Page 134 of The Rom-Commers

Huh.

Charlie was not panicking at the pool’s edge. He was underwater with me.

He really could swim.

As soon as we reached the surface, I coughed and sputtered and gasped, and Charlie rotated me onto my back and tugged me by the shoulders, his legs scissoring beneath us, to the steps at the shallow end.

He propped me on the second-to-top step and I draped over the pool rim, both of us breathing and coughing as Charlie clapped his hand on my wet shoulder, lacking any other way to help. We stayed like that for a few minutes, just trying to regulate our breathing. My side was stinging like hell from ankle to shoulder where I’d hit the water’s surface.

Heck of a way to sober up.

But I was alive. I should be good-and-drowned right now, not suddenly hyperaware of the wet smacks of Charlie’s bare palm as he patted my naked shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Charlie asked then.

I turned toward him. “I’m okay,” I said. “Areyouokay?”

In response, Charlie coughed some more.

“Oh, god,” I said. “You’re half-drowned.”

But Charlie shook his head. “I’m fine.” As he settled, he turned to inspect my body. “But you really belly-flopped.”

“Isidebelly-flopped,” I pointed out, like that was better.

“You can break a rib hitting water from that height. You can—”

“I know, I know. Explode your internal organs. You told me.”

Charlie met my eyes. “Did anything explode?”

“Just my dignity.”

“Well,” Charlie said, a microscopic glint of affection in his eyes. “That’s nonessential.”

“Tell me about it.”

We kept breathing for another minute before Charlie said, “I knew this was going to happen.”

“Did you? I didn’t.”

Charlie tried to shake some water out of his ear. “I knew from the very first day you came here that some way, somehow, you’d make me go off that high dive.”

I frowned. “Did you go off the high dive?”

Charlie nodded.

“Just now? You jumped in after me? That’s how you wound up in the water?”

Charlie nodded again.

Why was that so touching? “I’m very impressed, Charlie,” I said. “High dives are scary even if youaren’tafraid of water.”

“I agree.”

“But you jumped in, anyway.”

Charlie was looking into my eyes now.

---