Free Reunion by Meg Cabot Page A

swim trunks, handed the black rubber thing to Michael, who promptly removed his glasses and stripped off his shirt.
    One of Gina’s hands whipped out and seized my wrist. Her fingernails bit into my skin.
    “Oh my God,” she breathed.
    Even CeeCee, I noticed with a quick glance, was staring, completely transfixed, at Michael Meducci as he stepped into Adam’s wetsuit and zipped it up.
    “Would you,” he asked, dropping to one knee on the sand beside me, “hang onto these?”
    He slipped his glasses into my hands. I had a chance to look into his eyes, and noticed for the first time that they were a very deep, very bright blue.
    “Sure thing,” I heard myself murmur.
    He smiled. Then he got back to his feet, picked up Adam’s board and, with a polite nod to us girls, trudged out into the waves.
    “Oh my God,” Gina said again.
    Adam, who’d collapsed into the sand beside CeeCee, leaned up on an elbow and demanded, “What?”
    When Michael had joined Sleepy, Dopey, and their other friends in the surf, Gina turned her face slowly toward mine. “Did you see that?” she asked.
    I nodded dumbly.
    “But that — that —” CeeCee stammered. “That defies all logic.”
    Adam sat up. “What are you guys talking about?” he wanted to know.
    But we could only shake our heads. Speech was impossible.
    Because it turned out that Michael Meducci, underneath his pocket protector, was totally and completely buff.
    “He must,” CeeCee ventured, “work out like three hours a day.”
    “More like five,” Gina murmured.
    “He could bench press
me
,” I said, and both CeeCee and Gina nodded in agreement.
    “Are you guys,” Adam demanded, “talking about
Michael Meducci
?”
    We ignored him. How could we not? For we had just seen a god — pasty-skinned, it was true, but perfect in every other way.
    “All he needs,” Gina breathed, “is to come out from behind that computer once in a while and get a little color.”
    “No,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of that perfectly sculpted body marred by skin cancer. “He’s fine the way he is.”
    “Just a little color,” Gina said again. “I mean, SPF 15 and he’ll still get a little brown. That’s all he needs.”
    “No,” I said again.
    “Suze is right,” CeeCee said. “He’s perfect the way he is.”
    “Oh my God,” Adam said, flopping back disgustedly into the sand. “
Michael Meducci.
I can’t believe you guys are talking that way about
Michael Meducci.
”
    But how could we help it? He was perfection. Okay, so he wasn’t the best surfer. That, we realized, while we watched him get tossed off Adam’s board by a fairly small wave that Sleepy and Dopey rode with ease, would have been asking for too much.
    But in every other way, he was one hundred percent genuine hottie.
    At least until he was knocked over by a middling to large-size wave and did not resurface.
    At first we were not alarmed. Surfing was not something I particularly wanted to try — while I love the beach, I have no affection at all for the ocean. In fact, quite the opposite: The water scares me because there’s no telling what else is swimming around in all that murky darkness. But I had watched Sleepy and Dopey ride enough waves to know that surfers often disappear for long moments, only to come popping up yards away, usually flashing a big grin and an OK sign with their thumb and index finger.
    But the wait for Michael to come popping up seemed longer than usual. We saw Adam’s board shoot out of a particularly large wave, and head, riderless, toward the shore. Still no sign of Michael.
    This was when the lifeguard — the same big blond one who’d attempted to rescue Dopey; we had stationed ourselves close to his chair, as had become our custom — sat up straight, and suddenly lifted his binoculars to his face.
    I, however, did not need binoculars to see what I saw next. And that was Michael finally breaking the surface after having been down nearly a minute. Only no