seventeen going under - jeremiah fisher

ch. 8

"Aren't you guys a little too old to be playing chicken?" Nicole asked, laughing through her words. I saw Belly's face drop and Conrad stiffened next to me as he dropped his feet in the water. His calf was touching mine under the warm pool water.

"It was Taylor's idea," Belly said.

There was an awkward pause and then Jeremiah broke the silence, "wanna play water volleyball?" Before anyone answered, he threw Belly off his shoulders behind him and into the pool and everyone laughed and it was no longer awkward. Always the comedic relief.

"Kind of rude of her," I mumbled, only Conrad could hear. Nicole was taking off her shoes and setting her stuff down and Conrad glanced over his shoulder to make sure she didn't hear. I didn't care.

"That was kind of rude."

"She can't hear me."

"So what," he hissed. I looked at him and his eyebrows were furrowed and he looked more serious than I thought he would have and I recoiled into my body for a moment.

"Since when don't you side with your friends?" I asked as Nicole sat down next to Conrad, smiling because she had no idea what we were talking about or that it was about her.

"Side with his friends about what?" Nicole asked. She wrapped her arm around Conrad's shoulders and leaned into him, smiling. He smiled down at her and shook his head and we both said "nothing" at the same time. "Oh, okay," she mumbled, brushing it off.

I looked back out at the pool. The net was now set up and they had started playing their game and Conrad and Nicole engaged in small talk next to me but I tried not to evesdrop. I envied the time it was just the five of us. Me, Belly, Conrad, Steven, and Jeremiah. There was no Taylor crashing our party and Nicole would not be soaking up Conrad's attention and it would have been me on Jeremiah's shoulders.

When we were younger, before all the hard stuff happened, chicken was one of our favorite things to play. Belly would go up on Conrad's shoulders and I'd get up on Jeremiah's and our hands would be really slippery and we would laugh too hard until our stomach cramped and I'd fall off of Jeremiah's shoulders before he was able to catch me.

Belly always described Conrad's shoulders as a safe place to be. She said that Jeremiah felt too wobbly like she would fall and crash at any second but to me, Jeremiah was the most stable of them all. His were the ones I wanted to lean on.

I stood up and started to pull down my shorts but Conrad caught my wrists frantically when he noticed. "What the hell are you doing?" He scolded, looking around at everyone. No one was looking except for Nicole, who was peeking at us but trying to look like she wasn't.

"I have a swimsuit on underneath," I informed him, still trying to pull down my shorts but resisting from his grip. He looked over at everyone in the water, then back up at me, and released his grip. "What the hell is your issue?" I chuckled, taking my shorts off.

Conrad shook his head and rang out his fingers with his hand. I took off my shirt and tossed myself in the pool. I felt Conrad staring at me the entire time I swam over to Jeremiah and Steven. "YN! Finally," Jeremiah laughed, reaching out to me. I put my hands in his and he pulled me the rest of the way. I let my body glide through the water until it crashed into his chest. He instinctively wrapped his arms around me and I couldn't help but lean into him like he was an old blanket.

"You gonna be on my team?" He asked into my now wet hair and I nodded. He twisted his fingers into my hair as he hugged me tight and that's how I knew we will always be okay.

+

I walked into Belly's bedroom, towel drying my hair, as she and Taylor gushed on her bed about her birthday presents. I dropped the lemon loaf off in the kitchen as we ran through Susannah's house trailing water behind us all. Susannah and Laurel yelled as we booked it up the stairs, the boys going left toward Conrad and Jeremiah's rooms and the girls going right toward Belly's.