifled through his chest of drawers to find us some dry clothes. I was genuinely shivering now, so I just held very still and waited.

“I’m going to change first real quick,” he said from behind me, “and then we’ll deal with you.”

“Okay,” I said, teeth chattering a bit.

“Don’t look,” Charlie said. He was just feet away—in easy looking distance.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said, squeezing my eyes tight.

And then there was a notable silence where I heard brushes and slaps and squelches as Charlie—presumably—stripped down out of his sopping clothes, toweled off, and replaced them with dry ones.

I wasn’t looking. I would never have looked.

At first.

But then there was this moment when I guess Charlie must have been closing a drawer and he pinched a finger, maybe—because next, I heard him yelp, and when I looked over, he was hopping around and shaking his hand.