CLICKS - The Dolphin Prophecy

CHAPTER 5

I did get to stay on beach patrol, as Doc had promised. But I wasn’t allowed on the beach. The next day I landed pool duty, and since I wasn’t allowed to get in and get my head wet, I had to spend all day in the baby zone. A definite downgrade from the beach, but at least it got me outside. Alysha was getting to spend the day at the hospital with Shay, and I hoped to be able to go visit that night.

The town pool was a Pinhold institution. It was where we’d spent our summers until the age of ten, when we started in the Junior Guard. The rhythm of the day there was always the same; a forty-five minute free swim followed by fifteen minutes of adult swim every hour, except for noon, when the adults got the pool for sixty whole minutes. Adult swim meant intense games of wall ball or kickball on the playground throughout the day. It had been years since I’d really spent all day here like this, and I felt pleased that none of it had really changed.

Celeste came for the noon swim. She took one look at my face and, instead of swimming, dragged me to the beach for my lunch break. “Greasy food, gorgeous waves, and a little girl-talk to put things in perspective,” she said. She sighed and looked at me like she could see right through me. “No, Cami, I haven’t asked Blake about you,” she said unprompted, shaking her head at me in a way that made her seem way older than her twenty-one years. “And, I don’t need to. If you want him, then he’s definitely gonna want you, too. That’s how it works. You just don’t know it yet.”

At that moment, a seagull swept down and snagged a french fry right out of Celeste’s hand, flying back to the railing and chomping it slowly with a satisfied look. Celeste and I laughed so hard that the little guy looked embarrassed. Of course, I had to feed him another fry to make up for laughing at him. This time, he took it from my hand and flew with it under the boardwalk to enjoy it—away from our prying eyes. As the seagull cawed its thanks, I thought of another time a seagull ate my French fry, three years and forever ago, and sighed.

“Kaleb always said that he felt about as wanted on this Island as a seagull at a picnic,” I said, letting my thoughts drift. His presence was still everywhere even though he’d managed to steer clear of Pinhold for years.

“Wow, you’re like the first person to ever mention his name without major prying on my part,” commented Celeste. “It seems like everything I know about that kid I’ve found out online.” I nodded, knowing she was right. But my lunch break was limited, and I didn’t want to spend it talking about the wrong brother. “Okay, fine,” she said, rolling her eyes when I went silent. “No Kaleb questions for you, either. But, don’t worry about Blake. He definitely likes you. Haven’t your parents all been planning your marriage since birth?” She laughed, but I wasn’t laughing with her. “Seriously, that picture of you guys naked and kissing on your grandmother’s porch swing? It would make the perfect wedding invitation.”

  “Yeah, sure—if that picture was of me with Blake.”

When Celeste and I got back to the pool, minutes later, Blake had taken over one of the lap lanes for practice. I got to watch each muscle of his eight-pack flex each time he pistoned his hips above the surface, which—thankfully—he did over and over again. As a swimmer, I understood that the upward thrust was necessary to build muscle memory. As his maybe-because-we-hadn’t-talked-about-it girlfriend, the only thing I understood was that watching him pulse his body over and over again made me think very R-rated thoughts that had no place at the baby pool!

Celeste came over, after she finished her own laps, teasing me so that my face turned red. “All those women are judging your boy,” she said, pointing to a row of moms who looked about ready to hold up numbers like Olympic judges. It was almost obnoxious, though I understood the captivation.

“They should just stop it, already. It doesn’t get more perfect-10 than that,” I said, sighing and then shaking my head. I had watched Blake swim millions of strokes and it had never turned me on at all.