An invitation

The river is the same boring river you've seen on a thousand walks with Maisie, but she loves it and being with her is always worth it.

"Oh, I have to tell you about this movie I watched last night!" says Maisie. "It was this insane time loop thing about doing a bank robbery over and over."

"Let me guess, they had to successfully complete the robbery to break the loop."

"Well, I got distracted before I got to the end and saw how they broke the loop, but let me tell you about the weird thing with the cat!"

Maisie almost certainly saw this with a guy and hooked up with him before the movie finished. At least she isn't telling you about that part, those details would be soul crushing. The two of you come to a wide part of the river with a little bank.

"Here!" Maisie picks up a few rocks and hands half of them to you. "First one to skip a rock three times wins."

Maisie always loves this game even though you always win. You take the rocks and say, "Okay, but don't pout if you lose." You're obviously kidding her, Maisie's joking, exaggerated pout is insanely cute and always makes you smile.

"Ha! This is the day I finally win!" Maisie lines up a throw and slings her rock. In skips, then again, then six more times. She looks stunned. "Whoa."

"That's just a lucky first try. Let's do two out of three." You trow your rock and get two skips. Neither of you was ever great at this.

"Okay, here's where my usual luck kicks in!" Maise throws again, and this time she gets ten skips. "Okay, this isn't luck. I think that command to be more athletic did a lot more than improve my gymnastics. I could probably take over the softball team."

"With that arm, you could become the star player on the boys baseball team!"

Maisie looks slightly overwhelmed. "I wasn't expecting such a big change. I think I might need to slow down on using the curse. I've been overdoing it a bit lately."

The two of you keep walking along the river path. It's so nice to spend time with her again. You try to enjoy it, since all her time is taken up with guys and cheerleading lately.

Halfway along the path Maisie smiles exitedly and says, "Hey, I've got a proposal for you. Do you have any spring break plans?"

"No. Why?"

"Some of the cheerleaders are renting a house at the beach. It's going to be great! We got our parents to rent a house that has four bedrooms, one for each of us, but we decided that we're going to double up so we can take some guys to keep things fun. Please say you'll come!"

Maisie puts her hand on your arm and smiles at you. She probably thinks you're hesitating, but the truth is that this offer is just too good to believe. Your eternal crush, wearing swimsuits on the beach, staying in the same house as you, for a full week?! It's insane. You'll clearly die of sexual frustration, but it will be worth it.

"Yeah, absolutely!"

Mairie hugs your arm. "This is so great! We're going to have such a good time. By the way, you'll have to be on your best behavior. We'll start out with the guys rooming together and the girls rooming together, but there's no way it will stay like that. Somebody will hook up and need to change rooms, so a girl might need to share a bed with you one night. Try to get along with everyone so you don't end up on the living room couch."

"Oh. Uh-huh. Um... Are you planning on hooking up with anyone?"

She smiles while sticking out her tongue. "Of course! Brad, hopefully, but he has his eye on Tess. She has advantages that draw his attention."

"Right," you mutter as the two of you walk down the path. Soon Maisie lets go of your arm, which feels awful. Clearly she's not rejecting you, she's just trying to walk comfortably, but the part of your brain that's drowning in your feelings for her tells you it is a rejection. You think about ways to make her like you again, to be useful again, and one thing comes to mind.

"So, do you want to make any changes to yourself to get his attention."

Maisie looks at you sideways for a moment, but any suspicion she has goes away almost instantly. "No. I mean... no. I've been getting sucked into that a lot lately, I need to cut back before I get addicted to changing myself."

The two of you spend a couple more hours hanging out, then head home. Right before you go to bed, you get a text from Maisie.

"I changed my mind. There is something I want to do to make myself more attractive to Brad."

You're instantly hard.