Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 122: Cocktails and Handstands

They float through the rest of their honeymoon in Mexico in unbridled, open happiness and bliss. They spend more time lounging around the beach and some of the (multiple!) resort pools drinking cocktails, and plenty of time in their hotel room enjoying each other's company in a little more intimate way. They do another tour, where the bus they take is a little busier, everyone on board looks under 35, and instead of a day of leisurely hiking they end up at a waterfall and swimming area.

Someone in one of the groups of friends on their tour decides to start a loosely-organised competition, judges and scoring and all, for jumps off one of the more stable sections of the waterfall. It's not entirely safe, but it's safe enough, and there's even a marked trail up to it, so it's loosely sanctioned by the island's tourism body, anyway.

"This reminds me so much of Summer Games belly flop competitions," Shayne tells Courtney, both of them paddling in the water off to the side as they watch three judges take positions sitting on stones at the edge of the water and a line of people 'registering' for the competition by giving the guy taking on organising it their name, which he quickly types into his phone before instructing the contestants to gather off to the side of the jump area until their turn is called.

"Hey! You guys in?" he calls out, looking straight at them. Shayne hesitates, for a moment, but Courtney laughs and quickly extends herself up out of the water to wade towards him, tugging Shayne along with her.

"Yeah, yeah, sure, why not," she grins, when she reaches them, "Courtney. And this is Shayne, but he's won a handful of bellyflop competitions before so don't expect much from him."

"Damn, where you doing bellyflop competitions? That sounds dope," the guy enthuses, Shayne laughing in response.

"Courtney's won a bunch too, actually. Our work runs them sometimes," he answers, nonchalantly.

"Hey! You're that couple from Smosh! My sister watches you guys!" one of the girls on the judging panel just to their side calls out, "wait, weren't you guys getting married soon? Are you on a honeymoon?"

"Look, yeah, guilty," Courtney answers, shrugging, "but the internet doesn't know that yet, so keep it quiet."

"Understood!" the girl replies, holding out her hand to high-five both of them as they are directed over to join the rest of the contestants in the water.

They're some of the later contestants to sign on, and it means they're later to be called up, too. They let themselves join in the fun, laughing and cheering as the fifteen-odd people before them cycle through their turns. There's someone who does a perfect somersault dive, only afterwards revealing that she was a semi-professional diver as a teenager. The scoring is all over the place, though, and she gets about the same amount of points as someone who accidentally does an actual belly flop, stomach red as he winces in pain and trudges out after his jump.

"Next up is Shayne!" the organiser guy calls, Shayne already halfway climbed up to the top of the waterfall. The organiser had been throwing in random observations about the contestants as he went, and when Shayne stands at the top of the waterfall, he adds, "Shayne is a three-time champion of a semi-annual bellyflop competition, or so his wife says!"

"Yeah I am!" he calls out, not bothering to correct that he'd only actually won once, smiling a little too widely at the casual reference to Courtney as his wife.

He hasn't put a whole lot of thought into his jump, and he certainly isn't going to do a bellyflop from the height of a waterfall, no matter how relatively-short it is. Still, he manages to use his muscles to his advantage, intentionally tipping himself sideways as he cannonballs down off the waterfall so his shoulder and bicep hit the water after the rest of him, pushing the splash he creates up even further.