The Trouble with Love

❝ we are the reckless ❞

(unedited)

Setting fire to our insides for fun,
Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong,
The lovers that went wrong.
We are the reckless, we are the wild youth.
Chasing visions of our futures,
One day we'll reveal the truth.

"Youth" –Daughter

"It's not too hard," Skylar assured me as we walked down the hall to where the Jet Skis were. We had all split up, since there were apparently four places with Jet Skis, one on each side of the yacht.

Skylar had come with me, obviously. Vanessa and Jacen were together, Keira and Nathan as well and Ashton was by himself in the last one.

I followed Skylar into a small room with long benches, not unlike the changing rooms at school.

"Take off your clothes here," she said. "They'll get wet if you take them off in there." She nodded to the door at the other side of the room. Through the small window, I could see the sky, and gentle waves, but something, a glass wall of some sort, I think, kept them out.

"You have a swimsuit under that, right?" Skylar asked when I hesitated.

I glanced away from the window. "Yeah, sorry. I spaced.

She shrugged. "It's fine. Just don't do that on the Jet Ski."

I nodded, though I was sure if she saw since she was pulling her shirt over her head. I followed her move, then took of my shorts, shivering a little when the cold air hit my skin. Once we were both down to our swimsuits, Skylar pulled me through the door on the other side of the room.

It looked a little like an oversized compartment. The walls, floor and ceiling were all metal. Except the wall directly across from us, which was glass. But even so, there was a rectangle piece of metal cut in, almost like a door.

Life jackets, harnesses, lifesavers and other safety equipment hung on the far left wall. The wall closest to us had a row of steel cupboards, and a couple pictures of Jet Skis and instructions hung in plastic frames.

Along the back wall beside us were two silver and blue Jet Skis. They looked fancy, and new, and shiny enough that I was fairly certain whoever had cleaned them hadn't breathed the entire time to leave an imprint.

Skylar grabbed something from a drawer in the cupboards, then turned and tossed it to me. It jingled as it flew through the air and I just barely caught it by the stretchy cord. There was a piece of black plastic at the end that looked a little like a 'U' shaped key. "Emergency stop," she said.

She brought me over to one of the Jet Skis, flipped open a panel to turn it on, then pulled out a red button at the front. "The black part goes in here, and the cord goes around your wrist," she explained. "That way if you fall off it'll stop."

It took me a couple tries to get the plastic key in, but a moment later there was a quiet beep.

"Okay, so for steering, it's pretty simple. Just turn this whichever way you want to go," she explained.

The steering wheel was a little like a cross between a bike's handles and the wheels you see on those big, plastic cars for little kids. There was a plastic part in the middle that was shaped like a rounded triangle, and two thick handles coming out. Like a bike's handles there were little things attached that I assumed were brakes or something of the like.

"Use these," she said, tapping on the brake-like things. "To go forward or reverse."

Okay, so not brakes. More like the opposite, they made the Jet Ski go.