One Week of Summer Read Free

here?”
    Absolute silence met his question.  Even the waves seemed to have stopped their menacing laps.
    “It was a joke,” one of the girls muttered.
    “A joke?” The man’s grip tightened to an almost painful squeeze. “You think drowning some poor girl is funny? The four of you are fucking crazier than I thought.”
    “ We’re crazy?” Kirby countered snidely. “You’re a barely-out-of-the-asylum asshole with a hero complex. I’m surprised you’re allowed out in public at all.”
    “Since when is helping people a sign of insanity?” my rescuer replied.
    “Oh, please,” snapped Kirby. “She’s hardly a little girl in need of saving and you know it.”
    “Easy mistake,” he growled. “I’m just so used to you picking on the defenseless. Has your M.O. changed that much, Kirby?”
    “What-the-fuck-ever,” Kirby answered. “I’m sure those perky tits of hers are what brought you down here in the first place. I bet you can you feel them pressed into you, right now.”
    At that second I clued in that I’d misjudged the dynamic of the foursome.  It wasn’t Bex who led them.  She was just a pretty figurehead.  Kirby was in charge.  The meanest of the mean.  I knew it the way I knew the tree was the center of my drawing just a few minutes earlier.  But I wondered if the others even had a clue.
    “She was laughing at the beginning,” one of them lied.
    “It just got carried away.”
    I jerked my head up at the blatant falsehoods.  My vision was still blurry with tears, but I could see Delia and Ennia nodding to each other.
    “She’s practically a mute,” Bex told him. “She couldn’t answer you even if she wanted to.”
    “Let me get this straight,” my rescuer said slowly. “She’s a mute, but she was laughing as you tried to drown her.”
    “Exactly,” the brunette said.
    “You’re so stupid, Delia,” Kirby muttered, then spoke to the man again. “Bex said practically mute. Not totally mute.”
    He inhaled. “Any chance any of that bullshit is true?”
    It took me several seconds to realize his rumbling voice was directed at me.
    I wanted to shout out that no, it sure as heck wasn’t true.  But now that I felt a little safer, a little less like death was an imminent inevitably, my usual instincts for emotional guardedness had kicked back in.
    Almost imperceptibly, I nodded.  Once.
    He felt it.  I knew because the only part of him I could see – his jaw – clenched.
    Let it go, I prayed silently. Please.
    And he did.  Almost.
    “Well, girls. It’s clear to me that it’s not funny anymore,” he stated in a measured voice.
    “Not to her,” Kirby replied under her breath, and the other three giggled.
    “Hey, Kirby?”
    “What?” she snapped.
    “You still fucking that married man?”
    The giggles cut off abruptly.
    “Oh. My. God. Who is it?” Bex demanded. “I knew you weren’t alone the other night!”
    Kirby flashed my savior a furious glare, but Ennia had already grabbed her hand, begging for details and calling her scandalous in a delighted voice.
    I let out a relieved breath and the man’s arms tightened around me again, this time in a reassuring squeeze.  I knew he’d redirected them on purpose.  If I’d been the gushing type, I would’ve been all over him with gratitude.  As it was, all I could do was sink back into his chest gratefully and enjoy a blissful, attention-free moment.
    “Are you really almost mute?” He asked the question right into my ear, sending a warm breath across the sensitive skin there.
    I shot a surreptitious peek in the direction of Kirby and her unpleasant entourage.  They were too wrapped up in their own salacious gossip to be looking our way.  At least for the moment.
    Very slowly, and without taking my eyes off the foursome, I shook my head.  I knew he would feel the movement against his chest.
    “Listen,” he said quietly. “I can tell you’re scared out of your fucking mind. So I’m going to get rid of these