“I’ll pick you up at four?” Amy asks as I get out of the car.
“Sounds good. Thanks.” I wave as she drives away.
Liam’s waiting for me in the vestibule between sets of double doors. I let him wrap me in a hug, rest my cheek against his chest for a long moment, before we break apart and I get on my toes to kiss him hello.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He reaches back and tucks in my tag. “How’s break been?”
“Okay I guess. Yours?”
“Eh. Is it weird I’m kind of glad we go back to school tomorrow?”
“Not that weird.” I am too. Jasmine and I are barely talking. “I missed you.”
We’ve never gone so many days without seeing each other since we started dating.
“I missed you too.” He kisses my forehead. “Ready?”
As we get changed—repeated exposure hasn’t made the sight any less overwhelming and excellent—Liam says, “Sorry I something-something. Car’s back in the shop.”
“Again?”
“Some sort of coolant leak.” He sighs and tightens his drawstring. “Mom thinks I should get a new one before college. Doesn’t want me driving all the way to Texas.”
“Oh.” Even though we’re still in the locker room, I feel like I’ve plunged into water. I don’t want to think about Liam leaving for college.
I’m pretty sure that’s a regular thing when your boyfriend’s a year ahead of you. It doesn’t mean I have abandonment issues.
The pool is way busier than usual, filled with parents praying their kids will swim off their spring break energy. A harried-looking mom is wrangling five kids in the far lane, trying to get them going in a line as they work on their doggy paddle.
Liam and I share one of the middle lanes. He has me swim a couple lazy laps, just to warm up, before he starts correcting my form again, demonstrating how he wants me to scoop the water at the catch, maintain even pressure on the pull, get my arm angle right on the recovery.
His signing has improved so much he barely has to fingerspell anymore, which is great, but he also doesn’t have to demonstrate by moving my body around, which is disappointing.
I’m halfway through another lap when it happens. At first it feels like someone’s grabbed my calf, and I kick harder to get loose, but that makes it worse. I’ve never felt pain like this before. It messes up my stroke, and my breath, and before I know it I’m bobbing and sputtering, drifting back toward Liam as he swims out to collect me.
“Cramp?” he asks, helping me back to the wall.
“Yeah.”
I hold on to the wall as he helps stretch my leg until the cramp releases. I sigh with relief, but it’s still sore.
“Come on, let’s take a break.” He leads me under the lane lines to a ladder—usually, we just pull ourselves out, but he can tell I can’t do that right now. He spreads his towel out on a bleacher, has me sit, and wraps the other towel around my shoulders.
He sits beside me, has me spin a bit so he can get my leg on his lap, and presses at my calf. I hiss.
“Breathe.”
“This ever happen to you?” I ask.
He nods.
“I’m never getting back in the pool.”
He laughs. “When you’ve been swimming as long as I have, you get used to it.”
I’m quiet as he works on me. We’ve touched each other plenty (all still above the belt), but this is different somehow. It’s not exciting, exactly, but it feels tender and special in its own way.
Jasmine’s wrong. This isn’t all going to go south.
Liam cares about me. I care about him.
I love him.
“Am I a cynic?” I blurt out.
He pauses. “What?”
“Do you think I’m a cynic?”
Liam’s brow scrunches up, and he releases my leg so he can sign. “What brought this on?”
“That’s not a no.”
He laughs. “No. I don’t think you’re a cynic.”
“Really?”
“True biz. I think you’re kind. And thoughtful. And way too smart for me. You’re romantic and you’re beautiful. Maybe sometimes you’re a little too honest for your own good, but I like that about you.”
I laugh and cover my face, because he’s laying it on too thick, because he’s wrong, because I’m not any of those things. But he makes me feel like I am. He makes me want to be.
“I like everything about you,” I finally manage to tell him.
“Oh yeah?” He grabs my leg again, and immediately finds a really gnarly spot that makes me yelp.
“Not everything!”
He laughs, eases off, leans down to drop a quick kiss on my shin.
“Do you want to keep swimming or stay out here?”
I’m getting kind of cold, actually. And Amy won’t be back for another hour.
“We can keep swimming.”
It’s warm when we step out of the Natatorium, or maybe it’s just me, warmed on the inside because of the swim, because of Liam, because he’s right next to me in his sweats and a hoodie, our shoulders brushing.
The sun shines on him, his flushed cheeks, his true-blue eyes, his raven hair shining where it’s still wet. He looks at me, and smiles, and somehow the day grows even brighter.
My love for him boils over, so violently I can’t hold it in anymore. I pull him against the side of the building, so we don’t block anyone, and give him a kiss.
“Hey.”
“Hey, you.” He kisses me back, hooks his fingers in my belt loops. He looks down at me, and I look up at him, but it doesn’t feel like he’s looming. He’s just with me. Always.
My heart’s beating even harder than it did when we were swimming.
“I need to tell you something.” I swallow. I can’t keep this in anymore.
“Okay?”
“I really, really like you,” I say.
Liam grins. “I really, really like you too.”
I take a deep breath. “You make me feel good about myself. You listen to me. You see me. And I don’t know if you know how much that means to me.”
“Jacks . . .” he says, so soft I can only see the shape of my name on his lips.
“What I’m trying to say is I more than really really like you.” I swallow down my nerves. “I love you.”
I wait for him to say something back.
For him to love me too.
His eyes go wide and shimmery.
Did I mess this up? Why isn’t he saying anything?
But then his lips curve up. And if I thought his eyes were bright before, now they’re like follow spots on full brightness, and I’m transfixed in their beams.
“I love you,” he says.
He loves me. He loves me!
I kiss him. It’s like I’ve got a helium balloon in my chest, so full I might go flying off into the sky. I kiss him, and he kisses me back.
But all too soon, we have to come up for air. He smiles down at me, reaches back to play with my hair.
“I love you, Liam,” I say. “So much.”
“I love you too. I—”
But then he startles, steps on my foot and backs away to look toward the parking lot. His mouth has dropped open, eyes wide, not with joy but with something more like panic.
I turn and look.
It’s Jasmine.