“If I fall and kill myself you’re going to be very sad,” I said, trying to be brave.

As if sensing my discomfort, Samuel’s eyes didn’t linger on my scantily clad form. He turned and hoisted himself up into the tree like it was as simple as climbing a few stairs. I cringed, thinking about how in the world I was going to get up there and retain any dignity. He stood in the broad base, where the branches spread and lifted away from the trunk. He leaned down towards me, extending a long brown arm.

“Grab my arm at the elbow and I’ll pull you up.”

I did just as he asked, wrapping both of my hands just below his bicep. He leaned down, wrapped his left hand around my upper arm and, holding onto a thick tree-branch above him with his right arm, began pulling me easily up the tree. I marched my legs right up the trunk and was quickly standing balanced beside him, easy as you please. I felt like Shera, Queen of the Jungle, HeMan’s female counterpart. “Wow,” I breathed and then giggled like a little girl.

“There’s a little platform up there, see it?”

“Oh yes,” I groaned. “I know all about the platform. Please don’t make me jump from there.”

“Let me check it out.” Samuel was monkeying up the tree before I could protest.

“It seems pretty solid,” he called down several moments later. It was solid. It had been there for at least a few generations of dare devils. I sighed dejectedly. I was going to have to climb up there and jump with him. It was too late to back out now.

“Come on, I’ll guide you up.”

I knew I was going to fall out of the tree. Girls as athletically challenged as I was should never climb trees. At the very least, I was going to snag my underwear on a branch and be stuck wearing only a tank top high up in the tree. I shuddered in horror. I was NOT that kind of girl. I had a decent rear-end, but I don’t think anyone’s butt looks good climbing trees. At the very worst, I would impale myself on a sharp branch like a pig on a spit. Knowing me, both would happen, and I would soon be pantiless and impaled. I could just see the story in the local newspaper: “Local Woman Found Dead and Half Naked in Tree.”

I focused intently on placing my feet and hands where Samuel instructed and amazingly, I eventually climbed close enough for him to reach down and loop his arm around my waist. He pulled me up next to him on the narrow section of plywood that was wedged and nailed into the wide reinforcement of crisscrossing branches. The view below was truly breathtaking…and terrifying. The black bottom of the pond created an illusion of endless sky below us. The glassy surface reflected the brilliant stars in the firmament above, and it seemed as if we stood on the precipice of a miniature galaxy.

“Oh, dear God,” I whispered, panic flooding my heart with ice.

“It’s beautiful,” Samuel whispered too, only his voice was filled with awe.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to his arm, which he had kept braced around me.

“Are you ready? Here we go, on three…”

“No!” I yelped emphatically. “Not yet! I’m not ready!”

Samuel snickered softly, but I was too afraid to slap him.

My eyes were shut so tightly, I was giving myself a headache, my face scrunched up in denial of what I had gotten myself into.

I felt Samuel’s arm pull me against him, and then I felt his breath against my mouth. He smelled like peaches and pine, and I breathed in, relaxing my face, tipping my chin towards him as his mouth came down over mine. And I completely forgot to be afraid. Tipsily, I wound my arms around his brawny shoulder, winding my fingers up into the silky pelt of his closely cut hair. He pulled me in even more tightly, lifting my feet off of the platform, and then, with no warning, Samuel pushed off the platform with a powerful thrust, and we were air born. I was falling….and screaming, and falling. Just before we hit the surface, Samuel released me, untangling himself from my limbs as we shot through the black, star-filled water.

Instinct took over as I kicked my legs wildly and swam upwards, or what I thought was upward. I felt Samuel beside me, and he reached for my flailing hand and dragged me up with him, our heads breaking the surface together. I gasped, spitting pond out of my mouth and sweeping my streaming hair out of my face as my legs tread water furiously to keep me afloat.

“Don’t ever do that again!!”

“What? Kiss you, or kiss you while we’re jumping out of a tree?” Samuel practically drawled the words, they were so slow and mild. He wasn’t breathing hard at all; in fact, he’d laid his head back in the water and barely seemed to be working at keeping himself afloat.

“Ugh!” I huffed, completely disgusted. “I feel tricked! You didn’t want to kiss me! You just wanted to get me out of the tree!”

“Oh, I wanted to kiss you,” the drawl was even more pronounced. “I just killed two birds with one stone.” He lifted his head up off the water and grinned at me, his teeth flashing, and I was dazzled. So much so, that I stopped kicking and my head sunk beneath the water like a stone. I splashed wildly and popped up, spitting and swiping at my hair again.

“Lean back, Josie,” Samuel commanded, the words gentle and coaxing as he slid up beside me. “Kick your legs out in front of you and float on your back. Quit fighting. Floating’s easy.”

“Ha!” I grumped. “I knew how to swim when you were still wearing floaties in the high school pool!” I wasn’t done being mad at him.