Washed Up ≫ A.I

Chapter [7]

[Charlotte Kendall]

The cold water illuminated against my skin, bubbling up all around mine and Ashton's bodies. Once we started floating back to the surface my legs started kicking frantically with my arms still pinned around his shoulders. My head swam to the top, breaking the surface and breathing in deeply. I gasped repeatedly, pulling at Ashton once he surfaced after me. He breathed in with chuckles as he reached out and tried to calm me down but I was over the edge at this moment.

"Why would you do that!" I yelled in hoarse voices.

"Hey," He said softly while swimming closer to me. I pushed him away and tried to swim near shallow ends behind me. "Hey, you said okay." He continued to plead.

"That doesn't mean that I meant it!" I started panicking more the longer I was out in the open unable to touch. He looked at me quite puzzled as I kicked away and started swimming backward towards the edge of the lagoon.

Ashton kept swimming after me, pleading for me to calm down but I felt like I was drowning all over again. I started having trouble breathing above water until I swam backward into a rock. I turned and saw the sunbathed rocks nearest to the rock side wall. I quickly grabbed a hold of the rock and clutched my body around his rough surface.

"Charlotte," He called over to me before swimming up behind and wrapping around to look at me. "Hey, hey look at me." He hummed politely as his hand gently rubbed my shoulder. I was shaking from the freezing cold and the touch of Ashton's hand on my bare shoulder.

I waited several seconds with my chin pressed to the hot rock before tilting my head to the side and taking a peek up at him slowly. The sunset was directly in front of his face before he moved over and blocked the background with his wet curly hair. His cheeks were slightly pink and flushed pale with his lips parted in small amounts of breath escaping. I turned my cheek some more to look at him entirely as he bent in closer, tilting his eyes down at me sincerely.

My breathing slowed and suddenly my body cooled down and everything felt natural again.

"See," He pointed out quietly.

"What?" I squeak while pulling my cheek from the rock.

"You got over the fear." He smiled down at me, bringing up the side of his lips into a side smirk.

"No, I-" I didn't know how to win at this. I looked down at the water surrounding us and huffed before pulling my weight up and crawling up and over the side of the rock side of the waterfall, "You suck." I groan playfully as I stand up above him, draining the heavy excess water from my dress down on top of us his head.

He laughed as the water ran down his head. He brought a hand up through his golden hair and then quickly ducked underwater before darting back up to squirt water at my face. I squealed stepping away to head back down the side of the rocks. Ashton continued to splash me from below until I got over everything and a rush of adrenaline took over, sending me up and over Ashton's head back into the water. The weight of my dress lifted up around my waist, exposing my bathing suit bottoms as my body sunk into the water.

It was a slow motion feeling, diving in feet first and floating to the top slowly with a limitless amount of air inside of me. I soon realized jumping in freely was way more rewarding than forcing myself under.

My head soon shot up over the water, gasping at the fresh air and feeling the splashes of Ashton swimming over to me. I struggled a bit not knowing where to touch until Ashton's arms wrapped around me gently and pulled me around to face him. We were laughing, enjoying each other's company as growing acquaintances.