Chapter35

#Chapter35

My heart felt funny.

It seemed to tingle, vibrating through my chest, warming me even more than the water that I sat in did. Joel's chest pressed into my back, his arms holding me against his bare body; it was a very intimate moment, but rather than aroused, I simply felt... safe.

The whole world seemed to slip away. The pale bathroom walls that surrounded us, the conversation with my father that kept playing on repeat in my head. Even the strange looks that Nicky had kept throwing us after overhearing me call Joel Daddy... they all seemed to diminish.

/"Daddy,/" I said quietly, my half-closed lids lingering on my wiggly toes that poked above the surface of the water, a little foam hat seeming to reside on the top of my big toe.