Page 23 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

“We work together,” I reply.

“That’s Quentin?” she says. I can tell she’s trying to whisper, but her voice carries easily across the water.

At the mention of his name, Quentin smirks, flashing those obnoxiously handsome dimples. I notice his dark blue trunks match his eyes.

“She’s been talking about me?”

“Yeah,” Kamille says, addressing him now. “She said you were a liar who was being mean to her on purpose, but not because you like her, because you want her job.”

My eyes slowly roll to the cloudless early evening sky above us, as if I’m praying for deliverance from the heavens. I can’t even chastise her. I mean, she’s not wrong. The part of me that’s not borderline embarrassed is fighting a proud smile.

“Wow,” he says, his gaze shifting back to me. “That’s… quite the glowing review.”

“Is there something you want?” I ask him.

“Just here to swim,” he says innocently. “There’s no point having a building with a pool if I’m not going to use it. Especially when it’s a hundred degrees and humid.”

In an instant, he has slipped off the edge and dipped beneath the surface of the water. He comes back up wet and glistening, slinging his hair back like a supermodel. My suspicions that first day were entirely correct: he does look really good shirtless.

I drag my attention back to the foam board, willing myself to forget he exists. The girls under the umbrella definitely haven’t forgotten, though. They’re eyeing him when he emerges, smiling as they peel out of their Memphis College of Nursing tank tops and giving him coy little waves. I’m sure any moment now he’ll saunter over and begin to seduce one of them. Or both of them. It’s not like his go-to party trick is that difficult in this situation. These are basically the poster girls for a koozie-clad White Claw and gratuitous shots of cinnamon whiskey.

“What did you mean about breathing?” Kamille asks him, oblivious. “You can’t breathe when you’re underwater. I thought the whole point was to hold your breath.”

He turns to us, treading water easily. “We have to breathe to survive. Knowing when and how to breathe in the water is what keeps you safe.”

I can tell the gears in Kamille’s mind are turning, inspecting this tidbit of information from every angle and holding it up against what she already knows.

I’ll be honest, what he’s saying makes sense. I haven’t focused at all on breathing. We’ve been working solely on the mechanics: kicking, floating, how to move your arms and legs together. Kamille is strong enough to be a swimmer, but she’s not confident enough yet.

“Can you teach me how?” she calls over to him.

“Maybe,” he says.

For a moment, I think he’s trying to dodge her question, which infuriates me, not in the least because he’s the one who struck up a conversation. I’m ready to tell him to stop wasting our time and go flirt with the nursing students, but then I catch the spark of a question in his eyes. It takes me a full beat to realize he’s asking my permission.

I stifle a sigh as I give him a tiny nod of approval.

“We can do it, but we’ll have to be quick. How long do we have, Heidi? Three and a half minutes?”

“Please don’t make this weirder than it has to be,” I mutter.

He swims over until he’s standing with us in the shallow end, scantily-clad college girls quickly forgotten. Rivulets of water stream down his chest, following the trail of dark hair that draws a tantalizing line down his toned stomach, below his belly button, into the top of his shorts. He’s fit in a way that looks effortless. Is it possible for abs to look so approachable?

I drag my gaze up. I suppose it’s a credit to find he’s not checking me out. Although, I’m currently wearing sunscreen-smudged makeup with my hair in a lopsided knot and a top that more closely resembles an unremarkable sports bra than beachwear, so there’s really not much about me to check out. Not that I want him to be checking me out.

“All right,” he says. “First, you have to trust yourself. Not me. Not anyone else. Just you. You have to know that you can do this.”

Kamille nods once, determined. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he says. He instructs her to hold the side of the pool, take a deep breath, then dip her face into the water and blow bubbles out through her nose and mouth.

“I need my goggles,” she protests.

“You don’t,” he insists. “There’s nothing to see. And you can go as slow as you want. It’s your breath. Trust yourself.”

She looks at him for a moment like I think she might tell him off. I almost want her to. Then, she gulps in a giant breath, squeezes her eyes closed, and splashes her face into the water. She comes back up a few seconds later, gasping, but to my surprise she goes down again. The bubbles confirm she’s exhaling, exactly like he instructed. She works on this for a few rounds, slow and determined.

“Like that?” she sputters.

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