He’d been locking up early for weeks, ever since he’d caught us lingering by the deep end, our conversation too quiet, our glances too long. Tonight, he just waved, turned off the main lights, and left us in the blue glow of the underwater LEDs.
I was sitting on the edge, my legs dangling in the water, my black bikini still dripping from my last lap. Maya stood behind me. She was supposed to be adjusting my swim cap, helping me with the strap that had been bothering me. That was the excuse.
But when she leaned over me, her red bikini strap slipped off her shoulder. I saw it in the water’s reflection—saw the pale skin, the curve of her collarbone, the way the fabric hung precariously. She didn’t fix it. She just let it stay there, a silent offering.
“Your strap,” I whispered, my voice echoing off the empty walls.
“I know,” she said.
Her hand slid from my hair down to my throat, her fingers tracing the hollow above my collarbone, stopping exactly where the pool water had left my skin cool and sensitive. She pressed her mouth to my ear, her breath hot against the chill.
“The lifeguard left,” she whispered. “The cameras are off. And I’ve been watching you in that bikini for two hours. Tell me to stop, or I’m going to pull this string and finish what you started when you looked at me across the lane.”
I didn’t tell her to stop.
I reached back, found the string of my own bikini top, and pulled. The fabric came undone instantly, falling into the water between us. Maya made a sound—low, broken, hungry—and then she was pushing me back, off the edge, into the water.
I sank for a second, the cool blue closing over my head, and then her hands were on me, pulling me up, pressing me against the pool wall. My bikini top was floating somewhere near the drain. Hers was gone too, discarded on the tile. And her mouth was on me before I could catch my breath, her tongue hot against my cold skin, her hands pinning my wrists against the rough concrete.
The water lapped around us, hiding everything and revealing everything. She kissed me like she was trying to drown me, her body pressed against mine, her thigh sliding between my legs with a precision that made me gasp against her mouth.
“Quiet,” she whispered, her hand covering my lips. “The walls echo.”
But I couldn’t be quiet. Not when her fingers found me under the water. Not when she pressed inside me with a slow, devastating rhythm that matched the pulse of the pool’s filtration system. Not when she made me come apart with my back against the tile and my name breaking from her throat in a whisper that sounded like a prayer.
After, we floated. Tangled together. Naked and shivering and finally honest.
The lifeguard never asked why the pool was warmer than usual the next morning.
