“Here’s the story. When I was a teenager, going to the local pool was a big deal, particularly to the kids in the colony, because we were a good ten miles from town and pretty secluded. There was a girl I knew from school named Gina Paretti. When she developed, the boys were never the same. She would pass us in the hallways and literally take our words. We couldn’t talk for days. Gina spent every day at the pool in the summer, so when I was sixteen I went every day I could, just to stare at her in her bikini. It was toward the end of the summer when I decided to go for it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d fantasized about her for months. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I had to talk to her. I jumped into the pool and did some laps in front of her, manly stuff, before I got out and walked over to her. So there I was, standing in front of her, deliberately blocking out the sun and dripping on her, because I was still young enough to think that annoying a girl was a legitimate way of telling her I liked her. She finally opened her eyes and looked up at me…and screamed. It seems my shorts had fallen waaaaay past my hips when I had pulled myself out of the water. So I was standing there, flashing her. I was almost arrested.”

Claire wasn’t expecting that, and she laughed. It felt good to laugh—strange, but good. “That must have been horrible.”

“Not really. Three days later, she asked me out. Come to think of it, after that I received a lot of attention from girls who had been at the pool that day,” he said, preening.

“Is that true?”

He winked at her. “Does it matter?”

She laughed again. “Thank you for that.”

“My humiliations are yours for the asking.”

“Humiliating or not, it was a normal thing. You were a normal teenager. You spent your summers at a pool. You’ve probably even been to a lovers’ lane. You and Sydney would have gotten along.”

“You weren’t a normal teenager?”

“No,” she said simply, and it couldn’t have come as a surprise to him. “Henry was the same way. We were the kids who embraced our legacies young.”

Tyler sat up on his elbows, his eyes going to the edge of the water where Henry and Sydney were watching Bay. Someone on the beach called to Sydney. Sydney said something to Henry and he nodded, then she walked to a nearby gathering of women to talk. “Do you mind your sister dating him?”