It was a hot summer day in LA in July. The temperatures were in the upper 80s, occasionally 90s. And it was always so humid, the moisture in the atmosphere sticking to our skin. It was a Thursday night, Sam and I were trying to figure out a video idea for Sunday. We sat at the kitchen table enjoying the air conditioning, my computer was laid out in front of us.
"We could do another explore video?" Sam sighs. We've been going back and forth with ideas for the past hour. None had seem to caught our interest.
"But it's so hot out," I complained. I gazed out in our backyard, the pool was sparking in the daylight.
"How about we do something with water," I suggest. Sam follows my gaze.
"There has been those 24 hour challenges going around. Maybe we could do like 24 hours in the pool," Sam says, excited about this idea.
It was a good idea. The water would cool us down and the fans always loved to see us shirtless. We could even go to Target and buy some cool floaties and water guns.
"Yea lets do it, tomorrow?" I ask. I pull up Targets website and search for pool floats. A bunch pop up and I scroll through them. Sam leans into me to gaze at my screen.
"Yea, wanna do like noon so it's hot?" Sam says.
"Sounds good. Wanna go grab some floats from Target?" I question. They had plenty in stock. Sam nods and goes upstairs to put his shoes on. I wait for him in my car, trying to cool it down from the heat. He eventually jogs out and we make our way to Target.
Upon entering the store, Sam instantly grabs my hand. We haven't told anyone yet but we've been secretly dating. None of the roommates know and we haven't told any of the fans.
"Babe, the fans," I say. He squeezes my hand before releasing it, sighing. It's been hard, keeping it hidden. We constantly have to check around every corner before we do something.
We reach the pool part of the store and look around. "Colby look at this one," Sam says excitedly. I follow his tiny finger to a box that has a rhino on it. It looks like once you blow it up, it was big enough to sit on. It would be funny to try to balance on it on the water.
"You want that one babe?" I say reaching for the box. The nickname rolls off my tongue like honey. He hums for a response. I look at the other shelves and see a hot pink flamingo inter-tube. I grab that box too. Sam finds the water guns and grabs two blue ones.
"Ok do we need anything else?" I question him as we're about to check out. His eyes scan the store and then shakes his head, no.
We return home, floats and water guns in tow. It was getting close to sundown. We decided to blow up the floats now so we didn't have to worry about it tomorrow morning. It took about two hours because we had to do it all with our mouths.
"I know what we should've bought at the store," Sam said breathlessly.
I look up at him but don't stop blowing into my flamingo inter-tube. His cheeks were tinted red from working so hard. But his rhino was almost blown up.
"A compressor to blow these things up," he laughs lightly. I want to reach up and kiss him because he's so cute. But I know Corey and Jake are in the living room, right in eyesight of us.
We finally finish blowing up our floats and set them in the water until morning. "I'm taking a shower," Sam announces. He walks upstairs and minutes later I hear the water turning on. I crash on the couch next to Jake.
"What are y'all doing?" He asks, looking up from his phone.
"We're gonna do 24 hours in the pool for our video," I say tiredly. I wanted to go to sleep.
