Sprinkle of Life

Chapter 2

There were a couple reads and I think that's pretty awesome. Thanks for reading my story, you guys :)

There's a external link over on the side, it's Sage's swimming outfit. 

A few places came to my mind when he asked that, but one stood out. I turned us around and started walking towards my house. The place I had in mind was a little ways away and we needed bikes to get there. 

"There are bikes at my house that we can use," I explained as our hands swung between our bodies. "You can ride a bike, right?"

"Yes! I might be awkward at some things, but I can at least ride a bike," he said dramatically, throwing his free hand into the air.

“I couldn’t ride a bike until I was fourteen,” I laughed as we walked up my driveway. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Maybe a little bit,” he smiled, following me into my garage.

I pushed a bike towards him before getting onto mine. “I’ll remember that later.”

“Where are we going?” he asked after we got back on the road and headed towards a familiar back road. “This is how horror movies start out…”

I rolled my eyes at him and kept peddling, standing up as we went up a hill. I heard Joey huffing and puffing behind me and realized that he must not ride a bike as often as I do. He would learn that in a town as small as Glaten, Florida bikes were the best form of transportation.

“Are we almost there? This is the longest bike ride I’ve ever been on,” he complained after we were on level ground again and he’d caught up with me.

I laughed and shook my head, “Oh hush and come on! We’re almost there and it’s so worth the ride!”

I heard him laughing or maybe he was panting for breath, I wasn’t really sure. I stopped my bike a few hundred feet from the spring I was taking Joey to. I kicked off my sneakers and tugged my shirt over my head. I saw Joey’s cheeks turning pink as he looked away from me.

“It’s just a spring, Joey. I’m going to take my shorts off, just in case you’re going to freak out again,” I laughed as I unbuttoned my shorts and shimmied out of them. "I'm just as covered as if I was wearing a bikini."

He looked back over at me and saw that his cheeks had went back to their normal colored. He nodded slowly and toed off his shoes. He pulled his shirt over his head and sat it in the basket of my bike where I’d put mine. I laughed at how slowly he took off his khaki shorts and folded them up. His boxers were green with ducks on them. 

“If you’re trying to seduce me, it’s working,” I laughed, moving towards him slowly. “It’s like you’re drawing me in with your awkwardness.”

“Shut up!” he shouted, chasing after me as I ran towards the water.

I made it to the spring and skidded to a stop, holding out my arm to stop Joey too. “This is my favorite place in all of Florida. I came here with my dad when I was really small, it’s where I learned to swim.”

He took my hand in his and waded into the cool water. It went over my head in the center, but the sides came up to my stomach. Joey was taller than me so the water came up to about his waist. I let go of his hands and started to swim around in the water. It felt amazing with the hot, sticky Florida air around us.

“How did you dad even find this place? It’s in the middle of the glades,” he said after he went under the water. “It’s so clear, too, you can almost see to the bottom of the spring.”

I just laughed and sucked in a deep breath before going under the water. I opened my eyes and saw that he was right, it was so clear. My dad used to bring me here to get water, he would say that nothing was better than fresh spring water.

“He said that his father used to bring him here whenever he was small. He would tell me spring water is the best for a person’s health,” I explained when I came back up above the water. "It was almost healing." 

“That sounds really awesome. I’m from New Jersey and the water there is pretty much toxic,” he laughed, lowering himself deeper into the water.

“Oh wow, Jersey is forever away from here,” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, you’re telling me. I’m 4,332 miles away from home,” he said sadly. “It’s weird being this far from all of my friends and my brother.”

“You have a brother?” I asked in shock. “Why didn’t he come with you?” 

“He’s at university in Jersey,” he answered without looking at me. “He resents mom a lot, he wouldn’t have come even if mom asked him to.”

I sensed something under the surface of that, but I didn’t pry. I had my own family secrets. I just played around in the water with him, splashing him and squealing when he splashed me. It was starting to get cooler so I knew a storm was brewing up on the glades. I stood up and started moving out of the water with Joey on my heels. 

“It’s getting ready to start storming and you don’t want to be out in the glades during a storm. It gets pretty nasty,” I said, tugging my shorts and t-shirt back on.

We peddled quickly back to my house and made it there just as the rain started to fall. We moved onto my back porch and watched as the clouds rolled in.

“You should probably call your mom and tell her where you are. The last thing I want is for her to think that I kidnapped you,” I laughed before going inside to grab some towels.

I went to the hall closet and saw that mom had come home already. She was sitting in the living room with a bottle of scotch in her hand. She didn’t drink all the time, but it was a lot of the time.

“Can you wait until my friend leaves to get completely plastered? I don’t want him to think that you’re an unfit mother,” I asked as I was making my way out to the porch again.

“I will do whatever I please, and I’m not an alcoholic. I’m just having a calming drink after a hard day at work,” she snapped before downing a huge gulp of the amber liquid.

I just sighed sadly before going back out onto the porch. I saw Joey standing off to the side, watching the sheets of rain fall. I walked over to him and stood by his side as the lightning and thunder started to shake the ground. 

“I grabbed some towels to dry off, but it looks like the air’s doing a good job of it,” I said, holding out a beach towel with fish on it to him.

“Mom said to tell you that she was sorry for freaking you out. She’s just under a lot of stress because of Aunt Melanie’s cancer,” Joey apologized, using the towel to dry himself off the rest of the way.

“It’s okay, I understand what stress does to people. My mom was like that whenever my dad left,” I said without looking over at him. “It gets pretty hard when they’re so focused on themselves that they don’t notice how it’s effecting you.”

I felt him looking over at me, but I refused to look at him. I had my hands sitting on the railing of the porch as I watched the rain falling even harder. His hand landed on top of mine and slid his fingers in between. I squeezed them and leaned my head against his shoulder.