F***in' Arizona

A Matthews Family Vacation (Chapter 29)

I take it back! I take it all back! I hate this! I wanna go home! GET ME OUT OF THIS THING!

I didn't even care about being embarrassed anymore. I was practically screaming at the top of my lungs like a child on a playground.

"Nova! Chill! Just get out if it's that bad! Probably isn't even bad."

"That's because you aren't up here to see it Ari! You would be panicking too if you could see this thing!"

It was the third day of the Matthews' family excursion and I was NOT having it. Turned out that the family owned a big ass 8 bedroom 8 ½ bathroom house in Virginia that they use as a sort of summer home or just a home for whenever they wanted to go on vacation but nothing too extravagant. On this third day, the family and I drove a couple of hours to Great Wolf Lodge to take advantage of the indoor water park and some of their other attractions.

Ari and I had driven up to the house together while the rest of the family rode in another car. The whole drive consisted of us singing late 90s-early 2000s pop and rnb songs, listening to a podcast called "Thirst Aid Kit", talking about work gossip, and napping whenever one of us switched to drive.

Ever since the dinner with his family that night, the two of us have been talking nonstop. We call each other every couple of days and text almost every day. We mostly send each other memes we find funny or based on something we previously had been talking about. We've become so close that we probably really do resemble an actual couple.

However, at this moment, Ari and I were partaking in this canoe expedition with at least 8 other people in this lake.

He and I were not in the same canoe, so the two other random strangers I was with made me be the one to sit in the very front seat. Everything was going well at first and I was even having some good old-fashioned fun until we paddled out away from the shore where the water was probably at least a good twelve feet deep. I happened to be stretching out my leg when I spotted it.

A dormant spider.

My eyes went wide with fear.

My breathing hitched in my throat.

My legs froze.

My heart pounded wildly like it was running with a stampede of terrified African animals.

I didn't originally want to scream because I didn't want to startle the other passengers with me, but then it happened.

The spider moved.

"No," I whispered to it.

"No, please stop moving. You're about to have me gettin' hood up in here."

"Stop! Imma kill you! I'm not trying to be Spiderwoman!" I whispered harshly to the spider.

The spider obviously was not concerned with me and the fact that I was afraid of it. He just kept on inchin' and inchin' towards me.

I had nowhere to go and was starting to panic, so you can only imagine the shrill screams I started after the spider began running towards me at full steam ahead.

I jumped out of the canoe.

I could hear Ari and the others yelling after me as I swam myself back to the shore.

I don't do spiders. Especially ones that run towards me.

"Are you ok?? Everyone could hear you scream from here and saw you jump from the boat," a deep husky voice said to me when I made it back to the shore and laid down.

My eyes had been closed because of the glare of the sun bouncing off the water and me being tired, but I didn't need to open my eyes to know there was a fine male standing over me.