You Can Run To Me

Forty-Eight

There was barely a sound as his streamline body cut smoothly into the water. The dive itself had been exhilarating, twirling through the air like a hawk or perhaps a butterfly, seeming lighter than the air. Time had seemed to slow to afford him more time to move about. He had somehow managed to find a second to see her and wink, his eyes meeting with hers in an intense moment of breath-freezing silence. He remained under the water for what seemed to be far too long. Natalie began to grow almost anxious, staring hard at the water but the angle was all wrong and she simply couldn't see him. Then, with no more noise than his perfect landing, he appeared in the other corner of the pool, his skin glistening in the electric light with water droplets. He shook his hair as he stood and droplets spun on through the air in some fixed trajectory-

She broke out of her reverie, only to find herself staring down at a white sheet of paper printed with the words "END OF QUESTIONS". Her mind was lagging slightly, so she flicked through the pages, which she saw fleetingly to be mostly filled with her own hand-writing, only to have the paper snatched from her hands. She looked up and saw the back of her Psychology teacher's head. Slowly, and then all at once, it came to her that this was her Psychology mock and she'd finished a few minutes early, give or take a few mostly abandoned questions. Evidently she'd managed to squeeze in the time to daydream.

She waited a minute, but since everyone else was starting to stand, she figured she might as well go. There was only about five minutes left in the lesson anyway; no way would they be learning anything in that kind of time. Nat slipped her stationery into her bag and stood, making for the door. It hadn't been all that bad, as paper go, she reflected.

"Well hello there," said a voice that could only be Ephren's.

"How on Earth did you get here so fast? We finished early!" remarked Natalie somewhat incredulously.

"The magic of movie trickery."

"Never mind," she said with a smile, slipping her hand into his so they weren't stood in the doorway in front of everyone.

"So... not long to go now," said Ephren with a sly grin playing upon his lips.

"You still haven't told me where we're going."

"Oh, come on, you know you want this to be a surprise."

Natalie turned away, not sure what she really felt. A whole week with him... Alone. She hadn't exactly told her parents about it. She'd more sort of suggested that maybe she was going to be staying with some friends for the week. They were both clearly distracted by their own impending trip; too excited to think too much about what their almost grown-up daughter might spend her week. They did sort of know about Ephren, after they had called her once while they were in her room together making out, but remarkably neither of them had really asked many questions, which did rather raise the possibility that they hadn't quite glimpsed him there.

When she had told him that her parents were going to abandon her for the week, Ephren's knee-jerk response had been to laugh. After a while, he suddenly stopped, and gave her the are-you-serious? eyebrow. Of course, she wasn't joking. Then a look came over him, forcefully calculating and evidently excited beyond all justification.

"What's going on in that head of yours?"

"I'm going to take you on the vacation of a lifetime," he declared, his passion if anything deepening.

First Natalie had been excited too – it was infectious – but later that night she found herself feeling rather more nervous than anything. Anger briefly followed. It was a matter of chivalry, sure, for the guy to pay for everything, which Natalie was well down with when it came to nights out and so on, but once she started thinking about the cost of hotel rooms and transport, it all started adding up so fast she was glad she was lying down. She would love to spend that time with him, but the idea of him spending so much money on her scared her more than it had any right to. Not that she could really afford to pay for herself, of course. In fact, she found herself flustering, what if he expects me to pay?