Shock and Awe (Enhanced Book 1)

Chapter 10

A/N

Double update!

Mia and I are relaxing in the hot tub — which barely fits her floatie — with avocado face masks on. Her makeup bag held a lot more than I would have ever thought and I'm pretty sure it's bigger on the inside.

First, she pulled out a bottle of tanning lotion for herself and a bottle of sunscreen for me (she knows me so well). Then came hair ties and some strange towel contraption made to keep face product from getting onto your hair. Mia insisted on putting my hair into two pigtails. "In remembrance of kindergarten," she'd argued.

We weren't even in kindergarten together.

She finally conned me in to two low pigtails, the hair tied on either side around the bottom of my ears. The tails had to rest in front — partially covering my bikini top — because I kept leaning against them painfully.

Mia applied some clear mask that we've since peeled off, and now the avocado one, and she joked that I look like a knock off Flying Awesomeness.

Great.

Now, she's complaining that my nails are too chipped, so she's removing the polish to apply a new coat.

Rowan finds us like that — green, goopy masks and cotton balls taped to our finger nails — once he's finished swimming. He stands at the edge of the hot tub, dripping cold water on us.

"Rowan!" Mia complains.

"Well, how do you expect me to get in the hot tub when this ridiculous thing is taking up all the space?" His tone is lighthearted, so we know he isn't actually upset.

Mia shuffles around, opening up a space for him to join us in her floatie. Since it lets water in, we're still covered up to our belly buttons in the warm water, so Rowan would enjoy his hot tub trip just the same. "Join us."

Rowan chuckles and kneels down to climb into the floating contraption. It wiggles and wobbles as he tries to catch his balance. "This is crazy. Why don't you just sit in the actual hot tub?" Despite his complaining, he settles in anyway.

My friend starts ripping all of the cotton balls off, her nail polish successfully erased. "Let us paint your toe nails!"

The guy across from us drops his face into an exaggerated deadpan. "Mia, I am a Superhero."

We stare at him with blank expressions.

He sighs. "Whatever."

"Eeeeeeeeeeee!" Mia's squeal of excitement makes all off us wince, even her, but she doesn't care. She pulls out red and blue polish bottles and hands me the blue. "Every other one," she orders.

I laugh and take the cotton balls off of my now naked nails in order to be able to paint Rowan's toes. "Yes, Drill Sergeant," I joke.

After Rowan's toes, Mia forces him to paint her toenails while she paints my fingernails a new pastel green color. Every now and then, she has to stop and yell at Rowan for messing something up. The panic that appears on his face every time makes me roar with laughter, which turns Mia's anger to me.

Yes, the big bad Superheroes of Tri-City are, in fact, scared of a high school girl.

Rowan has finished Mia's toes, and she is finishing up a beautiful flower design on my thumb nails, when my mother sticks her head out of the back door and hollers at me.

"Sage, are your friends staying for dinner?!"

"Can they?!" I holler back.

"Did you do your homework?!"