The water rushed over the small sandy beach and came just short of engulfing our toes. It was almost ninety degrees and I knew that the thing I wanted most was to cool off by jumping into the pond on the campus of my boarding school, but I still had that feeling of dread one gets right before the climactic cool.

“Should we just jump in?” He asked.

I turned my gaze from the water to him. The sun was reflecting off of his light brown hair and blinding my slightly. He was wearing a light blue bathing suit, with a black waistband and his orange towel was slung across his left shoulder. The blue surface of the water paled in comparison to that of his eyes. He was shivering slightly. Though the temperature was hot, there was an unsettlingly cool breeze tickling our bare stomachs.

“You can, I am going to wade my way in. You know, lessen the shock,” I said, as I looked back at the water.

“Alright, see you out there then.” He said.

I began my slow, graceful decent into the water. With each step I felt it crawl up my body embracing more and more each time. I saw blue out of the corner of my eye and a second later felt the sudden splash of the freezing water on my chest. He flopped around through the water near me for a moment before taking off with widespread strokes towards the raft in the middle of the pond. I was furious, I took a deep breath and plunged the rest of my body into the murky water.

He made it their seconds before I did and when my head came to surface, he was hoisting himself up onto the small white raft. He was panting softly and looked at me with a mix of amusement and ever so slight fear. His hair was sticking to his forehead in damp strands dripping down over him. I gave him a challenging look.

“Did you have to get me all wet?” I asked him playfully.

“If you didn’t want to get wet, then you shouldn’t’ have asked if I wanted to go swimming,” he responded, smiling.

“Technically I asked a room full of people, you’re just the only one who said yes,” I said, lifting myself onto the raft.

“Yeah because I didn’t want you to go alone,” he said, lying out on the raft as if to sunbathe.

“Well thanks for that,” I replied sincerely grateful for his company.

“No problem,” he sighed exhaustedly.

I didn’t understand why he needed to tan, his skin was already far darker then most Caucasians, but to each his own. I crawled my way over on my hands and knees until I was seated next to him, and then I too laid down on the raft. My head fell into a pile of water and it tickled my neck as I continued to rest it there. We sat there for a moment in silence, just the feeling of the raft rocking back and forth.

“It’s funny, I always say I want to come down here to go swimming, and sometimes I do, but I think I really just come out here to hang out on the raft,” I said.

“Yeah, I know what you mean, something about it is so peaceful, you just never want to leave,” he replied.

“Isn’t the water beautiful?” I asked him, trying to stir up a meaningful conversation.

“I mean kind of. The water where I live is so much clearer then this, so much better, I guess it kind of ruins it for me,” he said.

“Yeah, but I don’t know. I think that the ponds water is one of my favorite places to be,” I said calmly.

“This coming from someone who was complaining that I had got them wet with it just a few minutes ago,” he said smugly.

“First of all, when am I not complaining about something,” I said, pausing for affect.

“That’s true,” he replied.

“And second of all, I still need to repay you for that, don’t I?” I said.

I’m not sure he heard the last syllable however. I had reached my fingertips under his warm chest and pushed him, the water on the raft serving as the perfect slip and slide for me to flop him over the edge of the raft. This may seem like a little bit of an overreaction, but we had been doing this for years. In the warmer months, he and I would come out here with other groups of students and it always turned into a game of who could stay on the raft the longest, or how many people could you push off before falling of yourself. I didn’t know how he would take having his relaxing sunbathing session interrupted, so I put on my best apologetic face and waited for him to resurface. Sure enough, a few seconds later his face appeared at the edge of the raft and he was pulling himself up back onto it. I had to get lower to the ground to regain my balance.

“Oh, your going down now,” he said, smiling and clearly enjoying the competition.

“You know if you try and take me out, I’ll take you with me,” I said as we began our rotating, slow walking circles around the raft.

“That’s fine, as long as you don’t use your nails, I still have scars from freshmen year,” he said.

“Aw, I’m sorry about that, let me see.” I said, genuinely sorry that I had scarred him, maybe a little pleased that I had left my mark though.

He held out his left wrist to me, and I could see the two feint white lines that I had left there. They didn’t look all that bad, but I reached out and felt them anyway. Even though he was drenched, his skin still felt so warm, I just wanted to hold him close. Instead I pulled his wrist with all my weight and he flew sideways off the raft again. He tried to grab my own wrist on his way down, but I pulled back and managed to escape him. He emerged a few seconds later and pulled himself back up onto the raft.

“Nice move,” he said, sounding slightly impressed.

“Thanks,” I replied.

We started our slow circles around the raft again. I had to be careful not to slip and fall on the wet patches that had formed on the white surface. He was intimidating. His arm muscles were larger then mine, and his abs were strong. He was also taller than me and a little bulkier. In a fight, there would be no question as to who would win, that is, if we fought fairly. The only way I could take him down would have been some sort of mind games followed by some quick cheap shots, luckily this was all fun and games, no need to get hurt. He lunged at me and I nearly lost my balance, but regained it. He grabbed a hold of my right forearm and as I tried to shake him off I lost my balance. Having notice this, he used it to his advantage and pushed me towards the side, I knew he had won this round, but as I fell backwards, I grabbed his arm and pulled him down with me. As we hit the water, he fell back on top of me, his skull bashing into mine. I swam to the surface and grabbed hold of the raft again.

He resurfaced too and I asked him “your head ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, neglecting to ask me about mine.

We climbed back onto the raft and only after a few second of getting back on, I felt my feet leave the ground. I was thrashing back and forth in his arms as he took be by surprise. Not wanting to actually hurt him though, I stopped, and allowed him to throw me over the edge. I hit the water with a splash, but as I started to resurface, I felt something long and slimy touch my leg. I swam for the surface, but the thing was still somehow attached to me.  My arrival to the surface was announced by a high pitched scream followed by his quick passed walk over to me.

“What’s wrong,” he asked astonished.

I held my hand out to him and he reached out and grabbed it pulling me with a swift motion back to safety on the raft. I sat there for a second on my hands and knees panting from fear. I finally caught my breath up enough to say “there was a snake.”

“Really? Snakes don’t usually come that close to the surface,” he said.

“Well tell that to the one that just touched my leg,” I sad annoyed at his disbelief.

“I’m just saying it could have been a fish or something,” he replied.

“God damn it, I know what I felt and it scared me ok!” I said, hitting the raft with my open palm.

The noise reverberated wildly and he jumped back slightly. He flailed his arms around for a split second before falling backwards into the water with a splash. I crawled over to where he had been standing and waited for him to come back to surface. It took him longer then expected and when his head protruded he was smiling a big wide smile.

“What’s that grin for?” I asked suspiciously.

“I found your snake,” he said, pulling a green slime covered rope partially out of the water.

“What is that,” I asked bemused.

“It’s attached to the weight that keep the raft in place,” he replied smugly.

He dropped the rope and crawled back up onto the raft. I looked at him, beaming at having proved me wrong. Even though he was starting to piss me off, I loved what he was doing to me. Someone needed to keep me in check, and if I had to see a smug smile, it might as well be on a face I thought was sweet as and angels anyway.

“So, are you going to say it?” I asked him sarcastically.

“Say what?” He replied, playing dumb.

“I told you so,” I replied.

“No, what am I a child?” He said.

“Really?” I said, taken aback at his sudden maturity.

“I can think of three words that you could say though,” he replied, still smiling at me obnoxiously.

The three words that I could think of were “I love you,” and I really didn’t think we needed to have that conversation again. Especially out in open water where nobody could here me scream. More importantly where no one could hear be drown him for not loving me back. I racked my brain for three other words he could be fishing for.

“Give me a hint,” I asked him.

“The phrase starts with a you,” he replied.

“I’m going to need a little more to go off of,” I said.

“The second word is were,” he said.

“One more?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes at me before saying “it’s something you have never said to me before, and I bet you’re going to hate saying it now.”

I racked my brain for a second before realizing what he wanted me to say. It as true, but I could never give him the satisfaction.

“Oh ok, I’ve got it now,” I said.

He looked at me expectantly. He was shivering slightly from the breeze that was hitting his soaking wet body.

“You,” I said leaning closer to where he stood. “Were,” I said getting up from my crawling position. It was then that I lunged for his legs, taking him completely off guard as he fell backwards into the water again. “Right,” I muttered under my breath, pleased with myself.

He resurfaced, but instead of swimming back towards the raft, he started swimming in the other direction. I saw his blue swimsuit enter and exit the water several times as he surfaced and then went under again, slowly making his way towards shore. I felt a little bad about pushing him now. I didn’t think he would get upset enough to leave me. I wanted to scream, “Wait, comeback. Don’t leave,” but he had heard all that before, and it hadn’t stopped him then. I just sat there on the raft, feeling a cool that had nothing to do with the breeze washing over me.

I looked up and saw that he had made it to shore, but instead of walking towards the path leading up towards campus, he turned left and disappeared into a set of bushes. He was there for about 30 seconds before he appeared again, pulling something large and silver. He pulled it out into the water and I could finally tell that it was a canoe. He got into it and started paddling towards me.  He reached the edge of the raft bumping it and sending me off balance.

“Want a lift?” He asked me, indicating the seat behind him.

“Sure,” I replied, trying to step into the canoe as carefully as possible.

I took one step, and then it was over, I felt the canoe slip out from under me as I toppled down into the water. The splashing sound next to me indicated that I had also flipped the canoe. I came up to the surface and waited there for about a minute, before worrying that something was wrong. He had yet to surface and my mind was working frantically to figure out what to do next. I delve down hoping to see some sign of him. On my first attempt, nothing, I returned to the surface to breath and then decided to swim under the canoe. I took a deep breath and then returned underwater. I swam right where he had been seated and ran into something hard and oddly shaped. Taken aback, I surfaced under the canoe, hitting my head on one of the metal braces. His laughing reverberated throughout the metal chamber. The area was dark and I could barley make out his face, his bright eyes loomed in contrast to everything else.

“God, I thought something bad had happened to you,” I said, in a tone of annoyance.

“Aw, I’m sorry. I thought you would just assume I was under here,” He replied genuinely.

“I didn’t even know you could breath under flipped canoes, guess I never really thought about it,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, my friends back home and I do it all the time,” he said.

The air surrounding us was hot and mixed with the sent of body odor and bad breath, but surprisingly it wasn’t bad. It was kind of sweet, almost aphrodisiac like. We just sat there in silence for a moment, breathing and staring at each other. I could have stared at him forever, but the moment ended too soon.

“Want to flip this thing back over and get out of here?” He asked.

“Sounds good,” replied.

We flipped it over to get all the water out and then he steered us back towards shore. The sand stuck to our wet feet as we crawled out of the canoe and on to shore. As he put away the canoe, I went and grabbed my towel. I threw his to him and we starting drying off. I have spent a lot of time with him over the years, but some of my favorite has occurred at the pond. As we walked back towards campus, I could see the green tinted water as it ran down our backs and into the grass, leaving a part of this memory there, forever.