Playing Games // a Zach Herron fanfic // Finished ✨

Chapter 5

As soon as we walked back to the main field, and noticed some people were looking at us, Zach pulled his arm around my waist.
His touch gave me shivers. But maybe not in the negative way I thought it would.
I pushed him a bit playfully but unnoticeable for the people around. Zach pulled me closer, knowing it makes me uncomfortable and smiled teasingly.
I knew he had his mask up again. Hiding his sweet and sensible traits behind the act to be careless and arrogant.
Or was it the sensible side of him that was an act?
We parted ways to go to our bungalows. I had to change for going to the lake. Not that I really planned on swimming, but the weather was wonderful and I could use a bit of a tan.

I changed into my bikini and pulled an oversized sweatshirt over it. Liv was already wearing a swimsuit undreneath her dress, and was laying on the bed, listening music through her headphones.
I flopped next to her and looked at the ceiling.
Immediately she uncovered one of her ears. I could hear a bit of the music, as she always streamed it way too loud.
"I want details." She said with a smile when she turned to me.
It didn't took me long to realise she was talking about Zach. She apparently has seen the two of us walking away.
I started to tell her about our little conversation in the woods with all the details I remembered.
With a shrug I ended: "He makes me so confused. I sometimes don't know anymore what is real and what's an act."
I looked at Liv, who was staring at the ceiling. "This is actually so romantic.." She let out a dreamy sigh.
I rolled my eyes and poked her with my elbow.
"Stop finding everything romantic." I laughed. "If you want romance, go talk to Simon already!"
Liv chuckled. Since last year, she had a crush on him. As Liv normally is really cheerful and social, she was too shy to speak to Simon now. Still I believed they were made for each other and I think the rest of the group also noticed that. Only Liv and Simon had to see that by themselves.
She sat up and jumped from the bed. I did the same since it was time to leave already. I quickly fixed my hair.
This morning I realised that being Zach's girlfriend was tough.. He was popular, which automatically makes me popular too, which means that people would actually be looking at me.
"We are going to be late!" Liv yelled over her shoulder. She was standing at the door already, about to leave.
"Not that that would be anything new.." I answered mumbling.
I sighed, only half satisfied over the end result that was staring back through the mirror. However, I left it the way it was, took my stuff and followed Liv to the main field.

I spread my towel over the sand and laid down. The weather was perfect, the sand was perfect and so was my book. So far this vacation I didn't have a lot of time to read so today, I planned on relaxing and reading some chapters.
Although, I thought it would went like that.
Instead, when I was only halfway the first page, I felt a pair of cold and wet hands picking me up.
It clearly wasn't a surprise when I looked at the person's face and saw that it was Zach holding me by my waist and carrying me towards the water.
I screamed at him: "ZACH PUT ME DOWN!!" But of course he didn't let go of me until he walked deeper in the water, letting me fall out of his arms.
The water was colder than I expected which made me let out a screech. Zach burst out in laughing.
I stood up, shaking from the cold and started chasing him. Because he was still nearby crying from laughing, it was not hard to catch him.
I jumped with all my weight on his back and when he was laying in the waist-high water, I pushed his head under. After a second or 10 I let go of him and he came back above the water, catching breath. Now it was my turn to laugh at him.
"Karma is a bitsh." I said, crossing my arms.
Zach eventually laughed back and splashed water in my face. He came closer and pulled his arms around my waist. My heart skipped a beat. I didn't like the touch of his hand on my uncovered skin and he knew that. I turned around and took his hands to make him let go of my hips.
His eyes rushed around to check if people were watching us.
Then he leaned towards my ear and whispered: "People are looking at us, Audrey."
I let go of his hands and stepped away.
"Yes I know and I don't care. You know I don't like it when you touch me."
Zach swam after me, trying his best to make it look as natural as possible.
"But how else are we gonna act like this is real?"
"I am sick of you pushing the boundries like this all the time." I said, ignoring his question. "And then I didn't even talk about how arrogant you are one moment and so sensible the other."
Zach shrugged with a smirk. "Sorry.. I guess that is the mysterious trait the girls like."
I rolled my eyes. This was exactly where I was talking about. "For sure.."
I walked out of the water, about to lay back on the towel and continue reading my book when Sarah walked up to me.
Good.. the last thing I needed right now was Sarah's not-so-subtle way of judging this situation.
"Don't you want to swim with Zach and the rest of us?"
I shrugged. "Nah.. I am good."
Sarah sat down next to me on my towel. The soft breeze blew her short, shoulder-length, blond hair into her face. It was still dry so I assumed that didn't go into the water yet.
I've always admired her hair and the way it fell straight around her face. As much as I admired her eyes, that were ocean blue and surrounded by lots of long and full eyelashes. She had a smile as bright as the sparkles on the lake. Her appearance was short but that didn't influence the fact that she had a huge attitude.
Sarah knew she was beautiful.
"Zach is doing a really good job with pretending, isn't he?"
I nodded while letting skme sand run through my fingers. "Ye I guess.."
"I saw what just happened.."
Again I nodded.
Sarah continued. "If you want to win this game, you gotta start keeping up with him."
I turned my head to face her, just in time to see the flickering in her eyes.
"Sarah.. this isn't a game between Zach and I. This is an act towards the rest of the people in the camp."
Now it was her time to shrug.
"I know you see it as a competition between you 2 as well." She sat up. "Like don't you want to test who can goes the furthest and who can pretend the best."
She started walking towards the lake again, backwards with her teasing smile towards her.
I didn't know how but she got a weak point there.
It was a competition. Not only towards the group, also between the two of us. And I wanted to win.
Sarah yelled over her shoulder: "we can do some couple games if you want us to. Collin and I, you and Zach."
I got up again and followed her, full of new energy. "Sure!"
We ran to the lake and Sarah let herself fall flat on her face in to the water. Unlike me, she didn't get any bothered by the cold of it.
When she got up again, she ran towards her boyfriend, who waited for her with open arms and spinned her around.
I rolled my eyes.. the cheesiness in their relationship. I already got dizzy by only the thought that Zach and I had to be like that too.
Speaking of Zach.. I searched with my eyes over the water trying to catch a glimpse of him. But I couldn't see him anywhere.
Suddely I felt something around my legs. Out of nowhere I got lifted up out of the water and the next thing I knew was that I sat on Zach's shoulders.
I screamed out, deadly afraid for falling, while Zach was laughing underneath me.
He held my legs tightly. I tried to keep my balance with putting my hands on his head.
Sarah saw it and chuckled. She motioned Collin to bow down and climbed on his shoulders too.
Zach walked to them and by the time that Collin and Sarah stood firm enough, we were standing in front of them.
Sarah looked me in the eyes. "The first one to lay in the water looses."
I smiled competatively. "So what?"
Sarah smirked. "The looser has to come to the lake at midnight to swim."
I shrugged. "Is that everything.
The smirk on her face became bigger. "Naked.."
My eyes widened and I dropped my jaw. Sarah already started to count from three to one and at zero we both started to push.

We stayed like that for about 5 minutes. I tried my best to push Sarah from Collin's shoulders but it was obvious that Collin was a lot stronger than Zach. And Sarah was stronger than me.
With both her arms pushing hard against my shoulders, I lost my balance that wasn't that firm at the first place. While screaming I landed with a splash in the water, pulling Zach with me.
I came back above. Sarah let herself fall from Collin's shoulders when she was done laughing.
With a face that could be the paragon of triumph, she wiped her wet hair out of her face.
"So I think it's pretty obvious.. we win, you loose."
I let out a sigh of frustration. "ye.. I guess."
"so the two of you are going to swim naked!" Collin said with even a bigger smirk than Sarah had.
"Just don't think about that in such a dirty way." I said while looking over at Zach.
He rolled his eyes and just acted like the bad looser he sometimes can be.
I then remembered what Sarah told me and pulled my arm around his waist. He looked at me surprised and I whispered: "I'll let you touch me now if you won't look at me when we go for that midnight swim."
His face suddenly became less upset and a smile formed on his lips. "deal.." he whispered back.
Immediately he pulled his arm around my shoulder. I was satisfied, we were on the same level again. After I swam a while with my friends, I went back to my towel to finally read some chapterd until we would go back to the camp.

After diner me and Live went to our bungalow, but not before I cuddled Zach at the table and wishing him good night.
Liv and I flopped on my bed.
The rest of the girls that slept in our building were here too but each one in their own room.
The little bungalow consisted 4 rooms, each room for 2 girls and one for 3. For the older teenager girls (the 17 and 18 yos) there were 2 bungalows, both almost exactly the same. In the other girls' bungalow Sarah slept with 7 other girls and a annoying room mate she kept complaining about.
The boys around our age had 3 bungalows, with the same amount of rooms for the same amount of people. All the younger groups had bigger rooms with sometimes 5 or even 8 people in one room.
There wasn't that much space needed for older teenager because most of them only came to the camp for the first 4 years and that was that. Only the 'real ones' kept comming back. Like me and my friends, we survived all 5 years of this camp already, now being at our 6th year. I even planned on coming back after this year but as coach.

Me and my best friend sat on my bed, talking about non-sense-making topics when 3 of the other girls came into our room. Megan, Sofie and Jazz. They sat down on Liv's bed and got part of the conversation.
Soon, All the rest of the girls joined us. Out of all the 7 girls we share the building with, I only knew Megan, Ava and Sofie from the years before because I slept with them and Liv in a bungalow with some other girls who left the camp already in the years before.
The other girls I only knew by face and name.
At a certain point the subject changed and all the attention focused on me.
"Let me mention that I absolutely didn't expect you and Zach to become a thing" Sofie said while pulling her arms around a pillow.
I grinned awkwardly and shrugged.
Ava continued. "Yes.. me too! You two are literally so different."
"But cute tho." another girl, Hailey, added. "You guys seem like you are made for each other. Like Ying and Yang."
I smiled and sighed. deep in my heart I wished that the news of me and Zach being a couple would become a normal thing soon. I didn't really like to be the subject of people's talk. But a certain part of me liked the attention.
We talked some further about Zach and how lucky I was to have him. Little did they know.
Then finally, Liv changed the subject and started putting on some music. I smiled thankful at her.

About an hour later all the girls left and I laid back on my bed and played a bit with my pillow.
"I didn't know you were such a good lair." Liv said. She was connecting her headphone to her phone again and put it over one ear. Then she laid down next to me. "Even I start to doubt either what you are telling about your 'relation' wit Zach is real or fake."
I chuckled. "Those things I came up with are too cheesy, weren't they?"
She shook her head. "Not at all."
I smiled. "I start to like fooling them."

That night I decided to go to bed quite early, around 10.
If Sarah would came in to my bungalow to wake me up at midnight to go out for a midnight swim, I'd better be a bit rested.
When I laid in bed, I expected Sarah to come in every second.