Let's Play a Game

Let's Play a Game (34)

 It was only the oven that had been badly damaged in the fire, but that was fixed easily within a couple of days. I was still being looked at for starting the fire, but Brianna and my dad were both making sure that I wouldn’t get in trouble, and I couldn’t have thanked them enough for that.

My mom’s ring was still missing. I didn’t know where it possibly could have been, and I was getting more and more worried about it with every day that went by. Zach and I were going to get married soon and I didn’t even have my wedding ring. To make it worse, it had been my deceased mother’s…

I couldn’t have felt any more worse about everything that was happening.

“Can we go swimming in your pool, Maxynn?” was the first thing Kate asked when she walked into the house. It was the first time she had been out of the house without being pregnant, so I knew she wanted to do a lot of things she had been missing out on. “My mom has Allison and she said I could go out for as long as I want. I love my daughter to death, but it felt so great to breathe fresh air!”

I heard Logan snort from behind her, and I couldn’t help but laugh as well. All of us loved that little baby to death, but I knew we all missed hanging out like old times. But now that Kate was free, Zach and I had planned on everyone coming over to hang out.

“You know I hate swimming,” I told her now, even though that wasn’t really the truth. I still didn’t want anyone seeing my scars; Zach was bad enough.

Kate shrugged. “But we all want to go!”

I looked around at the rest of my friends to see them smiling at me like complete idiots. So I guess Kate was being serious. I was the only one that didn’t want to go swimming. But I guess since they all wanted to… “Fine, if you all want to go, then we’ll go.”

Kate smiled brightly. “Yay! Okay, we’re all already ready, so now we’ll just wait for you to change, Maxynn!”

Oh, no. Did they really think I’d go in the pool with them? I glanced at Zach, who seemed to be thinking the same thing as I was, and I couldn’t help but glare at him when I saw that he was indeed wearing his swim trunks.

“We’ll be in the pool when you come out,” Logan grinned at me as he went right by me, patting me on my shoulder before making his way out to the backyard with Kate. Both Johnny and Todd smiled at my sheepishly before following right after them, and Aveline only sneered at me before storming right out.

“It’ll be a lot of much fun, Maxynn,” Zach informed me, but I didn’t agree with him. “You really should get into the water with us. Without your clothes on.”

“What’s with you being a pervert all of a sudden?”

Zach’s face turned bright red. “That’s… that’s not what I meant! I meant that you should wear a swimsuit, not your clothes!”

I couldn’t help but coo at him as I reached up and pinched his red cheek. I really loved that I had the ability to embarrass him and make him blush. I’d sure put that to good use.

“You know I don’t want anyone seeing my scars,” I sighed once his face had cooled down. “They’re ugly, and I don’t want people making fun of me for it. Not that our friends would make fun of me, but… Aveline is out there, and you know she has a big mouth. For more reasons than one.”

“Who’s the perverted one now?”

I said nothing back to this, because I was only thinking about what would happen if Aveline saw my scars. She’d make fun of me and then tell everyone in the entire school about it. Then everyone would know that I was scarred and deformed.