Luke
Oh shit! Sienna, are you all right?”
I leap off the lanai, missing all five steps, and might’ve landed crouched like a ninja if it weren’t for all the mud—my foot slips instead, and I slide through the mud on my side like a baseball player sliding into home plate.
“Sienna,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders from behind, “are you all right?”
She’s sitting upright in the mud, and covered in it, her white clothes drenched and stained; her long auburn hair is dripping and matted. She won’t look at me, and the little humor I found in watching her freak out like that drains right out of my body. She’s looking downward into her lap as she sits with her left leg bent upward and the right one lying against the mud, both hands gripping her ankle partially under the water.
“I’m fine,” she says in a wounded, unforgiving voice.
I tried to get it, but I feel like an asshole. Sighing heavily, I place my fingers about the tail of her drenched shirt and lift it to the middle of her back. The bug is nowhere to be found—I think it might’ve fallen from the back of her shirt before she made it all the way down the steps.
“It’s gone,” I tell her carefully and then drop her shirt back down. “Did you hurt your foot?” I move around on my knees through the mud to be in front of her.
“I said I’m fine.”
I reach out for her foot anyway, taking it carefully in both my hands.
She winces, hissing through her teeth. She still won’t look at me.
“I’m sorry. I think you just twisted it. Here, I’ll carry you back inside.” I start to reach for her when she cackles loudly and then her hand comes toward me, mud flinging in the air between us, before it slaps me across the side of my neck.
Sienna roars with laughter.
Mud covers one side of my face, sticking to the facial hair I need to shave soon and dripping down my neck and into my shirt. I’m too stunned at first, realizing she was playing me for an idiot—and did it so well—until she tries to run away from me and slips twice, scrambling to get to her feet.
“Oh no, you’re not going anywhere,” I call out from behind.
Her laughter fills the air, along with the sounds of her hands and feet sloshing through the puddle as she tries to crawl her way out and onto the wet grass. In a swift movement I reach out and grab the ankle she was pretending was injured and I yank her backward. She falls onto her back into the water. Slimy mud and droplets of brown water splash outward from beneath her.
“Let me go!” she shrieks, laughing so hard that it seems like she might cry.
And then bam! The wind is knocked out of me momentarily when her bare foot buries itself into my gut. Instinctively I release her other ankle. She stops, on her hands and knees, looking across at me with wide eyes, shocked and riddled with guilt.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to kick you that hard!” She winces.
I growl under my breath, low and guttural, shooting her with the most pretend pissed-off look I can manage, my jaw grinding harshly behind my mud-caked cheeks. Sienna’s eyes get wider. Mine get meaner. Sienna’s lips press together hard. My nostrils flare. And then, just when she intends to crawl over to me through the mud and console me with her girlish innocence, my lips turn up at one corner, my glare shifts, and she knows she’s in for it. She takes off in the opposite direction, laughing and shrieking as she tries desperately to get to her feet.
“No! Please!” She chortles, looking back as I’m coming up behind her on my hands and knees.
She flings herself out of the mud and onto the grass, and just as she’s clambering to her feet, my hand collapses around her ankle and she’s on her back before she knows what’s happening, sliding toward me. I’m on top of her in seconds, straddling her with my knees pressed into the grass on either side of her hips, glaring down at her shrinking, laughing face.