Chapter 12 - Adrian

I stood at the mirror in the hallway bathroom, steeling myself. Sir was right: I was skin and bones. I hadn’t given much thought to the appearance of my body over the past few years. I was comfortable around Sir and Avett knowing they accepted me, and at all other times I was hidden beneath layers of baggy clothes. But now, the prospect of Lily seeing me in a swimsuit made me want to shrink into myself.

I tugged my Henley back on, brushed the hair out of my eyes, and reluctantly stepped into the hall. The polished wood was cold under my bare feet and the house was quiet. Lily was changing in the cuddle room. I didn’t know where Avett was.

After just a moment, Lily joined me in the hall. She looked at my baggy swim trunks. “Hey, you beat me!” She fussed. She was wearing her dress, but the hint of a purple swimsuit strap was now visible at the collar. The white Madonna lily still rested behind her ear. Her legs were pale and slim, her ankles delicate, her feet also bare and her toenails painted pink. Fuck, she just looked better every time I saw her.

I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. Don’t stare at her feet, I told myself. I met her playful green eyes instead. “What do I win?”

“Hmmm...” She tapped her chin, deep in thought. “You get to throw me into the pool,” she decided.

That sounded like a pretty good prize to me.

“That’s a terrible prize,” Avett said, emerging from the master bedroom in his tightest swim shorts and nothing else. “I was already going to do that, anyway.” He looked back and forth between us. “Why haven’t you two changed yet?”

“We did,” I said, gesturing to my suit.

“Well, aren’t you both awfully modest,” He drawled, sounding annoyed. As he looked back to Lily, he caught her staring at his bare torso. “Pick your jaw up off the floor, doll. You’ll hurt yourself,” he said, and blew her a kiss before running for the stairwell. “Last one in the pool has to strip EVERYTHING off!” He yelled, and disappeared downstairs.

We looked at one another, neither making a move to follow him. “If neither of us get in the pool, wouldn’t that technically make him the last one?” I asked.

Her face broke into a smile, and she giggled. “Gosh, I love loopholes.”

I took her hand and we descended, traversing the rooms of the calm house. It was nice to be alone with her, only just for a moment, even. Her presence relaxed me, just like Avett, but without all of the lewd badgering. She was peaceful. That was the best way to put it.

Avett, on the other hand, was not. Especially today, after a long week of gradually building desire without release. He wasn’t the only one out of us two that was sexually frustrated, but I wasn’t the one yanking Lily around like a ragdoll or puffing my chest out at the pool boy to assert dominance. Not that I was a fan in the least of the way Jason had practically violated Lily with his depraved stare, but I wouldn’t exactly go out of my way to try and piss off someone twice my size. All I wanted was for the rest of the day to go smoothly; for Avett to keep it in his pants long enough that we could have a good time without scaring her off.

I snuck a peek at her as we passed through the sunroom, the light now amber with golden hour. I took a breath. She deserved more credit than I was giving her. She could be as tough as nails when she wanted to, and she could fend for herself. She’d already surprised me so much today. She caught me looking. “What?” She giggled again.

“Maybe I’m the only one that’s scared,” I mused.

“Of what?” Her eyebrows knit together. “Taking your clothes off? No, I’m terrified.” She laughed: a maniacal, unbridled laugh far heartier than her usual airy giggle. It was so adorably absurd. I joined in, laughing more at her laugh than anything else.

“Why?” I asked. “You’re stunning.”

“Ew, Adrian, you’re not supposed to say that about your sister,” she groaned.

Ugh. I wished she wouldn’t start with the sister thing again. It was fucking torture.

She removed the flower from her hair and perched it behind my ear instead. I frowned. “You don’t want it?”

“I don’t want it TO GET WET!” She screamed, and in a single, swift movement, she shed her dress and banged out the door. She sprinted across the patio and flung herself into pool with an enormous splash. “You lose!” She yelled through the window after resurfacing, then broke into that same manic cackle.

“That’s my girl!” Avett hollered and dove under her, emerging from the water with her seated on his shoulders like she was weightless.

“Woah,” she yelped in surprise, quickly adjusting her purple bikini top.

By that point I was at the pool’s edge. “You cheated!”

“Yeah? How do you figure?” She balanced herself after nearly tipping over as Avett trotted a victory lap around the shallow end.

“By, um ... I don’t know! Distracting me with your feminine wiles!”

Avett laughed. I felt a brief pang of envy as he clutched her thighs tighter around his neck to steady her, slick with pool water. “Lily,” he said in a knowing tone. “Did you seduce him to claim victory? You’re a genius, darling.”

“I won fair and square,” she said, but still accepted Avett’s outstretched palm for a high-five. She was competitive little one, that Lily. Little did she know that Sir loved games too, and his favorites where the kind that were ridiculously difficult for us to win.

The two of them looked at me and erupted into a chorus of ‘take it off!’

“Nope,” I said, and sat defiantly on the ledge, with my legs crossed to avoid touching the water. “If I never get in, I’m technically not the last one.”

“Boooo,” Lily said.

With a quick scan of me, Avett could tell immediately just how badly I didn’t want to strip. I knew he would let me off, at least this once. “Whatever,” he said. “I’m bored of this game, anyway. Let’s all play ‘launch the Lily’ instead.” He sunk down slowly then sprung back up, flinging her off his shoulders through the air and across the length of the pool with impressive power and accuracy. She resurfaced in the deep end, sputtering.

Thank you, I thought.

Avett glided away, eyeing me, and mouthed, “You’re welcome.”

Huh. Maybe I was getting better at this whole telepathy thing.

No longer averse to the water, I slipped out of my shirt, folding it neatly on the patio, then placed Lily’s flower gently on top. I lowered myself into the pool. The heated water provided pleasant relief from the rapidly cooling air outside. I sunk to my neck and began a lazy backstroke while Avett and Lily splashed and shrieked in the other end. “That’s not how mermaids swim,” Avett said accusatorily. “You keep kicking your legs all over the place!”

“Well, maybe I’m a mermaid with TWO tails,” Lily countered. “Don’t discriminate.” She was clutching her swimsuit to her chest, which certainly didn’t aid in proper mermaid swimming.

“Stop messing around with your top, darling,” Avett said. “Nobody’s looking at your nipples.”

She scoffed, sheepish. “It’s too big for me. It keeps slipping off.”

“What, did your boobs shrink overnight?”

“No!” She defended. “This is Cassie’s swimsuit, if you must know. I don’t have one at the moment.”

Avett shook his hair like a wet dog, sending tiny droplets flying. “Why not?”

“I just don’t swim that often, okay? Not everybody has a pool in their backyard.”

“Whatever,” Avett shrugged. “It’s just tied too loose, anyway. Here,” he glided towards her and reached for her bikini string.

She unconsciously recoiled, but quickly relaxed. “Fine,” she said, turning as she moved her long, damp hair over her shoulder to accept Avett’s help. “Just, don’t look, okay?”

“I’ll fix it with my eyes closed, okay? Goddamn,” he griped. He squeezed his eyes shut and waved his hands around clumsily until he found the string, which made her giggle. As he untied her top, I briefly feared he would rip the whole thing off her, but my worry subsided when he pulled the strings taut and secured them in a double knot. “Better?” He asked, blinking.

“Much,” she smiled, twisting her torso around to test the movement. She was such a willowy thing, with her ribs and dainty clavicles poking through her pale skin. I’m sure slimness was more attractive on her, but it did make me feel a tad less self-conscious knowing I wasn’t the only scrawny one.

Avett brought his hands to rest on her bony shoulders and lowered his lips to her ear, whispering something I couldn’t hear. Judging by her reaction, as well as general knowledge of Avett, it was something perverse.

“Shut up!” She shrieked, and broke free of his grasp with a giant splash in his direction. “I’m gonna go hang out with Adrian instead,” she said, and broke into an impeccable mermaid stroke towards me. “Hi, Adrian,” she said, popping out of the water a foot away.

“Hi, Lily.” I righted myself, leaning against the side of the pool.

She took my hands and slowly lifted them out of the water, her eyes traversing my outstretched arms with demure interest. Her gentle fingertips fluttered up my left forearm, coming to rest against a misshapen divot in the skin. “What’s that?” She asked, looking concerned.

I swallowed, the taste of peaches still lingering faintly in my mouth. “A scar.”

“From what?”

“A lighter. A burn, I mean.” Other old burns across my arms had faded away with time, but that particular one had been deep enough to leave a permanent mark.

“Was it an accident?” She asked, darting her worried green eyes upward to study my face from behind her matted blonde lashes.

“Um,” I glanced at Avett, who was floating nearby, watching our interaction with mild interest. “It was ... A mistake.”

“Okay,” she said, dropping my arms back in the water. She didn’t push it further, instead simply flashing me a quick grin of reassurance. Her reaction was far calmer than Avett’s had been back in high school. He had a conniption when he first saw what I had been doing to myself. But I supposed the scar was now old enough that she could tell I wasn’t in any type of immediate danger or anything. “Can I have a piggyback ride around the pool?” She asked sweetly.

I grinned and turned around. “Hop on.”

Beaming, she grabbed my shoulders and wrapped her legs around my waist. I wasn’t exactly known for my strength, but she was weightless in the water, and I could easily swim.

“I’ll race you to the other side,” Avett said.

“You’re on,” I replied, feeling determined.

My burst of confidence quickly dissipated by the time Avett was touching the ledge of the deep end, and I was still ungracefully flailing somewhere near the middle of the pool with Lily on my back.

“Not fair,” Lily complained when we finally finished the race. “Adrian had a disadvantage.”

“Okay, fine,” Avett said. “Trade me, Adey.”

I released Lily and she bobbed over to Avett, claiming her perch on his back instead. We positioned ourselves at the starting line, and he looked to me. “Ready? Set, go!” We took off, racing back to the shallow end. I still lost, but when I heard Lily’s delighted, triumphant cackle, it didn’t really feel like a loss.