Page 61 of The Summer List

“Don’t worry. I’ve got y—”

I don’t have time to finish my sentence before the guy is shouting instructions to keep our hands and feet inside the raft at all times. I barely have a chance to grip the handle before he yells it’s time to go and shoves us into the dark tube.

My scream turns into an exhilarated laugh as we fly through the first few turns, the raft sloshing up the sides of the tube and jerking us around so hard my stomach drops. The orange sections of the slide let some daylight through, but the black ones turn everything so dark I can’t even see my toes stretched out in front of me.

The slide coils through a series of tight loops that have Naomi screaming about us flipping and dying while I just shriek with more laughter.

Before today, I hadn’t been down a water slide since I was in the sixth grade, and now I already want to come back every weekend. I forgot how something as simple as careening down a giant slide at top speed can make your whole body burn with the incendiary joy of just how damn good it feels to be alive.

The track evens out for a bit, forcing our raft to slow down a fraction. I hear Naomi sucking in deep breaths over the sound of the rushing water.

“You good?” I shout, turning my head so the words don’t get lost in the tunnel.

“THIS IS CRAZY!” she screams back.

I laugh again. We’re about to hit another bend and head into a pitch-black section of the slide, but thinking about the last time I was at a water park—specifically, on a school field trip with a bunch of other daredevil twelve year-olds—gives me an idea.

“Watch this!” I yell before I lift my feet up in a wide straddle and brace them against the sides of the slide.

The water shooting past us tries to keep tugging the raft forward, but I press the soles of my feet harder against the slippery sides of the slide until I finally force the raft to a complete stop.

“Andrea! What the hell are you doing?” Naomi shrieks from behind me.

“What?” I demand. “You never tried this as a kid?”

I crane my neck around to face her with my feet still up in the air and see she’s leaned forward in her seat, her face just inches from mine. Her eyes are bugging out of her head, and she’s still got a death grip on the handles.

“Of course not! We’re supposed to keep our hands and feet inside! They’re going to freak out when we don’t come out of the slide soon!”

I want to tease her about following the rules, but she’s so close I forget everything I was about to say. Her damp hair has been whipped into a tangled mess, and her face is still pale with terror, but none of that makes her any less pretty.

She’s just so damn pretty.

The thrill-seeking chemicals flooding my brain can’t think about anything else, not with her mouth so close to mine. It doesn’t matter that I’m twisting my neck around at what I’m sure is a very unattractive angle. It doesn’t even matter that I’m fully spread-eagled to hold us in place in the slide.

I want to kiss her.

I’ve wanted to kiss her for weeks, and sure, the middle of a giant water slide is not exactly a prime location, but my heart is pounding so loud I can’t hear the roar of the water anymore, and every beat makes me more sure of one thing than I’ve ever been of anything else in my life: I can’t go another second without knowing what it feels like to have her lips pressed to mine.

I watch as the terror starts to leave her eyes. Her pupils darken, her bottom lip dropping open as her gaze flicks to my mouth and then back up to meet my stare.

“Naomi,” I say, the blood rushing in my ears so loud now I can barely hear my own voice. “I want you to kiss me.”

If I shift back any further, I’m going to lose my grip on the sides of the slide.

She’s the one who will have to make the first move here.

She jerks back with surprise, but after blinking at me a couple times, a look of determination so cute it would make me laugh if it weren’t also somehow incredibly sexy takes over her face.

She leans back in towards me, hunching forward until her mouth is hovering just a breath away from mine.

I can feel the warmth of her lips already. My eyes drift shut on instinct. I squeeze the raft handles so hard my fingers ache.

She still doesn’t close the gap between us. I’m about to squint at her through my lashes to see if everything is okay when she takes a sharp breath and then presses her mouth to mine.

The whole water slide disappears. Everything fades out of existence like we’ve shot into one of pitch-black sections of the tube.

There’s nothing but the pillowy softness of her lips as they brush mine. I don’t think I’ve ever kissed a mouth even half as soft as hers. Somewhere deep in my chest, a rich, resonant note rings out, like Naomi is a tuning fork and I’m singing her own sound back to her in perfect harmony.

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