A Little Less Girl by Tess Oliver

Author:Tess Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, suicide, drugs, family, young adult, swimming, social issues, teen fiction, teen romance
Publisher: Tess Oliver

Chapter 23

Jake

Dani had seemed out of it today at practice. She swam fast but she was off on her starts. Blister had not shown up to watch. He’d told me that his mother wanted him to come home this afternoon to mow the lawns. He’d hardly talked to me all day.

I’d spent an hour organizing the store room, and I pulled the door shut behind me. I walked back onto the deck ready to head home for dinner. Someone wearing the blue swim sweatshirt and hood was sitting on the edge of the diving block staring down at the pool. I could only see their back.

“We’re going to close up the pool area,” I called to the person. My voice echoed in the empty building. I stepped closer. “The coach doesn’t like anyone hanging around unsupervised.”

The hidden face turned toward me. It was Dani. She glanced at me through glossy, dark eyes and then faced the water. Those few glimmers of frailness and vulnerability I thought I’d seen in her occasionally were fully on display now. She looked sad, but it was not a fight with a friend or failed a test kind of sad. It was a life sucks sort of sad. I wondered if she’d been thinking about Amy.

I sat on the adjacent edge of the block and stared at the wet cement below my feet.“Everything all right?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes. “I’m fine.” She turned toward me. Her long lashes were clumped together by a mixture of chlorine water and salty tears. “I was just having one of those feeling sorry for myself moments. I was thinking how much fun it would be if my best friend were still here.” She slipped the hood off her head. “I really miss her. No one could make me laugh like Amy.”

“I’ll bet. You know, there was this kid at school, he died last year. He was the kind of guy most people never noticed. But I saw your cousin purposely sit near him at lunch to talk. Ryan was always laughing when she talked to him. Even with as sad as the guy always seemed, he smiled when Amy was near.”

Dani reached up and tucked a strand of my long hair behind my ear. As her soft finger rounded the back of my ear, I temporarily stopped breathing. It was like having the wind knocked out of me.

“I read about Ryan in her diary. It seems that Amy wasn’t the only person who befriended him.”

I glanced down. “He was a cool guy. Ryan knew everything there was to know about outer space. He wanted to be an astronaut. Life is definitely not fair.”

Dani looked up at me. I had that aching urge to kiss her again. But I restrained myself. I doubted I’d ever work up the confidence to kiss her.

“You two need to head home. I’m closing up the place,” Higgins yelled from his office doorway.

“I’ll only be a minute, Coach,” Dani called over her shoulder.

‘Is that you, Dani? Take your time.

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