Free Friction by Samantha Hunter Page A

away from shore if you can’t get back in your boat, or help your partner get back in his. Rules of the road, so to speak. C’mon, it’ll be easy. I’ll work through it with you.”
    Sarah looked toward Logan, who was still caught up in conversation, and sighed.
    “Okay. What do I need to do?”
    After a few times dumping out of the boat—though she still wondered who the heck threw themselves out of a boat that wasn’t on fire on purpose—Sarah started to get her bearings. She felt like a drowned rat by the fourth time, but she could exit her boat and crawl back in, both with help and by herself.
    As she hauled herself up and over for the last time, she was pretty sure Jim was checking out her butt—just as he’d slid his hand a little too far up her calf when he’d helped her in the time before. She’d had enough lessons for the moment and looked for Logan as she settledback in the cockpit of her boat, soaked and ready to do something else.
    “So you’ve learned how to do wet exits.”
    Logan’s boat slid quietly up beside hers, to her relief interrupting the space between Sarah and Jim. The instructor offered them a friendly salute and headed off to another member of the group.
    Logan grabbed the lip of Sarah’s kayak, butting them up against each other, side by side. She looked at him, shaking the wet out of her hair.
    “A what?”
    “Falling out of the boat upside-down on purpose. It’s called a wet exit.”
    “Yeah, that’s one thing you could call it.”
    He just laughed. “I know it seems stupid, but if you know enough ways in and out of your boat, and eventually how to roll it, you can take these craft in just about any kind of water, where no other boats could ever go.”
    “Fascinating.”
    “I thought you’d think so.” He grinned. “We have the boats for the day, though the lesson’s over. How about we go back and get some food and drinks, then we can go off on a paddle somewhere. Maybe Smith Island. I hear it’s not a long trip.”
    “An island? Down here?”
    “Just a small one off the tip of the shore, past the national wildlife refuge. We can travel back out from the beach, hug the shore and then it’s about a fifteen-minute paddle across to the island. It’s undeveloped for the most part, so we’ll probably be alone.”
    The lazy suggestion in his words didn’t fail to make her pulse race just a little faster, and in spite of her intentions to keep her distance, she agreed, and they went back toward shore.
     
    T HEY WERE PADDLING across an open stretch of water, their boats quietly cutting through the one-foot chop, and Sarah felt truly relaxed. Her muscles were loose and warm from the paddling, her mind at peace. Logan moved parallel to her a few yards away, but they said nothing. The early afternoon sun was hot, but she barely felt it in the breeze, and she smiled as brown pelicans swooped overhead, diving down headfirst into the water for their lunch.
    They’d hugged the shore for the majority of the trip, paddling underneath a section of the incredible Chesapeake Bay Bridge and forward to the spot where they veered southeast toward a shore visible on the other side. Late at night Sarah had often watched the twinkling lights of the bridge from her apartment, and she’d driven over it several times, but paddling beneath it was yet another new perspective.
    Considered one of the seven engineering wonders of the world, it spanned twenty miles above ground and included two tunnels underneath the Bay. The bridge connected the southern shores of mainland Virginia with the Eastern Shore.
    Bobbing in the water in her small boat, she’d appreciated its enormity more than ever. She was enjoying so many marvels of man and nature on this short kayaking trip.
    Sparing a glance over to Logan, who also appeared lost in his own musings, she thought maybe vacationing wasn’t so bad after all. She saw him steer his kayak a little closer as they approached the island’s