Page 81 of Again, In Autumn

My fingertips graze his. It’s the closest I can get to an embrace. “Nothing much,” I answer.

He doesn’t buy it.

“You have a really good sister,” I say, leaving him lost in thought, tapping pieces of metal together.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Francesca yells at Grayson to stop playing with the beach balls while she tries to explain the rules of her game.

Maggie turns to me. “I don’t think I understand.”

“There’s not much to it. They are the enemy,” I say, pointing to the five figures standing on the opposite side of the grass. “They have to get to their beach ball to our side, but we have to try and steal it. If you steal it, they can, as the game suggests, snatch you up, and drag your defenseless body, fingernails in the grass, back to the side you started on. Whoever gets the ball to the other side gets a point. But they get two points if they manage to steal a human.”

“That sounds violent,” Diego considers.

“Yes,” I reply. “Liam Neeson made several movies about the very thing they’ll try to do to us.”

“Got any tips?” he asks.

Francesca supplies the opposing team – Adam, Grayson, Caroline, David, Alice – with beach balls.

“Grayson will straight maul you. Keep your hands in front of your face. Watch Caroline put her ball in her shirt and try to belly bump someone to the other side.” I laugh, thinking about it. “It never works, it’s her go-to strategy. David goes straight for the goal, he won’t try to take anyone with him. And just don’t step on Alice.”

I linger on Adam. He laughs and tosses his ball. I push through the flutter in my stomach and say, “Let’s be glad Adam never played football.”

As Francesca stands beside me and blows her whistle, Maggie says, “Oh, but he did.”

“Run!” Kate calls out.

She darts straight at Adam, but he runs diagonally. Francesca scoops up Alice, who runs the wrong way, and Diego fearfully puts his hands up to let David pass. Maggie runs up to Caroline and smacks the top of the ball out from under her shirt. Caroline wraps her hands around Maggie’s shoulders as the older woman trudges forward with an iron determination, letting Caroline’s body drag like a cape behind her.

“Excuse me, that’s my ball,” I tell the man jogging up to me.

“This one?” Adam holds the ball out and pulls his to his chest when I made a grab for it. He makes a motion forward, and I stick out my leg.

He jumps over it, jaw dropping, asking, “Did just try to trip me?”

“Everything short of murder is acceptable in this game!”

“Oh yeah?” He turns, his mouth shifting into a grin. “And I was going to let you escape.”

My feet stumble backward.

“Now I think I’ll abduct you.”

“No!” I try to squirm out of his reach and make another brazen grab for the beach ball.

He clutches my body and digs his fingers into side, a spot he knows will turn me into a flopping fish.

“No probing allowed!” I giggle against my will as he continues to tickle the skin above my hipbone. When I twirl around, his arm cradles around my back, and everything around us seems to disappear. Between our faces, my hair flies up with my breath.

“You said anything’s allowed,” he mutters.

The tips of our noses graze. His palm warms my back, and I fight not to close my eyes and breathe in this moment, adding this snapshot into the hundreds of memories we shared together years ago.

That wouldn’t be productive.

So, instead, I bite my lip and say, “Anything is allowed…like this.” My knee rises between his open legs.

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