“Hey, you’re blocking our water ball of doom game!” a young voice shouted.
An inflatable beach ball smacked him in the side of the head and, just like that, he was sucked into a cutthroat game that seemed to be a mash-up of water polo, soccer and volleyball. And, since they were limited to the deep end of the pool due to the little ones at the other end, it was one hell of a workout. After about fifteen minutes, he worked his way toward the edge and hooked his elbows up on the rim.
“You’re weak, Miller,” Josh taunted, right before one of Mike’s sons climbed up Josh’s back to smack at the ball and shoved him underwater.
It was a rough crowd. Drew watched for a few minutes, until he was breathing like a normal person again, and then dove back into the action. He wasn’t sure how the game would end, since he had yet to figure out the actual rules, but he wasn’t going to be the first guy out of the pool.
“Liz! Liz!” It was hard to miss Steph shouting right next to him, so he gave himself permission to look in the same direction the teenager was. “Come on! I’m the only girl.”
For a few seconds Drew thought Liz was going to refuse and he was relieved. Water ball of doom, as the boys called it, was a very physical game and there was a lot of bumping and grabbing.
Then she grinned and threw herself into the deep end with a splash. There didn’t seem to be any time-outs in water ball of doom, so she surfaced in the middle of a melee. Just when Drew was going to yell at her to be careful, she dove under again and he lost track of her.
He felt her before he saw her—the glide of her naked leg across his thigh—and then her head broke through the water near his shoulder. She slicked her hair back and laughed. “Are there rules to this game?”
“Don’t drown. Other than that, I think it’s just an excuse to spike the beach ball in each other’s faces and water wrestle.”
“Are there points?”
The ball was heading toward them and Drew slapped it hard, bouncing it off the back of Sean’s head. “The score, last I heard it yelled out, was two hundred thirty to two hundred nineteen, but I’m not sure how you score. It’s a very complicated system that’s pretty fluid, from what I’ve gathered.”
“In other words, Mike and Lisa’s kids invented this game.”
“I’ve only been here less than a day and I’ve already figured out if the word doom is involved, so are Joey, Danny, Brian and Bobby. And Steph, too, though she tries to pretend she’s an innocent bystander.”
“Ooh!” She was watching the ball come toward them in a high arc. “Throw me!”
He clasped his fingers together and, before he could think about whether or not it was a good idea, she had her foot in the cradle of his hands and he tossed her high into the air. She slammed the ball back toward the buoy line marking the deep end and Ryan missed the return by a fraction of an inch.
“Point!” Brian yelled, and Liz gave a triumphant yell when she surfaced.
“Dude, she’s not on our team,” Ryan yelled at Drew.
“There are teams?” Drew threw his arms up in the air. “How can you tell?”
“You’re not very good at water ball of doom,” Bobby said in a very serious voice.
The penalty for helping the other team score appeared to be drowning since, after that incident, Drew spent more time under the water shoving people off him than he did treading water. His muscles were burning but he knew the Kowalski family well enough to know if he crawled out of the pool in defeat, he’d never live it down.
It was a relief when Mary whistled and called everybody out of the pool. His muscles were getting shaky and it was only the trash talking from Mitch and the other guys that had kept him in so long. He swam to the opposite side of the pool from Liz, just so he wouldn’t be tempted to watch for her swimsuit’s skirt riding up while she climbed the ladder.
Brian scampered up in front of him, then ran down the side of the pool with his fists in the air. “S’mores time!”
Wishing he had a quarter of the kid’s energy, Drew hauled himself up the ladder and winced at the soreness already setting into his leg muscles. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been swimming, but it was obviously too long ago.
“Rematch tomorrow,” Mitch said, slapping Drew’s shoulder so hard he almost fell back into the water.
“Can’t wait.” He’d come up with a good excuse before then. Maybe run himself over with a four-wheeler somehow.
Leo, who’d been smart enough to claim a chair on the sidelines, tossed towels at them. “You think that was bad, you just wait. After everybody’s changed, it’s time for s’mores.”