The Beginning of Summer by Greg Welch (rosie project .txt) 📖

attention to notice. She waved at him with one hand and continued her conversation.
“Well, just hurry up. If we’re gonna get any sun this is the best time of day to do it,” she said. “Alright, bye.” Mia hung up the phone and walked over to the fridge where she took out the orange juice and poured a glass.
“So, how’s it going, Mia?” Nick said.
“It’s going,” she said. Mia looked over the shirtless Nick and held an impressed look on her face. Not attracted, just impressed. “Have you been working out Nick?”
“Yeah. Me and Gary work out a few times a week.”
“Oh right, Gary plays football doesn’t he?” Gary was in the tenth grade this year. He was older than Nick and but younger than Mia and her friends. Mia would tell me later on that he used to hit on her relentlessly until she graduated, but he was as she said ‘a huge sleaze.’
“Yeah, he made the varsity team this year. So he works out harder than he did. I just started working out with him this year.”
“Well, you should stick with it. Its working,” Mia said. Nick nodded and wore a look of utter bliss on his face. When she left the room he gave me nod as if he had just won some argument. I simply shook my head and finished my sandwich. Mia made observations and gave compliments like this all the time. It wasn’t uncommon, but Nick had convinced himself that she was into him and I think he held onto that conviction for the rest of the time that we remained friends.
When we returned to the water it was warmer than it had been before and our energy had been refreshed by the food that my mother had served. After being in the pool for a few minutes I looked through the window of our kitchen and saw that Dana was now here and she was walking around with my sister. It took them a while to come out to the pool, but when they did Les wasn’t with them.
“I thought that Les was coming,” I said. My sister ignored me and Dana stopped in front of the pool covered with a large beach towel that was tightly wrapped under her arms hiding her breasts.
“What’s the matter, handsome? Am I not good enough?” she said. Dana said stuff like this all of the time and it was one of the reasons that I didn’t really know how to take her. I knew enough about her to know that she spoke to most people like this, especially other guys. Once I asked Mia why she acted this way and her simple answer was, “Attention.” I didn’t understand what she had meant at the time.
I smiled at Dana’s question in the uneasy way that I always responded to her and she went back to talking with my sister again. They took their towels off and laid by the pool in the fold out lounge chairs. Both of them held their heads high as if they smelled something. I heard them talk in low whispers saying the names of people that I had never heard of and laughing about some girl who my sister called, “sad”.
“Man, look at Dana’s rack,” Nick whispered to me. “Your sister is defiantly hotter, but Dana’s cans are huge.”
“Whatever, dude. You wanna play Marco Polo?”
“No way. I’m not gonna play that baby game with those two right there.” Nick said.
“What’s the difference?”
“If we’re gonna have a chance with them at all we have to act a lot more mature than that,” he said.
“Nick, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“Hey man, your sister was flirting with me and Dana was flirting with you. I think there could be something there.”
“Nick, my sister was not flirting with you. And, Dana wasn’t flirting with me. They talk like that to everybody.” It was beginning to be obvious to me that the sudden attention that Nick had been receiving from the girls at our school over his newly developed arms was beginning to give him delusions of grandeur that I didn’t know anyone our age was capable of.
“You can think what you want, but I know how it is,” he said.
I ignored him and went about my swimming. As the day went on I was in and out of the pool. Several times I got hungry and went inside for a snack or a drink, but I couldn’t talk Nick away from the girls for more than a few seconds. He sat there with his legs dangling in the water being totally and utterly ignored by Mia and Dana, but he still wasn’t discouraged.
It was about four pm when Les arrived. He walked through the back door of the house and was wearing swimming trunks very similar to my own. He gave me a smile and a nod and walked over and sat beside my sister. She was pouting and ignoring him for a minute until he tapped her shoulder in a joking way that she couldn’t ignore. She turned to him with a furious look on her face and said, “Why don’t you go play with my brother. You act about his age, anyway.”
“What did I do?” he asked. Mia didn’t answer. She turned toward Dana and I saw Dana give Les a sympathetic shrug.
“Hey, I never said that I would be here at noon on the dot. I told you that I would come over after I helped my dad with the lawn,” he said. Mia still wouldn’t face him. “Yeah, I wouldn’t expect a spoiled little brat like you to understand that.”
“Excuse me?” Mia said. She was wearing a face that I had seen several times and I was a little surprised that someone other than me could pull that face out of her.
“You heard me, Princess.”
“I may be a princess, but at least I’m not a liar.”
“How did I lie, Mia? Tell me that.”
“You told me that you were gonna be here by noon. You said last night that you would get up early and help your Dad and then you would be here by noon. I told my mother to expect you for lunch and she made sandwiches and fries that weren’t eaten because you didn’t show up. I looked like an idiot.”
Les looked around and saw that Nick and I were watching the argument in perfect silence. Dana had turned back to her tanning and ignored it. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time that she had to sit through one of my sister’s tantrums while some poor guy had to apologize. Les took her hand and leaned over to whisper something to her. They stood up and walked inside. Mia jerked her hand away from him before they made it through the back door.
Dana sat silently while Nick and I swan around. Since the disappearance of my sister he had seemed to mellow and was again acting like the kid that I enjoyed hanging out with. The posturing was for the moment laid aside. We raced again and once again he beat me, but I was getting closer every time and I was sure that by the end of the summer I would beat him at least once.
“You weren’t even close,” he said.
“Yes, I was. I’m getting closer every time.”
“Man, in your dreams.”
“Hey Nick, you want to race me?” Dana said. She stood and for the first time I noticed her. Nick was right. Her breasts were very round and ample. I don’t think that I fully understood the term ‘hourglass shape’ until that day when I saw her standing in that bikini.
She seemed to tower over Nick and me as she stood on the edge of the pool with the sun behind her. Her hair was barley touched her shoulders; it was much shorter than Mia’s. She walked around and slowly sauntered down the submerged steps into the water. Her body was tense as her large hips disappeared into the blue and then she took a gasp of breath and ducked under right where she stood.
Shooting up she let out a loud gasp and wiped her eyes. Her hair was now slick and darker. It seemed to stick to her skull. She began to swim and looked like a professional. Nick wore a concerned look on his face and then wiped it away with a cocky smile when he saw me looking at him.
“Alright, junior. Let’s do this,” she said. She was in the shallow end and was standing waiting on Nick to get there. I watched her as she pulled her hair back with cloudy white arms and a long firm rib cage.
“Alright, Curt, you have to keep an eye on this in case it’s a close one,” she said. I nodded in agreement and said, “On your marks, get set….GO!”
Nick shot himself off of the side of the pool with his feet and resembled a frog as he did. Dana kept a good pace and seemed to flow through the water with much more precision and ease than Nick with all of his frantic paddling and flailing. Dana held the lead for most of the race but at the last minute Nick shot ahead of her and won it. He grasped the diving board on the deep end and took long exasperated breaths for a moment.
“Who won, Curt?” he asked.
“You did,” Dana answered. Nick took a moment to regain his composure and then said with confidence, “I thought so, good race though, Dana.”
Dana swam around for a minute and then came over by me. Nick had gotten out of the pool and was headed inside of the house for a q-tip to clean his ears and a glass of Kool Aide. She never looked at me, but just her presence that close made me nervous and I had a tense feeling as if I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. She was standing close enough that I could smell her. There was a vanilla smell from her tanning lotion and I could smell a small hint of sweat mixed in with the chlorine from the pool which now stuck to her skin.
“That was a good race,” I said. “Really close.”
“Yeah, Nick can swim. I’ll give him that,” she said.
“Yeah, Im getting closer though. I think I’ll beat him at least once before the end of the summer.” Dana put her hand on my shoulder and I froze. I can still remember how it felt. Warm and damp. She slid it down to the small of my back and said, “Im sure you’ll catch him. Don’t worry.”
She then got out of the pool and walked around to get her towel. She dried herself for a moment. I watched her as she bent over and dried her hair with the towel. Her body moved with such a simple ease that for the first time I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t know why. She walked into the house passing Nick as he came back out. She never looked back at me. Nick finished his glass of Kool Aide by the pool and then hopped back in.
“Man, your sister is really giving it to Les in there. I heard them yelling from the kitchen.”
“Yeah, Mia is a real pain. I don’t know why a guy as cool as Les is still with her,” I said.
“Man, Mia is so hot that she’s worth the head ache.”
“Your nuts,” I said. And we didn’t speak about the girls for the rest of the