Page 21 of Christmas Cheer

Everybody’s screaming and cheering as he plows through them, either startled about getting pushed or excited to see one of the star players in our swimming pool, but he ignores them. And there’s no doubt that he’s heading straight for me; I can see that look in his eyes. I’m trying to figure out how to keep him back, to convince him not to make a spectacle of us, but then, when he’s about five yards away from me, he submerges.

There’s so much going on in the pool that I can’t track him. Here in the shallow end, there are people standing everywhere, and the water distortion makes it impossible to tell what’s leg and what’s whole body.

I brace my hands on the ledge, ready to pop up if he doesn’t surface in the next couple seconds, scared that at over two hundred pounds, he’s going to be too heavy for me to haul up with all those clothes on him.

Suddenly, like a swamp monster rising up from the muck, like Cthulu rising up from his interdimensional rift in the whirlpool, like the shark that ate Samuel L Jackson’s ass in whatever movie it was where Samuel L Jackson’s ass was eaten by a shark, Evan surfaces directly in front of me.

Before the water can even drain from his face, his hand goes around my waist, and he pulls me back underwater.

There’s no time to react. One second, I’m mildly concerned he might have just drowned; the next second, I’m the one being drowned.

He barrel-rolls us, and there at the bottom of the shallow end of the saltwater pool at the Grand Marquis, among a sea of legs from the marching band, his hair an electric blue anemone pulsing over his head and his sunglasses gently floating away, Evan kisses me softly but hungrily. Like he’s been starved for days but has to savor his first bite.

And then we’re on the surface again, and I’m pushing him off me. “What the hell, Allore? Get off me, you psycho!”

I stand up straight but he stays hunched down, his chin bobbing on the surface and his hand tucked up under the leg holes of my bikini bottom just under the gentle waves. He looks very sweet and affectionate, his eyes at boob level but respectfully trained up to my face.

Also, he is ridiculously drunk.

“Do you know what I went through to find you?” he slurs.

“A handle of vodka?”

“The band kids are fucking monsters.”

I nod. “They’re easily excitable.”

“No, you don’t get it.Monsters.”

“Sometimes.”

“Hughes, listen to me: I think they all colluded against me. Like, I think they have this hive mind. I think they somehow were able to join forces through telepathy to keep feeding me shots every time I asked where you were.”

Good grief. That’s exactly the story I need following me to Berlin. It’s not like my name is on the back of jerseys or anything, though, so the band kids may not have even known who he was looking for.

“If you’d spent more time with the band, you’d have known to expect this.”

He gets a little closer to me, his nose practically brushing my sternum. I’m sure he thinks he’s being clever and ‘riding the current,’ but I can feel his arms tightening. “Do you spend time with the band?”

“Well, they do go to the same college that we do, and they do have the same classes as us.”

One of his legs snakes behind my foot. He may not have my flexibility, but he still manages to lever his thick calf muscle over mine to make my knees bend, dropping me lower. “That’s not really spending time with someone, is it?” he asks as he manages to get my butt on his other knee.

“They also have this Underdog thing they do.”

Evan raises an eyebrow.

“The trombone players all play the theme from Underdog. You know, that old kids show? With the superhero dog in the cape? And while they play it, a bunch of the band guys toss someone in the air. In the Superman position. It’s kind of like crowd surfing but on your tummy.”

Evan’s expression darkens as I explain it until he looks absolutely menacing and his arm has coiled around me. He looks around, suddenly acting threatened and territorial in this literal sea of band kids.

He nods to the tuba guys. “Was it them? Did they touch you like that?”

“Evan!” I admonish. “There was no touchinglike that. It was just good fun.”

“It was absolutely the fuck not good fun. They were groping you.”

I ignore the fact that yes, I was very much groped every time I was Underdog, but that’s college life. I knew what I was getting into, consent was given. It’s not like any of them got under my bloomers, and it’s an easy way to get those spirit points I sometimes lack. “How do you know they were groping me?”

---