I wring out my shirt, which is drenched and clinging to my torso.
“Never pegged you for a wet T-shirt contest guy, but you pull it off,” Molly says.
“I guess I can go swimming after all,” I observe, trying not to focus on the suggestive nature of her words and the way she is openly eyeing my chest.
Around us, most of our fellow competitors are still swinging balloons at each other. But I barely clock them, because suddenly the air between me and Molly feels thick.
Too thick.
I step back, but Molly takes my hand and yanks it up into the sky.
“Rubenstein vanquished me,” she yells to Eliana. She turns back to me. “Let’s go in the pool.”
Without waiting for an answer, she shimmies out of the cutoffs she’s wearing, kicks off her sandals, and goes running. She jumps in without a moment’s hesitation, creating a splash that douses half of my teammates.
“Come on,” she yells at me. “It feels amazing!”
“No suit!” I yell back.
“Who cares?” Emily interjects, getting up and stripping off her cover-up to reveal a two-piece and a very adorable baby bump. “We have a clothing-optional pool policy.”
There is no way I’m taking off all my clothes in front of an audience of mostly women at a baby shower, but I figure boxer briefs are close enough to swim trunks.
“Okay,” I say, “but only because it’s ninety-nine degrees. How do you guys live this way in October?”
“Isn’t it already, like, snowing in Chicago?” Molly retorts.
I take off my clothes and hang them on the back of a chair to dry in the sun. I’m going straight to the airport after this and don’t want to throw them wet into my suitcase.
I jump in close enough to Molly to splash her. The water is warm from the sun and the heat, but cool enough to still be refreshing.
I swim toward Emily in the shallow end, but a hand grabs my ankle, and my head goes under. I hear the muffled sound of laughing and look down to see Molly’s mermaid hair swirling around my feet.
She lets go of me and surges toward the surface. I chase after her, grab her shoulders, and dunk her below the water.
She’s laughing and coughing as she comes up. It reminds me of all the pools of our Floridian youth. When Molly and I were dating, we’d often do homework together and then horse around for hours in my parents’ pool. It was a very convenient way to be almost-naked and touching in a parentally sanctioned way.
Molly’s hands reach out to my hip bones and she begins to pull me toward her, but I scoot backward and swim out of her grip.
I try not to like this attention, but it feels good on my ego. Restorative.
She comes at me again, and I pick her up out of the water and hold her above my shoulders.
“I’m going to throw you in if you don’t behave,” I threaten.
“I dare you,” she says.
I don’t need further encouragement. I send her flying to the deep end, and she lands with a splash. “Oh, you are going to get it,” she yells, power swimming back to me with a murderous glint in her eyes.
“Okay, children,” Eliana calls. “That’s enough Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
I look up and realize every single person is staring at us.
No one else is in the pool, except for Emily, who is sitting on the steps of the shallow end, smirking.
“Let’s play the next game, if Molly and Seth are quite done with their horseplay,” Elle says.
“I think I’m pregnant just from watching them,” the caftan guy says to a soaking wet woman beside him.
My cheeks go hot. We’ve been acting like teenagers.
Flirty teenagers.
Completely unacceptable.
“Sorry!” I call, paddling very, very far away from Molly Marks, and lifting myself out of the pool.
I’m better than this.
Gloria throws me a towel. “What’s the next game?” she asks Elle.
“Baby Bucket List,” Elle says. “It’s where we go around in a circle and write down an activity we think you should do with the babies in their first year. I’ll compile them all into a book, and you and Em can write little notes about the experience on the back of the cards, to remember.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet!” Emily says.
“I know.” Eliana laughs. “It’s sickening.”
We all gather around the table, and Elle passes out Sharpies and yellow cardstock embossed with the words In your first year as moms …
