Excerpt: Games of Life and Death

The water lapped at my feet, cold and clear, and Lara shoved me all the way under. I came up, laughing and dripping. David grabbed Lara, carried her bridal-style deeper into the water, and dunked her. I watched, grinning widely, as she resurfaced and tried her hardest – failed – to drag him under.

In that moment, I felt like our interconnectivity, like our friendship, was the clearest. I easily saw the lines of how we stretched back into the past, and didn’t care about how far we reached into the future. The moment was now, and I intended to make the best of it.

I didn’t care if Lara had an awkward discussion with me later about me and David, or if Jonathan completely pissed me off that night. I didn’t care how many people stared at us like we were lunatics, or how cold the water was. I knew somehow – perhaps intuitively – that this moment wouldn’t last forever, but I didn’t let that bother me. I just took it all in, like the way that people always say to appreciate what you have while you have it.

The future may have been unclear, the past was nothing but a distant memory, but I was here, I was now. I was with some of the people I loved most in my mortal life. And I was perfectly content to leave that moment at that.