Page 17 of River
“Wooow!” Maximum drawled out the word.
“I don’t understand,” Eas, the oldest of the boys, who was a teenager, said.
Peter and I exchanged a grin and were just about to explain it to him when River took over. “Eas, try to see if you can fit the entire ice into your mouth.”
He tried, and even with some of it already eaten, he couldn’t.
“See, it’s difficult, isn’t it?”
“Can you do it?” he asked, and she quickly shook her head.
“No, that takes a special talent.”
She gave us a pointed stare, communicating without words that there was no reason to explain the lack of a gag reflex to a boy.
“Who wants to go into the water and wash off the sticky ice cream?” I encouraged the children when we were done eating.
As we made our way to the water, I made a series of imperfect, acrobatic handsprings, rotating in the air. It made the children laugh, and when I looked back to River, she was laughing too. I grinned with dizzy butterflies swirling in my belly. Fuck. I shouldn’t be this attracted to another man’s woman, but with River, it felt like I was being pulled in by a current much stronger than any I’d ever met in the ocean.
