For the first time all summer, the air didn’t smell like competition. It just smelled like rain and lake water and the beginning of something neither of them had a name for yet.
A beat of silence. Then, a snort from his friend Sam. Then a giggle. Then, a full-throated roar of laughter. But it wasn’t mean. It was a wave of pure, delighted shock. People were clapping. Someone wolf-whistled.
She was standing in the shallows, water lapping at her shins. Her carefully constructed cool had shattered. Her eyes were wide, not with the mockery he expected, but with a raw, naked wonder. She looked at him—not at the suit, but at him —as if she was seeing him for the very first time. bikini dare
“I’m not scared of anything,” Mia shot back, but she didn’t reach for the suit.
“You’re insane,” she whispered, but it sounded like a compliment. For the first time all summer, the air
He didn’t look at Chloe, whose mouth was a perfect O. He looked at Mia.
Later, when the sun bled orange and purple into the lake, Leo sat on the dock, a towel around his shoulders, the bikini now a memory in a trash can. Mia sat beside him, her polka-dotted shoulder touching his. They weren’t talking about the dare. They were talking about the first issue of a comic book she’d secretly loved as a kid, and he was telling her he had a mint copy in his closet. Then, a snort from his friend Sam
It was then that Leo, who usually faded into the background of these moments, heard himself speak. “I’ll do it.”