Dramatic Summer Love Story

The Wave Pool Incident

I wake up to the feeling of something moving underneath me, I flutter my eyes open to discover Thomas awake laying in front of me trying to wiggle his arm out from under me. He sees I'm awake and immediately stops moving.
"Sorry." He whispers his voice gentle and raspy from just waking up.
"It's okay, what's the clock?" I ask and push myself up so Thomas can get his hand back.
"It's fucking dead!" He exclaims as he takes up his hand with help from his other one. I laugh as he shakes his hand in the air making it flop back and forth. "No wonder it was so hard to try and move it from under you."
"Could be an explanation, but don't worry you'll get the feeling of your hand back in a few minutes this happens all the time to me." I chuckle and sit up in the bed.
"How does it happen all the time to you?" Thomas questions as he drops the dead hand and gets his phone from the nightstand to check what time it is. I'm going to answer and explain to him I sleep on my arm all the time so it cuts off some of the circulations to my arm when his phone starts ringing.
"Who is it?" I try to quickly ask before he picks up and Thomas shows me his screen for two seconds before answering the phone. Gabe was the one calling and I wait patiently while they talk.
Thomas puts his phone back on the nightstand and pulls me to him, he kisses me and hugs me letting me know he has his feeling back in his hand. "What did Gabe want?" I ask after getting and giving a few kisses.
"He told me we had an hour to get ready before we go to Daytona Lagoon," Thomas says in between kissing me.
"Okay." I take a hold of his hand and hold it in the air our fingers laced together.
"That means we can get a quickie in!" Thomas says and I shake my head.
"Stop those naughty thoughts." I let go of his hand and swat his upper arm while giggling.
"Not while this ass is exposed." Thomas counters and slaps my asscheek.
I cry out in surprise and jump up out of the bed, I'm naked and so when I go retrieve clothes for the day Thomas's eyes stay on my body the whole time. I retreat into the bathroom when I've got my clothes in my hands I hear Thomas stand up and so I lock the bathroom door to annoy him. Similarly to yesterday, I put on a two-piece swimsuit and then throw a dress over it to cover me up, Thomas is ready when I get out of the bathroom, he just has to brush his teeth so while he does that I leave to go downstairs to get a few breakfast muffins for us.
Thomas joins me a few minutes later, we have backpacks and wait in the hotel lobby on some couches for the others to come downstairs, it only takes twenty minutes until we're all there and ready to go. I and Thomas still have one muffin to eat when we sit down in the car, Soph counts up the things we should all have, like backpacks with extra clothes if we need them, money, and maybe some snacks. When we finish that we start driving from the hotel to the water park. Daytona Lagoon here we come!
Gabe drives the car through Daytona carefully, entering the parking lot he parks the car in the first spot he sees that's free. Everyone gathers their things and then we get out and lock the car before walking to the reception where we wait in line for a few minutes and then buy the best tickets into the park allowing us to skip lines and some other stuff which isn't nearly exciting.
Into the water park, we stroll and immediately go find lockers so we can throw our stuff in there, we strip down to our swimsuits and then head for our first ride.
We start slowly and go on a ride where you sit in a donut and the water carries you through the ride, it's a fun ride because you see many things in the park from this ride. This ride was about ten minutes because it was so slow but the next ride we go on isn't nearly as similar, we decide to go on the slide where you drop down and then you get shot out into the water. We walk up the long stairs skipping the line and then watch a video of instructions, you're supposed to cross your legs at the ankles and keep your hands crossed over your chest.
I decide to go first and so I get into the tube, I do as they told me to and cross my limbs and they close the tube and then the floor under me gives away and I go flying down, I was told not to open my mouth so I do my best to resist the urge to scream first out of fear and then rush of excitement and adrenaline flooding my body. I go faster and faster down and then I start curving up and I'm all of the sudden in water, I'm surprised so I drink a bit of the water, as I come up from under the water I cough a little bit and then laugh, I climb out of the pool so the next person can go without crashing into me.
The next person I don't know and then comes Gabe and it continues like that, once the groups are back together we continue on our adventure through the water park and go on all the slides except the boring kid stuff. Once the slides are over we're all a little hungry so we get a snack and then go and embark on the wave pool.
We swim into the big pool that gets deeper with every meter we swim forward, in front of us is a big gate where a bunch of water is getting filled up to then get released so the people in the pool can have fun. We try to go as far as we can and then keep ourselves afloat waiting for a wave to burst out.
A few seconds after we are satisfied with the spot we're in the gate opens up and a huge wave gets released. Everyone swims up with it and gets pushed back a bit after the wave is gone past them, this is the best part of every water park, the wave pool.
Our group gathers back up again and we laugh and chit-chat for a while waiting for the next wave. The wave that comes isn't as much fun. Once we hear the gate start to open up we turn towards the wave that's coming, a small wave pushes me from my friends and I don't bother to swim back to them just yet, but the bigger wave pushes me into someone we both struggle to stay above water after crashing into each other, the person who I bumped into puts their hands on my shoulder and push me farther underwater to get up themselves. As they pushed me I was just about to take a breath and so I inhaled some water. When I finally am on the surface again my eyes are blurry and I cough trying to catch my breath while trying to get the water out of my lungs, someone touches my hand and I shake my head but then I feel arms lock around my chest and start dragging me backward.
I don't realize what's going on until I feel the fake beach under my body, my ears are clearing up, and the deafening yells are now distant, I hear a feminine voice call for help. My eyes are starting to see clearer and I feel the hot sand under me, I'm sitting with my back against a sunbathing chair, I have hair stuck to my face and all I want is to feel Thomas's arms around me.
I mumble his name as two lifeguards lean down beside me, they have a bag with them and out of it they get a stethoscope, tears are dripping down my cheeks as the cold metal is put on my back.
"Miss, can you take a big breath for us?" One of the lifeguards who sounds like a guy asks me. I try to take a breath deep into my lungs and get rewarded with another round of coughing profusely. "It doesn't sound like there's a lot of water in her lungs." The lifeguard says to his partner.
"Miss try and cough the water out, it shouldn't be too hard after that you're all clear. Are you ready? Let's try and clear your lungs together okay, we need to take a deep breath." The other lifeguard is a woman, she has her hand on my shoulder and the other is gesturing to breathe in deeply, I do and she does too however when I breathe out of my mouth I cough more and a bit of water travels up my throat, I start having and I'm quickly given a paper bag, I throw up in it.
"That's good honey, Leon checks her lungs again." The sweet lady says. He does and while I take deep breaths I hear promotion come from the pool. I look up and the woman who swam with me to shore is looking at a group of people who are hurrying to the beach, they're yelling I can't hear what and so I turn back to the conversation going on between the lifeguards.
"She sounds clear." The guy who was called Leon says and pats my back lightly I nod and sit back against the sunbathing chair again.
"Honey, how did this happen?" The woman asks me. My thoughts turn back to the horrible feeling of some hands pushing me under, it probably wasn't intentional but it's still horrifying to think back on and so I shake my head not wanting to talk about it. "Well if you want to talk about it later you can ask for me in the reception, my name is Cathy Lincoln I'm in watchtower two," Cathy says and I nod with tears in my eyes. They stand up to leave and then I hear the yells from the group.
"Taylor!" Sofia's voice yells like she's looking for me. I look back up to the woman, who is walking towards the group. My eyes scan the group and I realize who they are, they are my friends, my eyes land on Thomas. I stand up and his eyes finally lock with mine, then the woman approaches the group, instead of staying and talking to her Thomas runs from her and toward me, the others walk with the woman and talk, she's probably explaining what happened.
I don't have the energy to run so I take a few steps but he takes me into his arms seconds after having spotted me. His embrace is strong and more tears escape my eyes, Thomas breaks away from the hugs and cups my face. "What the hell happened?" He gently strokes my drying hair away from my face.
"I don't know." I sob and he pulls me back to his chest and plants a kiss on my head, his arms are strong and make me feel protected, if I had a superpower I would want to be able to stop time, I would then choose to stop it right here in his arms.
I let a few more tears run down my face before I pull away from Thomas and dey my face, the others have gathered around us, and the woman who helped me stands further away looking at us. "Can you go tell her thanks?" I ask Thomas and he nods then quickly runs over to her and I assume he does what I ask and thanks her for me.
The girls gather around me and sit me down on a plastic chair, Aaron and Gabe stand behind them and so does Thomas when he joins us again, after speaking with the woman she has left to go back into the wave pool. "Taylor, what happened, are you okay?" Chloe asks me her voice is calm and gentle but has a slight worrisome tone to it.
"I don't really want to talk about it just yet, especially not in public," I say quietly and wrap my arms around me.
"I think me and Taylor should get back to the hotel, if you guys want to stay longer I can pick you up when you call me," Thomas suggests and I like the idea but don't voice my opinion.
"I don't know about the others but I feel like we have all had a good day and so I'm ready to go back as well," Soph tells Thomas. The others think about it for a second before all nodding in agreement and we start to walk back to the locker holding all of our stuff.
Even though the sun warms the air I feel cold, Thomas pulls me closer to him by the waist while we walk, it comforts me to have him near me. As soon as we open up the locker with my stuff in it I grab my dress and pull it over my head, giving me another layer of protection. I am on my way to pick up my backpack when Thomas swerves in front of me and grabs it before I can. He plants a kiss on my forehead and then we head out of the water park and search the parking lot for the car which doesn't take long as our car is pretty unique for its big size and we spot it almost immediately.
We sit down in the car and start driving, for some reason no one seems to turn the radio on, I rest I was on Thomas's shoulder, in the middle of the ride I text Dad saying we had a small hiccup on the trip but otherwise we're fine and I'll tell him about it later. Once I put my phone in my pocket we are back at the hotel and quickly park the car. We sit in the car in silence and I burst, I can't have them wondering what happened and so I tell them exactly what happened, my voice is quiet so they all stay silent while listening to me a few more tears make an appearance but they get brushed away by Thomas's thumb, he holds my hand the whole time and when I have finished we quietly depart from each other up into the rooms, I'm sure the other will talk about it and text Thomas too but right now I couldn't care less for the pity party I'm going to have around me for the next few days, I'm tired as hell and just want to take a nap.
Thomas told me to go up to our room and he'll be up with our bags in a minute, I know he's going to talk to our friends but I don't argue and go up, I leave the hotel room open so I won't have to open it when he gets back up without a key to open the door for himself.
I throw myself on the bed and don't try to keep my eyes open, I allow the tiresome feeling to take over my body and I'm barely conscious when I hear Thomas come into the room and set down our bags then sit down beside me on the bed to stroke my hair out of my face.