Page 39 of Jump on Three

I was bouncing, excited, forgetting myself as he pushed out of the pool and strode across the tiles toward me.

I held my hand up. When Ivan reached me, he slapped it gently then pulled me into him, giving me a loose hug around my shoulders. He was getting my hoodie wet, but it only slightly bothered me.

“How did I do?” he asked, barely breathing heavily.

“You were beautiful,” I blurted out. Heat rose to my cheeks, and I tried to sputter out something to cover up my inappropriate praise. “Your form was perfect. You could be in a how-to manual.”

Ivan squeezed my shoulders, chuckling. “Nah, too many tattoos to be in a manual. I gotta get ready for my next heat. Keep cheering for me, all right?”

I nodded, watching him saunter back to the pool to talk to our coach. The striations in his traps and lats were mesmerizing. When he moved, they rippled beneath his skin like waves.

This wasn’t the first time I’d had to curl my fingers when they twitched with the urge to touch him, but it might have been the strongest.

“Evelyn.”

A sharp poke to my bicep broke me from my trance. I turned to the girl who’d said my name.

Layla.

This couldn’t be good. Nothing concerning her ever was.

“Yes?”

She leaned toward me as if wanting to confide something. “I know you’re not really aware of how awkward you are, but could you do the rest of us a favor and not scream like a banshee? It’s embarrassing. Everyone was staring at you. Poor Ivan must have been dying over you shrieking his name like that.”

“I wasn’t…shrieking.” There was no force behind my denial, though.

She sighed and shook her head like she pitied me. “Are you even capable of not being creepy as fuck?”

Of course, this was a rhetorical question since she didn’t wait around for my answer.

I didn’t have one anyway. I didn’t think I’d been shrieking…but what if I had been? Layla was mean for absolutely no reason, but that didn’t mean she was lying.

I sat down on the bench, unsure of how to act. Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I wished for an instruction manual on how to do life. It felt like everyone had been given one but me. They knew how loud to cheer, how long to clap, how they were perceived.

If Delilah were here, she would have told me Layla was being a jealous cunt, in those exact words. Her voice was inside my head. But Layla’s was there too. And our parents’, who had spent years telling me to just act normal. Along with our older brother, who insisted autism was an excuse for being a brat.

Delilah’s should have been the strongest. She was the person who knew me best, who I most admired, but my brain didn’t work that way. She could have told me a thousand positive things about myself, but one negative thing would stick to me like glue.

Frustrated with everything, I picked up my knitting and slid my headphones on. If I ignored the world, I’d miss Ivan’s next heat, but at least I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.

Ivan slouched in the seat beside me on the bus, his legs spread wide, encroaching on my space. I was curled up against the window, so it didn’t bother me, and he needed the room for his mile-long limbs.

He tapped my shoulder, and I slid my headphones off.

“You disappeared,” he accused. “I lost my best cheerer. Something happen?”

“No. Nothing happened.”

His scrutinizing gaze swept over me. It felt like fingers prodding at my skin. I squirmed, worms slithering in my belly. He was warm, but my blood was still icy with doubt, and his presence didn’t change that.

“Ah, okay.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs. “I got worried when you weren’t there.”

“I’m fine,” I stated.

“Good.” He nodded two or three times. “I won, by the way.”

I let myself look at him for a few seconds before sliding my eyes back to my yarn. “I predicted that outcome. You made the rest of the swimmers look like untrained children.”