Page 63 of Totally Opposed

Alan looks back over his shoulder at me, sitting on the bed shirtless and covered by the sheet from the waist down.

“Never mind, I don’t want to know,” Duckie goes on to say and walks away, shaking his head.

“On a scale of one to ten, how weird do you think this looked?” Alan asks, still looking my way.

“To Duckie, eight, but from where I’m sitting, that isn’t the word I would use to describe how great your ass looks from this angle.”

He wriggles it a little and starts to crawl forward.

“Got any place in here without a window?”

“The bathroom has one, but it’s frosted, can’t see a thing.”

He clears the doorway and stands leaning against the hallway. He strips off his shirt.

“So, are you coming?”

“Oh, we both will be any minute,” I reply and jump from the bed and chase him into the bathroom.

Chapter twenty-two

Alan

The pool water isn’tcold, but it isn’t warm either, and as I take each step down the stairs, my grip on the rail tightens. How does something that happened so long ago hold so much power over me even now? There is no slide here. I can touch the fucking bottom of the pool, but my heart is racing a million miles and my brain is screaming at me to get out.

Ryan dives in from the other side, and I suck in a sharp breath, watching as he glides under the surface towards me. He’s completely at home in the water. His head pops up and his face is alight with joy.

“You’re doing great,” he says, wading over to the stairs as I take the next step down. I’m only as deep as my waist, and as the water shifts side to side, it tickles the soft skin of my stomach.

“I’m not.”

“You are tough. Facing fears is hard. It’s okay if it takes a while to get there.”

He stands, and the water glistens, rolling down his chiseled chest.

“I think you need to come closer,” I say, and he walks towards me and holds out his hands.

“Whatever you need.”

I reach out with my free hand, and when his fingers tighten around mine, it does actually help, and I let go of the rail and take his other hand.

“See, you’re doing great,” he says, and I force my feet to move in closer to him.

“I didn’t tell you what happened for me to get like…well, this. Did I?”

He shakes his head.

“It was forever ago. I was ten, I think, and me and my brothers were at a party for one of their friends. I was supposed to be staying with Mom and Kelly in the small pool, but I followed my brothers everywhere back then.”

Ryan guides my hands out at the sides and back in as I speak, swishing the water around us in a soft rhythm.

“I used to follow one of my cousins around like that.”

“Well, that day I should have listened to my mom. The pool we were at was a big one, It had diving towers and slides, and I thought it was a good idea to follow them up the stairs of the giant slide. Because it’s a slide, and I’d been on slides before. No big deal, right?”

He smiles at me softly and keeps moving our arms through the water, my feet following him as we step side to side.

“I wasn’t a bad swimmer either. I mean, I could swim. I wasn’t like a proper swimmer, but I could get to the edge of a pool with no problem, and it never occurred to me that when the slide shoots you out at super speed, it plunges you down, deep into the water. It was so cold, my chest went tight the second I hit the water, and when the surface grew further and further away from me, I kicked and tried to make myself rise, but I just kept sinking deeper. The chlorine filled my nose and burned andthen just when everything started to go dark, Nial was there. He jumped in and grabbed me and pulled me up out of the water.”

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