- "Unfair! You cheated!" she said and splashed water at me. Looks like it didn't offend her that I kissed her at least. To be honest I had already forgotten about the contest on my way to the surface. I had worried about her reaction though. That kiss hadn't landed very well since it made her lose her breath.
- "Talk about cheating... How about you failing to mention that you can breathe under water?" I replied and splashed back.
- "No I can't! You think I would have come up here for air if I could breathe down there?"
- "That's actually a fair point. So how did you do it then? You were like a mermaid down there. Hardly moving and yet controlling how deep we went without floating up. I mean, you held me down there and we hardly moved an inch. I started to float up as soon as you swam away." She looked a bit ashamed.
- "I wanted to tell you, but not like this... I was supposed to win!" Maybe I was a bit hard on her...
- "Hey... look... You won the first round, and I won the second. Let's call it a tie and forget the whole thing. You tell me whatever you want when you are ready."
- "Except that you cheated..." she muttered.
- "Well so did you..."

- "You're really not going to ask?" she said after a while.
- "Ask what?" I turned toward our bikes and headed for land. All this swimming was starting to get to me.
- "How I did it?" she made no effort to follow me.
- "I said that you could tell me when you are ready. Are you ready now?"
- "No..."
- "Then I won't ask. Not that at least..."
- "What do you want to ask then?"
- "What's your record? How long can you stay under water?"
- "I don't know. I tried to time it once, but I got bored so I stopped."
- "You got bored?"
- "Yeah... I was under water for 32 minutes then. 32 minutes is a lot of time to get bored when you are in a bath tub. I haven't tried since then."
- "You're kidding me? You didn't breathe for half an hour?"
- "Do you doubt me? After what we did just now?"
- "No..." How could I? She acted like my personal scuba gear, and she was in front of my face the whole time. She couldn't fake that. "You do realize that the world record is like... six or eight minutes?" I wanted to ask her why she wasn't dead if she could hold her breath that long, but I felt that might be close to asking her about what didn't want to tell me right now.
- "Amateurs!" she scoffed mockingly. "Are you heading off?" she asked as I reached the shore.
- "Nah... just need to rest. Been swimming non stop for some time now." I walked out of the lake and on to a patch of grass close to water. I found a sunny spot and parked my butt there. Jamie was still swimming.
- "Why did you come to the lake?" she said once she were close to me.
- "Needed to sort some things out in my head." She just looked at me like she was expecting more of an answer. "The town has changed so much since I left... I've been so busy with my life that I didn't really think that this place would evolve."
- "I'm glad we did... Evolve I mean... or else that kiss would have been really weird." I laughed out loud.
- "Eew! Thanks for that image..."
- "Seriously though, of course we changed... We are all people with our own thoughts and wills... The town has never been the same, it's always changing, but you were having so much going on inside of you when you left so you didn't notice. I'm glad you can see it now though. Must mean that you are more comfortable with yourself now..."
- "Yeah..." I took in her words and let them echo in my head for a while. My conviction of home as a constant was shattering, but it didn't really matter. I was mature enough to see now this was just like every other place in the world, and it was stupid of me to think that it was never going through changes of its own.

- "It was just so weird to wake up in my old room this morning. It got me angry for some reason... the way everything was frozen, like someone expected me to be like I was when I left..."
- "I think you were the one that expected that... Your mother knows you have changed, and she wanted to do something about your room, but she never did. She never felt like bringing it up with you either. Like it would keep you away even longer if she talked about your old room. Did you notice that she has basically renovated all of the house? Every room has had something touched up, except yours..."
- "She's talked about it on the phone, but I was so tired last night that I didn't see..."
- "You should go home and have a look... And talk to your mother. You'll see that there are no expectations. You have changed, she has changed, the town has changed... It will take a while, but you will come to the same page eventually."
- "You have changed as well..." She was still swimming close to me glancing at me from time to time.
- "I might have... but I just mostly feel like I grew older." I caught her eyes looking at me. She was checking me out, there was no mistaking it. I toyed with the thought of calling her out on it, but I let it slide... She had joked about the kiss, but I was still unsure how it had actually been recieved. I didn't want to force any advances on her. In fact, I was unsure I wanted to make them. She was so much younger than me, and we were firends... At least when I left town all those years ago...

- "I think I'm dry enough to go back now." I said and headed towards the bike.
- "Aww... I thought you were going to get back in and keep me company." She swam along the shore beside me.
- "Nah... As you said, I need to get back to reality. It would be unfair to hide out up here."
- "Unfair to who?"
- "Mom... myself... you... If I'm back in town I might as well embrace it." She rose from the water and walked up on the beach. The water trickled down on her skin and made it glisten in the rays of sunshine that penetrated the canopy above us. She really wasn't a small girl anymore, and my eyes lingered a bit too long on her wet hair that clinged to her body. She was naked in front of me and I could check her out anywhere just as she had done with me some minutes ago, but I couldn't let her hair go. She freed it from the tight grip of her skin with her hands, ruffled it and shook some water out. Then our eyes met for a second and I instantly looked away. My face started to feel warm and I couldn't stop smiling. I made the bold choice to put my helmet on first to hide. I thought I could see from the corner of my eyes that she was looking at me. I was looking at the pile of clothes and trying to figure out what to do. I couldn't pull the T-shirt over the helmet and it felt weird to put on pants but no sweater. I quickly solved it by shoving everything except shoes and the bike suit in a compartment on the bike. I was still smiling as I pulled the zipper up on my second skin, even though it wasn't exactly comfortable to wear on bare skin. But I knew she was looking and that made me smile. I started the bike.
- "Well, I'll see you back at the house."
- "Aren't you wating for me to get dressed?" She looked offended, and sure I really wanted to ride with her, but my instincts were on the fritz, telling me to get out before I made more of a fool of myself.
- "Sure, I'll wait." My voice was almost cracking up from all the effort I put into not fleeing. What the hell was making me so nervous? I shouldn't have asked myself that right there, because the kiss started to replay in my memory. I actually kissed her. Why would I do that? My thoughts overwhelmed me and I got dizzy. I'm not sure how it happened, but I toppled over and the bike with me. It landed on my leg and pinned me down for a moment, but I hardly had time to react about it before she picked up the bike and put it aside. She really was freakisly strong. I would have had trouble to lift it in her position, but she literally picked it up. I saw her grab the frame with one hand and lift it completely off the ground.
- "Are you okay?" She asked as she helped me up. I tried to put some weight on the leg but it buckled. She grabbed me again and held me straight.
- "Yeah... it's not broken, but it got a hell of a squeeze. Can't really get any strenght into it right now.

It was the strangest sensation. I was standing as tall as I could to come to terms with the damage done on my leg, but she was taller than me. She wasn't usually but now her nose was an inch over mine, and she wasn't even standing straight. Pain suddenly emerged and I let go of the strange thoughts. I pulled out of her grip and sat down hard.
- "Does it hurt?"
- "A bit, yeah." I couldn't scream. It's funny how when you get older you can bypass the need for screaming. I kind of wanted to scream though, but some other part of me made me not, just to seem a bit stronger in front of her.
- "I'm going to check if it's really not broken. Don't be alarmed, but I'm taking your suit off."
- "I kiss you once and you can't wait to rip my clothes off..." I joked as she pulled the zipper down.
- "That's not funny." she said, laughing.
- "Why are you smiling then?" Her hands were cold when she shoved them inside the overalls and started peeling me out of it. First my arms and then my legs. She was really gentle, but there was something really firm over her. She felt my leg up and down.
- "It's not broken."
- "That's what I said."
- "Well, I wanted to make sure that you just weren't being stubborn. You don't have to try and impress me you know?" There was something magic about her words. Like she turned a switch inside my head and I could finally scream.
- "Fuck me that hurts! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The noise was trapped inside the helmet and my ears started ringing.
- "There, doesn't that feel better?" she said once I stopped. It did feel better, but I didn't tell her. Instead I just laid down and took the helmet off.
- "I just need to rest a while, then I'll be right as rain."
- "How do you know?"
- "I've done this before..."
- "You make a habit of falling on bikes when they are not moving?"
- "It only happend once before... That's how I knew it was my bike you're driving around. I fell and the bike hit a rock... The first dent I made on that bike, and it hit an impossible spot on the frame. A tiny speck that no one else can see, but it's my first dent so I'll never forget it... I was so lucky that I didn't get my leg pinned by the bike on the rock that time. Then I surely would have hurt more than my ego. Those things are heavier than they look."
- "You were lucky now that I was here... You would have had a hard time getting out from under the bike by yourself." I felt like telling her that I wouldn't have fallen if it wasn't for the thought of her making me dizzy, but I didn't.