The Summer Reunion (unedited version)

41| Lake Nights

Holy shit, I want to kiss him.

We both fell back into the lake, away from each other. My breathing hitched like I was too freaked out to even keep my body functioning. It was hard to see Grayson's expression with only the moonlight over our heads. His eyes were dark and hard to read. At first glance he looked angry. Beneath it all he looked hurt.

Water lapped over my shoulders and up to my chin before I steadied myself. I could feel a pair of eyes on me, besides his. While Izzie and Drew were still fooling around out of the water Tosh was holding onto the side of the dock, staring between the two of us. She didn't look amused like I would have thought. Her expression was concerned. For me, I guessed.

I swam to the ladder and pulled myself up onto the dock. A breeze passed by, chilling my damp arms. I brushed passed Izzie and Drew standing close together on the dock and hurried to the wooden steps. This is embarrassing enough even without an audience.

It seems I left my critical thinking skills in the lake with Grayson. The only thing I could think of was getting back to the cabin as fast as possible, and alone. I'm not ready for any conversation I need to have with Grayson or Tosh about what they just witnessed. I don't know how I feel, how I've even supposed to be feeling right now, and I'm not going to mess up a lifelong friendship because of some urge I had in one small moment. 

I trudged up the small hill until I reached my pile of clothes hanging on a branch. My sweatpants stuck to my legs as I pulled them up and by the time I was fully dressed everything on me was cold, damp, and clinging to me. I grabbed my phone and used it as a flashlight to guide me back, something I didn't think to do earlier.

If any of them were following me I was too quick for them to catch up. My legs moved on autopilot; my brain too lost in thought to focus on walking. I sensed a shift in the air, like temperature altering the atmosphere. Everything had changed. Yet it all remained the same. I was still fleeing in the opposite direction of real life, and it was still waiting for me to turn around and catch up.

On the hurried walk back my brain was running through so many thoughts and scenarios I didn't even give myself the chance to be distracted by sounds in the forest or anything I could be scared of beside my own problems.

Who cares if a bear mauls me? I'm going through a crisis right now. That would only be doing me a favor really.

Mental images flashed across my mind. Grayson's hand on my waist, tugging me closer. His tongue darting out to lick his lip. The dark shadows of the night darkening his features, his eyes only a shade away from black. The moonlight shimmering the water around us, reflecting uneven lines of brightness across our faces.

Again my mind reverted back to his lips. Have they always been so enticing? That can't be true, I would have noticed had they have been. They weren't big, but they were full. The type of lips you want to have against yours, pulling at and running your tongue ov-

No. I'm not thinking these thoughts about him. Anyone but him. Why had things suddenly changed? Why did they have to change at all?

I was doing fine with us being friends again. I worked hard to get us back to normal. And now some feelings are creeping up, after all the time effort, and telling me this isn't enough anymore? That's what it was. This feeling. It was discontentment. Sure, I was shocked and unprepared when he did whatever the heck that was in the lake, but I wanted it to happen. And it didn't. Now I was filled with this disappointment at our unfinished business.

If things want to change, they better hurry up and do it cause I'm getting tired of waiting in these half stages. We hate each other, but we both want to make up. We're friends, but not fully. Now we're really back to normal, and we can't stay there anymore. All these things are enough to make a girl's head spin!