Page 43 of Unsteady

I eye him quickly, shaking my head and pressing my thumb backwards over my shoulder, desperately trying to remove him.

He only shakes his head, crossing his arms like a pouting child and casts a quick hesitant glance towards a very wet Aurora, her curls now pulled high atop her head in some crazy knot that looks like it’s tied with—a shoelace?

I try to pay attention to the whispered argument between the two girls, but I’m far too distracted by my stupid friend getting closer and closer to the duet.

Sadie falls back from her whispered conversation, her back tapping against my shins. It doesn’t seem to startle her—far from it, so it seems—as she grabs onto my jeans and starts to heft herself back up.

Instead, I grasp her biceps easily and set her on her feet again.

“Can you find a towel?”

“Yeah,” I agree, no hesitation, despite knowing I have no idea where I could find one.

Spinning away, my foot taps against the two sets of shoes sitting perfectly by the pool, one set of flopped over cream boots; the other a pristine set of white and navy Air Forces with a missing shoelace.

“Don’t touch my shoes,” Freddy barks, and I’m seconds away from shoving him back into the water for getting snippy with me right now. He walks right past me after barking out the order, heading for a wicker chair and table set beneath the overhang of the porch, where two bath towels lay.

“Planned this one, did you?”

Freddy smiles, that same stupid smirk that’s etched nearly permanently to his face, and grabs a towel to sling over his shoulder, taking the other one back to the girls heading towards us.

A quick, “Sure,” is all I get from him, before he’s handing the towel to Rora. She fumbles with it for a moment, before a concerned Sadie grabs it and circles it around her like a blanket over her shoulders.

“Thanks for watching out for her,” Sadie says, albeit reluctantly, as she guides Aurora towards the wooden staircase. Freddy nods, swiping the towel over his hair and letting it rest around his shoulders as well.

“Not a hardship to get a beautiful woman soaking wet,” he quips, before I can elbow him in the gut, or tape his mouth shut, or find a way to rewind time and never let him become my friend.

Sadie and I both jump in simultaneously, barking over each other.

“Jesus, Freddy.”

“Back off it, Matt.”

But, there’s a loud hiccupping laugh that bursts from the drowned girl, cutting off every reprimand sitting on my tongue.

“That was a good one, Freddy,” Rora agrees, dropping the towel and stumbling as she attempts to pull on her boots. “At least,Ithought so.” She nearly falls again, but Freddy wraps a hand around her arm to steady her while she gets her shoes over her wet calves.

My gaze finds Sadie immediately, her arms crossed and lips pursed, looking altogether much smaller than she did mere minutes ago, straddling me against a dingy bathroom wall.

“Okay, Gray?” I ask again.

The question seems to jolt her for a moment, her eyes snapping to mine with such sharpness that a shiver rolls down my spine. She bites down on her lip, and my hands tighten inside the confines of my pockets, keeping myself from reaching to pull it loose.

“Yeah. We just need to call an Uber.”

I’m shaking my head before she can finish. “Don’t. We’ll take you back to…?”

“The dorms,” she finishes. “Not far. Honestly, we could walk—”

Freddy shushes her, making that little divot form between her brow again as he passes by her and taps on her head like a child.

“Rhys is an overprotective crazy person, and Rora here is walking like a baby giraffe, so let us drop you, yeah?”

It’s clear she’s battling her agreement, but there’s no way in hell she’s walking home alone. If she won’t take our offer, I’ll just have Freddy drive slowly alongside them until they get back to the dorms.

“Okay,” she nods, while her friend jumps up and down in place, using Freddy’s arm as a stabilizer shouting a chorus of “Yay’s!”

Freddy easily joins in too, a glint of mischief in his squinted eyes that I’m sure is now permanently stuck there.

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