" Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hot wood of the dock, still touching elbows with Adam, staring at the skull-and-crossbones pendant. And when I looked up into his light blue eyes, I saw that he was staring at my neck. No. Down lower.
“What’cha staring at?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “Tank top or what?” This was his seal of approval, as in, Last day of school or what? or, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or what? Hooray! He wasn’t Sean, but he was built of the same material. This was a good sign.
I pumped him for more info, to make sure. “What about my tank top?”
“You’re wearing it.” He looked out across the lake, showing me his profile. His cheek had turned bright red under his tan. I had embarrassed the wrong boy. Damn, it was back to the football T-shirt for me.
No it wasn’t, either. I couldn’t abandon my plan. I had a fish to catch.
“Look,” I told Adam, as if he hadn’t already looked. “Sean’s leaving at the end of the summer. Yeah, yeah, he’ll be back next summer, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to compete once he’s had a taste of college life and sorority girls. It’s now or never, and desperate times call for desperate tank tops.”
Adam opened his mouth to say something. I shut him up by raising my hand. Imitating his deep boy-voice, I said, “I don’t know why you want to hook up with that jerk.” We’d had this conversation whenever we saw each other lately. I said in my normal voice, “I just do, okay? Let me do it, and don’t get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin.” I bumped his hip with my hip. Or tried to, but he was a lot taller than me. I actually hit somewhere around his mid-thigh.
He folded his arms, stared me down, and pressed his lips together. He tried to look grim. I could tell he was struggling not to laugh. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“Dolphins don’t live in the lake,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this were the real reason. The real reason was that the man-child within him did not want to be called “little” anything. Boys were like that.
I shrugged. “Fine, little brim. Little bass.”
He walked toward the stairs.
“Little striper.”
He turned. “What if Sean actually asked you out?”
I didn’t want to be teased about this. It could happen! “You act like it’s the most remote poss-“
“He has to ride around with the sunroof open just so he can fit his big head in the truck. Where would you sit?”
“In his lap?”
A look of disgust flashed across Adam’s face before he jogged up the stairs, his weight making the weathered planks creaked with every step. "

― Jennifer Echols , Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2)