“Please, I could take you in a race in a heartbeat."
She laughs out loud. "Wanna bet?"
"Sure. Let's go."
She follows my eyeline to the edge of the pool like she might actually race me, but then I reach forward and tug her cap off her head in one swift motion, her blonde hair spilling into the pool in wet tangles around her face and shoulders.
"Foul!" Pepper crows, yanking it back from me.
"You know, for someone named Pepper, you're pretty salty about losing."
She groans at my pun as she shoves her hair back into the cap, but then counters, "For someone named Jack, you're pretty bad at knowing when to hit the road."
"Wow, Burger Princess, sick burn."
And damn if she hasn't gone and done it again--- distracted me right at a peak moment for me to most fully make an ass of myself. The soccer ball is sailing over our heads, and Pepper's already plowing through the water with the focus of a shark, halfway to where it's about to smack into no man's land.
Not on my watch.
I reach out and grab her ankle and yank her back the way she's done to me too many times to count, but unlike me, she seems to be expecting it--- expecting it so readily, she snaps her body through the water like a rubber band, using me as an anchor for momentum, and before I know it, she's got a palm squarely on top of my head and is dunking my entire body underwater.”