Chapter 1
An orgasm is like diving into deep water. Stomach muscles tensed. Lungs filled out until they’re straining your ribcage. Eyes closed and body alert. There’s no sound but the pounding of your own heart, no feeling but potential and desire. Something builds up in your lower body, between your strong lungs and your shaking legs. Between the fear of doing something and just-fucking-doing it, there’s this…pause.
And then you go on faith. There’s no solid ground underneath you. Your stomach throws itself over like a flipped pancake. The lights, once static, spin out of control and the whole world is floating up, weightless without needing wings. That’s the truth about any dive: you go up before you go down. There’s no way to experience the crash, the horrible, gut-wrenching fall, without that one perfect moment of weightlessness. Right side up. Flying. It never lasts.
It can’t. That’s why they’re the same.
You can see the end coming. For one, terrifying moment you’re always looking down at the board. Just hanging in space and thinking What if I screwed up? What if it’s over, right here, right now? What if I go into the water unconscious like Monique Gladding and unlike her, I stay that way?
I’ll get hurt. I’ll suffocate. I’ll die.
These were the thoughts that entered Anja’s head when she orgasmed, when she flew through the air above the pool, when she so much as looked at her boyfriend Trevor. He was in the audience, watching her. When she dove, just like when they made love, they gasped at the same time. One final hit of oxygen before she twisted face down in mid-air, looking for seconds that felt like hours at the board, and then turning to face her destination.
She grew up diving off rock faces and boats down at the waterfront, and could never completely get used to the pool. Diving into water so clear she could see the outline of every tile on the bottom felt like diving head-first at the ground. She closed her eyes (partly to avoid the view) and made minor adjustments that looked like huge twists to those watching. In the air, when you move a little, things change a lot. When the water hit, it smarted. Her palms felt skinned. Her face stung. The chlorine didn’t help.
And then came the flood. Wetness, everywhere. Turning her legs into gelatin so that she had to let them go completely, giving herself over to the absolute joy of this beautiful moment.
It felt like it could change the course of her entire life. Here, and in the bedroom.
At the bottom of the pool, she hesitated an extra second or two. Lately, he’d been getting out of bed the minute they were finished, claiming he needed to get cleaned up. It had become quite the game of cat-and-mouse: he’d disappear for hours.
Of course, she’d always find him somewhere. Making himself a snack in the kitchen or playing video games in the basement. Occasionally, he’d leave the house entirely and take her dog for a walk, or go home without even telling her he’d left.
Possibly, diving wasn’t like an orgasm. Maybe (and she’d only admit this to herself) it was better.
She swam to the other side of the cold pool, letting her hands sting. Letting her face smart. Releasing the deep breath that had been caught in her lungs. It came out in a whirlwind of bubbles that tingled like satin sheets against her body. She surfaced, practically levitating over the side of the pool because she knew how amazing her dive had been; waiting for the score as someone, a team member or her coach, wrapped her in a towel.
And that felt like being wrapped in his arms. Her head on his soft and furry chest. Closing her eyes as his arm came over her. Being enveloped by him in the blanket. Breathing the mixture of their scents. He was on everything, even here. His cologne lightly scented the air around her towel. The rec center scoreboard said 9.5. An almost perfect dive.
Charlie shot her a green-eyed wink that almost disappeared under her mop of strawberry blonde curls. Anja had always been jealous of her best friend’s hair. Her body. The adorable dimples in her cheeks. Her own black hair fell as straight and flat as a horrible dive. Her dark eyes were as boring as a competition swimsuit. Why couldn’t she wear something that made her look less pale? Something that made her tree trunk brown hair look less limp and boring?
Charlie mouthed “Almost perfect.”
She mouthed back “I can’t believe it.”
It could have been perfect. Should have been perfect.
Replaying the dive in her head took up most of the next few hours, and by the time she was sitting across from Trevor at Surfer’s Paradise, she knew what she’d done wrong.
“I was too scared,” she told him. “Instead of thinking about my dive, I was thinking about stupid things. I was looking at the board, but not the pool. I was thinking about dying and hurting myself and drowning and…just all kinds of stupidity.” And I was thinking about us. The way you’re looking at me right now.
Trevor wasn’t someone you could describe to anyone who hadn’t met him. The puzzle pieces that made him were a weak chin, a hawk nose, and those sympathetic grey social worker eyes. He had clustered front teeth that pointed together like a beaver’s. That one terrible haircut every man gets and no woman wants. If you talked about his parts, no-one would really understand how they worked out to be such a gorgeous man when you put them together. How they managed to create the profile of a Greek god. She hated him for it. Maybe because she herself was exactly the sum of her parts.
She scratched at a red mark on her bicep, feeling the hard muscle and letting it comfort her. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with US.
She needed to stop with the negativity. Her “imperfect” score was the team’s best today, and her personal best all week. As her coach, Hans always took it harder on her than the judges. It probably HAD been a perfect dive. She needed to count her blessings.
Not only was the best guy in town taking her to their favorite restaurant after the best dive of the day and her personal best of the week, but she was going home to the cutest little arts-and-crafts bungalow she’d just purchased to see the most adorable smoodgey-faced Neapolitan mastiff in the entire world. Lincoln (Link for short) was their relationship dog. They’d found him in a little box out front of a pet store just weeks after they started dating, and had agreed to shared custody. He stayed with Trevor when she was travelling, and with her when Trevor had to work. Five years ago, neither one of them had any idea how huge he’d get. Lately, Trevor had been taking him less. He’d been staying with Anja’s grandfather when she was away.
No matter what else happened, thinking of Link could always put her in a better mood.
She smiled mischievously at Trevor.
“Do you want to know what I was thinking about during the dive today?”
“What?” She caught an edge in his voice, like the nail that snags your favorite sweater. Did he have a bad day at work? He didn’t talk about work much anymore.
“I was thinking about an orgasm. How it is with us.”
He leaned forward, “And how’s that?”
“Absolutely wonderful.” She winked. “I’ll show you later.”
He scoffed. Clasped his hands together. Looked down at them. His grey eyes met hers like a storm and she beamed at the man she loved. Obviously, she’d been too focused on training recently and he was upset. Honestly, she felt horrible about it. He wasn’t getting to see her as often as he’d like. She knew that, and knew it sucked.
Still, she had a lot of new sponsors. No way she was letting them down. They believed in her, and had chosen to extend their support. Some had put an unbelievable amount of money behind her success. Trevor had to be okay with how hard she was working, because this was bigger than just the two of them.
“Listen, Anja…”
She cut him off. “Why did you choose this place?”
He looked around as if seeing the restaurant for the first time. For a moment, there was curiosity and some semblance of life in his eyes. As if he’d never seen tacky brown seating, lobster bibs, and bored waiters before. Just like that, his expression went dead again. His shrug telegraphed boredom. “It was close to the rec center. Quiet. Not too many people. I wanted to talk to you…”
She waggled her eyebrows. “So it has NOTHING to do with the fact that this is where you brought me on our first date?”
He seemed to think about that, hard. Almost too hard. He deflated. “That’s where it started.”
“I guess so,” she grinned harder, as if she could bite the love back into their date. Charlie said smiles were an infection people loved to catch. She hoped that was true. “It was the first date of five years together.”
“Almost six.” Followed by an exasperated sigh.
“You don’t have to make it sound like a prison sentence.”
“That must be why we came here then, too. Though I didn’t know it at the time. Because it was close to the rec center. I don’t think you even changed out of your team sweats.”
She remembered. Disappearing in the middle of practice with her still-wet hair in a messy bun. Running around with him like a happy secret. Fitting him in between school, and work, and practices. He was at every meet. Always in her corner. They were a perfect match.
“I love you so much,”
He started to say something, but the waiter interrupted with their order. Steak for him, salad with grilled chicken on top for her.
“You don’t have to eat that.”
She gestured at his plate with her fork, “If I eat that, I’ll die of a heart attack.”
“At least you’d have lived, first.”
