Free Wicked Games by Sean Olin

better,” Carter said, trying to convince himself that he meant it. “I’m not going to leave you.”
    “Really?” she said. Her voice broke with the word and the tears finally began to stream down her face.
    “Yeah,” he said. “But, Lilah, if we do this, you have to be honest with me, okay? It can’t be like the past few months. You have to talk to me. And . . .” He nodded toward the cuts on her thighs. “You have to find a way not to go to that place in your head anymore. Can you promise me that?”
    She nodded.
    He reached up and held his hand out to her. He gave her fingers a couple quick, comforting pulses and then let go.
    “I should be paying attention to what’s going on out there on the waves. Don’t want anybody to drown on my watch,” she said, glancing out toward the kids on their boogie boards.
    “You’re right,” said Carter. “Lilah, just remember. It’s all going to be okay.”
    Standing on her lifeguard chair, Lilah watched him go. As he grew smaller and smaller, his blue-and-green striped polo shirt shrinking into just a speck of color at the edge of the promenade, she wondered why she hadn’t mentioned Jules’s name to him. Why hadn’t she asked him about the photo on his phone?
    She’d been afraid that if she did so, she’d make everything worse. Now that he was giving her another chance,she swore to herself that from here on out she’d be the best girlfriend ever. She’d find some way other than pressuring him to vigilantly protect what was hers. And, who knows, maybe she really had misinterpreted the photo.
    Maybe . . .

13
    A week later, Carter waited for Jules on a bench under the massive iron sculpture of the Seminole warrior wrapped in blankets and cocooned in a canoe, about to be sent off to sea by his mourning tribe. It towered over the lush green mall where Shearwater circled around and met the beach. He felt he owed it to himself—and to Jules—to make good on his promise to be friends with her. He’d told Lilah he was going to be hanging out with his “buddies”—not quite a lie, but not the whole truth, either.
    When he saw Jules heading down the boulevard toward him, dressed casually in a tight aquamarine top and a pair of low-rider jeans that she’d cuffed high andturned into waders, he was struck again by how beautiful she was. The desire he’d tried to forget came flooding back. He could feel it in knees and his elbows, a tingling weakness. Reminding himself that he needed to control these feelings, he stood up and waved.
    “Hey there, friend,” he called.
    She made like she had a pistol in her hand and aimed it at him. “Ptewt-ptewt,” she said, imitating the sound of a silencer.
    Identical grins cracked over their faces. Then they glanced away, Carter staring at the toe of his red-and-white old-school Air Jordans, Jules biting her lip and flipping her long, black hair over her shoulder.
    When she reached the sculpture they struggled to negotiate their greeting. Carter went to shake Jules’s hand at the same time as she leaned in for a hug. Then, each of them seeing what the other had done, Carter went for the hug and Jules for the handshake.
    “Well, whatever. We tried,” said Carter. “How long has it been since you’ve been to Harpoon Haven?”
    “I can’t even remember. I used to hang out there in middle school, I guess. You?”
    “I’ve been there once. Freshman year.” Carter paused, unsure if he should say more, but in the service of friendship, he felt he should be honest. “With Lilah.”
    Jules secretly winced, but she didn’t push the topic.
    As they wandered up the promenade toward thelights of Harpoon Haven, they made sure to keep a couple feet of distance between themselves. They breathed in the warm salt air, soaked in the cool breeze coming in off the ocean.
    Then, once they were inside and making their way through the first arcade of games that ringed Harpoon Haven’s small collection of rides, they let the carnival