She took off her tank top and shimmied her shorts onto the deck. She could’ve been the most exciting exhibit in the aquarium, the way all eyes were hers. Mickey fumbled with the collar of her shirt, which had gotten tangled with the tie of her only two-piece, which she had worn every day since they arrived. Her hands were sticky from the hard lemonade and feeling thicker with each second.

“Ready?” Ruth asked, spinning around.

“I can’t—” Mickey said, tugging on the tag of her shirt.

Ruth squinted and looked at the boys.

“We don’t need our tops, do we?”

Mickey froze. “Ruth, what the—”

“I want to go swimming. So come on,” she said, pulling Mickey’s shirt up. “I’ll do it too. They won’t look; they’re perfect gentlemen. Aren’t you, boys?”

Ruth lifted Mickey’s shirt again, and Mickey grabbed the hem.

“No freaking way, Ruth,” Mickey hissed, ripping the fabric back down to cover her belly button. Ruth stepped back.

“Fine,” she said. “Suit yourself.”

She hopped up onto the back seat of the boat, wavering just enough for Cody to offer his hand, but she shook her head. The lake lapped quietly against the boat’s hull, the glitter of it reflected in her eyes. Or maybe the glitter in her eyes reflected in the lake.

Maybe Ruth was there first, and the rest of the world was built in answer.

Ruth reached with one hand to the middle of her back, grabbed the red string of her bikini top, and pulled. She did it slowly, so even Mickey hung on every stitch. Until, finally, the whole thing fell, limp and accomplished, to the deck. She hugged one arm across her bare chest and glanced back over her shoulder. The contrast of her tan against her nakedness upped the drama of it all: the pure engulfed, literally, in the grip of the exposed.

“You got another Mike’s?” she asked Cody. “I have a feeling the water is going to be pretty cold.”

Cody nodded and handed her his without taking his eyes off the length of her back, uninterrupted. She took a long swallow with the bottle straight overhead, her free arm silhouetted against the sun. Which was how Mickey first saw it. The delicate network of lines that crossed Ruth’s arm’s most tender flesh, the part closest to her heart. They were straight and clean, like a completed to-do list. Her body hadn’t made them.

In an instant, Mickey forgot about Josh. She wanted to touch those raised white lines much more than she had ever wanted to touch anything else. But there was a splash and Ruth was gone.

LILY