Chalk

13

The boys weren’t climbing the next time I found them.

Instead, they had a thick piece of webbing strung up tightly between two trees. Enough tension in the fabric to keep it stretched taunt, even when you stood on it, which was what Jasper was doing. Balanced in the middle of that wobbly looking material with his arms outstretched. His lower half was trembling from side to side on the rope, but his upper body remained amazingly still.

He lifted his foot gently and took a tentative step, and then one more, crouched like a ninja.

Edward was lounging on a rock in a puddle of sun, eyes closed and hair on fucking fire. He seemed to prefer shorts that looked as though they had once been dress pants before he took a pair of scissors to them. Flat fronted and in a surprising variety of grays. I was starting to suspect that he went commando. Jasper caught a glimpse of me from the corner of his eye and was thrown off the rope with much more force than I thought possible, flung to the ground in a wild tangle of limbs. He barely kept to his feet underneath him and turned to look at me with something that looked like a frown.

“Where’s Alice? You didn’t bring her?”

“Why does she not get some stupid nickname?” I grumbled and watched Edward sit up, scowling and shaking his head. His muscles bunched tighter, stomach a rippled pane of flesh, and I struggled to keep my eyes on his hair.

“Flatlanders don’t get nicknames,” he said sourly. Jasper looked like he didn’t exactly agree and I wondered if he’d be the thing to get Alice onto a rock, just so he could give her a nickname.

They convinced me to try the slack-line, which lasted precisely two parts of a millisecond before I was tumbling back onto Edward. He spotted me just as though I was on a rock, which was a good thing because the webbing sprung out from underneath my feet as I fell and I toppled like a bowling pin. The glancing moment my feet had been on that web felt far too unstable to trust and I shook my head at them as Edward set me back on my feet.

“No way. That’s impossible.”

Jasper smiled wryly at Edward. “Why don’t you show her how it’s done, Doll-face?”

“Seriously?” I gaped up at Edward. “That can’t seriously be it.”

“Why not? You don’t agree?” Jasper snarked at me, totally on to my sort-of-secret crush. Which was ok because I was totally on to his.

“Oh, I agree. I’m just a little disappointed that it was the best you could do.”

“You think you could come up with better?” Edward piped up, sounding like he was challenging me and I nodded at him. If he was planning my terrible nickname, then I was going to plan one for him too. He was stained a little red around the neck and I didn’t know if it was from the sun, or me agreeing that his nickname was totally understandable.

“Show me how it’s done, Doll-face.” I smiled at him and he went even redder.

Edward took a lot of time with a single foot on the the rope, the other planted firmly on the ground as though he was testing the water before he suddenly lifted his foot off the ground and set it softly behind the other on the thin strip of web. He tucked low and wobbled wildly for a moment before he pulled together and the web stilled to a mere vibration.

It looked hard, even for him, but I knew that he was probably making out to be far easier than it actually was.

I watched him straighten slowly until he was standing almost upright. The muscles in his abdomen flexed and he stepped gingerly forward like a cat on the edge of a fence. He let the momentum carry him forward, the balls of his feet spanning the webbing in seconds and he hopped off the end with a flourish, the web barely moving an inch the entire time.

Goddamn.

“Wow,” I said instead.

“Yeah. Edward’s biggest talent is making all the rest of us look bad,” Jasper stated blandly and Edward looked for a moment as though he wanted to stick his tongue out at him. He didn’t, but he did flip him off.

“Is there anything you’re not good at?” I asked, mostly to distract both of them.

“I can’t really cook,” Edward laughed and Jasper’s jaw dropped.

“Really? Cause I was gonna say that you really suck as keeping your eyes off her ass when she climbs.”

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