A light in the window

You're lucky to be facing the house when a soft light suddenly fills the window of a room on the top floor. It takes a second to get Amy to notice; she knows where you're ticklish, and its hard to 'ssh!' someone when you're struggling not to laugh out loud yourself. When you manage to fend her off with one hand while pointing with the other, she realizes the problem, sinking into the water up to her chin and moving against the wall of the pool, and you follow suit, peering just over the edge up at the otherwise darkened house.

"We need to go!" you hiss to Amy, and she puts a hand on your arm under the water.

"Hang on," she says, eyes still glued to the building, "if they're looking out the window they'll see us moving."

"So we just sit here until they go back to bed?!"

"Look, if the window goes dark we sneak back over the fence. If not--" she freezes as another light goes on in the house, on the second floor; not in the kitchen overlooking the backyard, but in the next room over, visible through a doorway. That is to say, closer than before.

"--we run. C'mon!"Amy snaps you out of a deer-in-the-headlights moment, kicking backwards off the wall and dragging you along with her before frantically scrambling to and over the opposite edge of the pool. You're a second behind her, and she hangs back to help pull you out. Nearly winding up on top of her, you can't appreciate the contact through the panic.

"The fence! Let's--" your eyes scan the fence, but there's no chair on this side, or anything tall enough, near enough, or light enough to be moved into place quick enough to give you a boost over. Either Amy already figured that out, or she's not stopping to consider it at all, because your jerked back into a run, Amy holding your arm as she runs further back away from the house. The neighbors never put up a fence of their own, with the sides to the left and the right of the house already being in place from your family and the house another door down. What they did have along the very back was a dense row of flowering hedges, and Amy was barreling towards them with you in tow. You didn't have time to object, not that you had any better suggestions, and all you could do was take a split second to brace yourself as the two of you crash through. Whatever kind of bush it is, you're lucky it doesn't have thorns, because even without them you wince at the scratching branches. You're almost through when you get wrenched back, bra straps cutting into your shoulders as something yanks back on them. You barely suppress a shout, imagining you've just been nabbed by your neighbor, and look back to find the garment snagged in the brush. Amy hasn't looked back, however, and having already cleared the greenery is still pulling you forward by one arm.

The surprisingly resilient branch manages to hold out longer than your bra does, straps popping free from the cups and clear off your torso, and you only just manage to swing your arm back and free it from the shrub as you keep moving. For a moment, you're running bare chested through a near-strangers yard, wet skin glistening in the dim starlight, nipples hard from the chill and the adrenaline. Then Amy suddenly pivots, and pulls you into the space between a toolshed and a barbeque grill, pulling you close and crouching low, the two of you hearing nothing but your own panting as you wait and see if you got away with it.