Given Time

♡11♡

He laughs and pulls his T-shirt back down. "Because panthers are cool!"

I laugh back. "Fair enough."

My trick seems to have worked at distracting Zara as she tells Jake to pull his T-shirt up again so she can talk me through the other two designs she's made for him. Tanner doesn't make any effort to join in on our conversations, which is fine by me.

After ten minutes of chilling on the grass, Zara gets an idea in her head to use us three as her patients while she tries out her new first aid procedures. She whips out some rolls of dressing and a pair of scissors from her backpack and heads straight to Jake to practice making a head wound for him along with an eye patch.

When Tanner finally opens his eyes, he bursts out laughing and pulls out his phone to take a picture. "You look like a complete idiot."

"As long as my baby passes her classes, I'll be her fucking dummy any day. Especially when we get to play nurse and patient later," he winks.

Tanner gags while I cringe.

"Ew, too much information," I shriek.

Zara playfully hits Jake and assesses her work. "He wishes, Leah. Have you seen the nurses outfits they give us? Talk about unflattering."

She then shuffles over to Tanner and lunges for his arm. "Quit being a baby and let me practice on you."

"What, and look like him? No thanks," Tanner jokes as Jake sits happily on the grass with his invisible wounds.

Zara huffs and makes a swipe for his arm again. "I'll just put your arm in a sling."

"Nope."

"Oh, come on. Pretty please." Zara bats her eyelashes for effect, and it does the trick as Tanner groans before letting Zara have access to his arm.

I watch mesmerized as Zara acts swiftly, knowing exactly what to do. In a matter of minutes, Tanner's left arm is tied up in a sling, and he looks down at the work and sighs. "Can I take it off now?"

"Yes. Mr. Grumpy Pants, you can."

"Great." In one fluid motion, Tanner releases his arm from the hold and pulls it over his head.

Zara turns her attention to me and grins. "And what fake injury shall I give you?"

"Go for whatever you wish."

Unlike Tanner, I'm happy to oblige.

Her mischievous smile comes back, and she glances at Tanner briefly before responding. "Okay, hike your dress up so I can bandage your leg up."

Shit! I spoke too soon.

Not wanting to back down, I lift the dress halfway up my thigh and hold onto it for dear life as I don't want to risk my panties coming on show.

Zara releases some of the dressing from the roll and wraps it tightly around my leg multiple times. "Is it meant to be this tight?" I ask.

"Yes. You're suffering from a huge amount of blood loss, and I need to slow the circulation," she quips as she ties it off. "Ta-da."

"So, what accident do you think we survived, Leah?" Jake inquires as he pretends to support his injured head.

"Yours is definitely through some water-sports injury, and I could have fallen back on a metal rod."

"Nice," he agrees, giving me a high five.

When Zara's finished playing with us, Jake and I take off our dressings and give them back to her.

"Thanks, guys. Consider this your first taste of what I'll be practicing on you for the next three years."

"Awesome," Tanner deadpans as he jumps up from the grass. "Come on, Jake. We need to get our asses off to class."

"Yeah, yeah."

He lifts off the ground and places his hands on either side of Zara's face as he kisses her with just as much vigor as before.

"Dude, stop sucking face and let's go," Tanner grumbles, grabbing him by the shoulder.

"Cock blocker," Jake mutters as he releases Zara and follows Tanner down the path.

"I'll see you at the party on Friday, Tanner," Zara shouts after him.

He spins around and puts his thumbs up. "Make sure the bookworm comes too. She promised she would."

I scrunch my nose. Bookworm?

"Will do," she shouts back.

As soon as the guys have disappeared I lightly swat Zara's leg. "That's for meddling when I asked you not to."

Zara grins. "Sorry. It's just you'd make a really attractive couple."

I hold up my finger and let my wrath come down on her. "Never ever say that again. If you ever pull shit like that again, you'll have to be applying real dressings to yourself."

Zara snorts and lays back down to sunbathe. "You suck at being threatening. You know that, right?"

I huff and open up my textbook again. "I'll work on it."

"You do that," she jokes.

As Zara spends the last thirty minutes relaxing with her eyes closed, I continue to make notes until I reach the end of the chapter and then spend the last ten minutes soaking up the sun with her.

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