Page 9 of One Night in Paris
“Well, she might’ve been on the beach, but she was really close to the water.” Trevor narrowed his eyes and huffed at me.
All I could do was laugh. Thank goodness his jet ski had gotten stuck on the sand a few feet short of running the poor woman over.
That was Trevor, though. Wherever the man went, chaos was sure to follow. Going on dangerous adventures with him might not be the smartest idea, but we always had a blast, andhe had yet to seriously injure either one of us—or an innocent bystander.
“What do you say?” Trevor asked, bringing my thoughts back to the present. “Race you to the island?”
My mouth opened and closed. It probably wasn’t a good idea to be racing when there were so many people on the water, but Trevor was a true thrill seeker. Some were addicted to drugs or alcohol. Others liked the high of lots of sex with multiple women. Or gambling away their fortunes on the ponies every weekend. Trevor may have been involved in some of those other obsessions to varying degrees, but above all else, he was addicted to speed and danger.
The only way he would get a satisfactory high out of this was to let him have his fun. “Yeah, yeah, sure.” I was about to say more, like, “Let’s be careful,” but before the words could come out of my mouth, Trevor took off, putting full power in, and shooting off through the water with a laugh that sounded like a cross between a drunk frat boy and a hyena.
He’d gotten ahead of me by several feet, so I cranked it up as well, being more cautious than he was. Winning wasn’t as important to me as it was to Trevor, despite how much I hated it when he rubbed it in my face that he’d beaten me.
What was important was making sure no one got hurt. I liked danger and adventure within bounds. Stupidity hadn’t gotten me this far in life. So when I realized Trevor had forgotten to tether himself to the jet ski, and there was essentially nothing keeping the watercraft from continuing on its way should he bail out for some reason, I did my best to catch up to him, trying to warn him.
“Trevor!” I shouted. “Your safety lanyard is off!”
Without turning his head to look at me, he shouted, “Yeah, dude! This sound is off the charts!”
My eyebrows knitted together as I puzzled over what that might even mean. Obviously, he didn’t hear me. “No, man! Your tether!”
“We are together—at last, motherfucker!” He stuck out his tongue like a rock’n’roll star and then sped up even more somehow.
In front of him, I saw a girl on a Sea Doo crawling across the water as her parents watched from their speedboat a few feet away. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. “Shit,” I muttered. If I could see her, surely Trevor could see her, too, right?
Apparently not. He continued heading right in her direction. “Trevor, watch out!”
“Yeah, man. Far out!” That laugh echoed through the wind, flying back at me, his path not changing.
Knowing I had to take evasive action right now, I began to turn my jet ski toward Trevor a bit at a time. I wasn’t quite even with him, but if he was paying attention to me at all, he’d have to turn, too, or we’d collide eventually.
“What the fuck?” he asked, turning to look at me, “What are you doing?”
Pointing at the girl, I shouted, “Watch out!”
Trevor’s eyes continued to linger on my face. Now, he had no idea where he was going at all. “Huh?”
“Trevor! Look out!” Frantically, I pointed at the little girl. Her parents saw us now and were screaming at her to get out of the way.
Like a baby deer on a lonely highway at night, suddenly cast in the eerie glow of oncoming headlights, the little girl batted her eyelashes a few times, her mouth dropping open. She didn’t move. Not even forward.
“Shiiiit!” Trevor screamed, suddenly turning to see her there, directly in his path. Yanking the jet ski to the side, heovercorrected, avoiding the girl, the boat, and me, but with the sudden change in direction, his body didn’t keep up.
Trevor went sailing off the back of his jet ski, landing right in front of me. All I could do was pretend I was on theTitanicwith an iceberg right ahead. With full control of my watercraft, I turned swiftly to the left, away from all of them, missing Trevor’s bobbing form by mere inches.
The fact that he did not have his safety lanyard around his wrist or secured to his life jacket meant that his jet ski continued to run. I watched in horror but then amusement as the vehicle propelled itself across the sound, skipping across waves from other watercraft, and then promptly beached itself on the small island we’d been headed for.
As soon as the jet ski stopped in the sand, Trevor shouted, “I won!”
A few hours later,after we managed to have a little fun on the water, despite Trevor’s mishap, we finished loading the jet skis onto the trailer. I pulled my truck up the boat ramp, tired, drained from the sun, but happy to have been doing this with my best friend.
Making my way back to the place where I stored the jet skis, I wasn’t expecting Trevor’s question that seemed to come out of nowhere. “Man, what would you do if you saw her again?”
Confused, I said, “Probably apologize to her and offer to pay for her college education.”
“What? No, not the little girl we almost killed. The girl from Paris.” Trevor shook his head.
“We?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything but try to warn you, bro.” For a moment, I thought about his question. What would I do if I saw Harper again? A thousand images of her smoking hot body beneath me came to mind. Chuckling, I said, “Offer tomarry her.” Trevor raised an eyebrow. “I mean… for her money, of course.”