Dream Team Plus One

Part Twelve

A/n- just incase you haven't heard this masterpiece of a song, I linked it above. It helps to understand the atmosphere later in this part

Clay quickly laced up his shoes as he watched Grace doing the same. For a split second he thought she was about to lead him into the woods to kill him, but he quickly dismissed that thought. He then began mentally cursing himself out for ever thinking that about Grace.

“Here I’m always the mom in the friend group,” she handed him sunscreen and bug spray, “if you don’t put it on, I’m not showing you the surprise”.

“I- whatever,” he obliged, “can you show me now?”

They walked out the door, down the stairs of her deck, and made their way into the woods. “Grace this is sketch, you know that right?”

“It’s worth it ok? This is the entire reason I pay so much for the property,” after a couple more minutes of walking, they stumbled upon a clearing. The forest led straight to a little bit of beach that was surrounded by more trees and bushes. “Welcome to my own private beach!”

“Whoah, this is so cool,” Clay stared at the water, “it's so peaceful here”.

“Did you pack your swimsuit like I asked?”

“Wait, we can go swimming?”

“Race you back to the house”.

They took off running, once they reached Grace’s house they rushed up to their rooms to change. After Grace had changed, she began gathering things to take with them. She packed her speaker, drinks, and a few snacks.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Um yes,” Clay laughed to himself, Grace was using his merch shirt as a cover up.

Once they made it back to the beach, Clay was the first one in the water, “come on Grace, you’re so slow,” he splashed water at her.

“Ok, ok, give me one minute,” she connected her phone to her speaker and shuffled her playlist. The first song to come on was “Lost In The Wild” by WALK THE MOON. She took a deep breath, took off the shirt she was wearing, and ran into the water towards Clay.

A bikini, she was wearing a dark purple bikini. Purple looked so good on her, hell everything looked good on her. Clay couldn’t keep those thoughts out of his head. He watched her dance around in the water to the song. Where did these feelings come from? Why was he so infatuated with her, they barely knew each other. None of this made sense.

“Are you just gonna stand there?” Grace questioned.

“No,” he started running after her.

“You’re not gonna catch me,” she ran off toward deeper water.

Pretty soon they were both swimming around, chasing and splashing each other. A current caught Grace off guard, sending her right in Clay’s chest. She looked up at him, their faces were inches apart. Of course to add to the moment, the next song to start playing was “Dusk Till Dawn” by Zayn and Sia. Tension filled the small space between them, neither one of them wanted to do anything but neither one of them wanted to move. It was the perfect imbalance of wrong timing and unidentified feelings. As much as the two of them didn’t want to admit it, this wasn’t the time for anything to happen.

Grace was the first to pull away, she laughed nervously, “s-sorry, the current caught me off guard,” she swam a little farther back from him.

“No, it's ok,” he searched for the right words, “glad I was here to catch you”.

To combat the awkward atmosphere that the moment had created, they both decided to swim back to shore to get something to eat. Grace had packed chips, sandwiches, and of course Dr Pepper. Clay looked up to see the sun starting to set, neither of them had realized how late it had gotten.

“You know,” Grace began in between bites of food, “if you had told me a year ago that I would be watching the sunset with the one and only Dream and MY house, I would never have believed you,” she took another bite, “this is still so crazy to me”.

“Aw is someone fangirling over me?”

“You know what, I take it back. You know why? Cause I’m a big youtuber now, you should be fangirling over ME!” Grace snickered at her response.

Clay put his bag of chips down, “Oh my gosh, are you the real Gracie23?? I’m your biggest fan! Can I have an autograph, and I’m definitely taking one of your pillows! I can’t believe I am breathing the same air as the Gracie23!!”

“Ok you can stop now, that's not as satisfying as I thought it would be”.

The sun had almost completely disappeared from the sky, “we should probably head back before it gets any darker,” Clay got up and started grabbing their things. Grace followed suit and led him back to the house.

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