Underwater

The Prompt: They came out under water.

It was the summer before they turned seventeen, in the pool in Lia’s backyard. Their skins were a deep golden brown from the weeks spent tanning. Together they swam and laughed, acting like the best of friends. And they were.

But in that moment, in the blue water that smelled vaguely of chlorine, they were more. They took hands almost instinctively, staring into each other’s eyes with a feeling neither could define, but both recognized. It was less than love, but more—different—than friendship.

Words between the two didn’t need to be spoken. They just understood. Their eyes open under the surface they could see what the other felt in a clear way they never could on dry land. It filtered out the lies, their facades, and left just them, naked to each other. Their fingers wove together and they drew nearer, intrigued by the new feelings. The lust and desire. They didn’t need to reason, talk things over. They just knew. They just felt. The just were.

Closer and closer their faces came as they drifted under the water. Their hair rose and circled their heads, one brown and one red. They were free, free to experience everything they truly felt away from judgment and fear.

But the chlorine began to burn their eyes. The water felt heavy over their heads as the pressure built. Their chests felt like they were going to burst from lack of air and they pulled apart, disentangling their hands as they did. They both pushed against the bottom and shot up, breaking the surface of the pool as they gasped for breath and gratefully filled their lungs with oxygen.

Once more they were separate, not touching or even looking at each other, but no longer quite the same. The moment was over, but they hadn’t ended. It wasn’t the same as it was before. The one moment, alone under the water, had changed everything. Even as they breathed in deep gulps of oxygen, so distant from the blue depths below, they had changed. They didn’t take hands again, but as they moved around the pool their fingers brushed.

Words were never exchanged, not a one, but they weren’t needed. The girls just understand each other.

They left the pool completely, hair dripping as they returned to their towels and lay out in the bright summer sun. As their hair began to dry the girls turned to each other, their smiles shy and small across their faces. They could see through the other’s walls now, see what they really felt since the moment under the water, but it was muted, no longer blaringly obvious. Softer in a way.

And they reached out with their hands as they lay side by side and wove their fingers together. The innocent gesture was all they needed as they closed their eyes against the bright glare and continued on with their lives, the rest of the world oblivious to the moment that had just passed under the water.

So Sorry

The Prompt: The phone rings and rings and rings in the middle of the night.  It keeps ringing after the machine picks up.  Finally you answer it—groggy, irritated, and befuddled.  It’s the call we all dread and yet know will come more than once in our lives … The narrator’s (closest friend, lover, parent, brother, sister, you decide who to kill…) was in an accident, is at the hospital, and will not last until morning.  He or she dresses furiously, jumps in his or her car, get to the hospital, cursing at the slowness of traffic, and the stupidity of parking attendants, and arrives at the person’s bedside.  What happens next?  

He had been running, speeding, doing everything at top speed to get there as fast as possible, but he slowed the moment he reached the door. He shut it softly behind him before even looking at the bed.

She was there, just as they said she’d be. It took a moment for the recognition to hit. There were so many tubes, IVs, just things sticking out of her that beeped at regular intervals. He wasn’t a doctor, didn’t know the medical equipment, but even he could tell that it looked bad. It looked really bad.

“Jamie, are—” His voice cracked as he hurried to the side of the bed.

Her eyes were closed and she didn’t rouse at the sound of his voice. She just continued to lay there, unmoving. His hands found hers, one of the only parts of her body not marred in some way from the accident. Her face was cut and bruised, everything visible in some way hindered. But her hand was clear.

She seemed so small and fragile in the bed, the machines dwarfed her. He stroked her hand gently, his thumb over the back. “Oh god, Jamie,” he murmured quietly.

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he even should say anything. If she could hear him. In movies didn’t they always say the unconscious patients could hear what was said? He didn’t know, but it couldn’t hurt.

“Jamie, it’s me. It’s—it’s Ben. I’m here.” He stopped. There was no response. It wasn’t as though he’d been expecting one, but one-sided conversations didn’t often workl. There was always going to be that pause. The pause where a response should have been.

“I’ll be here, okay? For as long as you’re here, I will be too.”

He meant in the hospital, but the second meaning hit him hard. They’d said on the phone she wouldn’t last until morning, but doctors were wrong all the time, weren’t they? Miracles happened. He wasn’t much the praying type, but he knelt his head beside the bed and said a silent prayer in his head. If Jamie could hear what he said, he didn’t want her to know how close she was to the edge.

When he finished he looked back at her, no sign of a change. The steady beeping continued. A tear trickled down his cheek and he wiped it away. He was the strong one, the shoulder to cry on. He had to be strong for her.

“You’re going to get through this,” he whispered fiercely. It wasn’t a lie, he didn’t see it as such. He was going to pull her through this with everything it took. “You’re going to be fine.”

Her eyelids fluttered and his heart jolted with hope, but the steady beeping of the machine evened out into a single long note.

He jerked at the sudden noise. A few nurses hurried into the room and he was pushed out of the way. “What—what’s going on?” He asked desperately.

The question was ignored as he pulled back to the door. “Is she—she’s okay right? She’s got to be okay.”

He didn’t know what the nurses were doing, but they stopped after a minute. One turned to him with pity in her eyes and he shook his head. “She’s gotta be okay. She just—she has to be.”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, shaking her head.

His stomach sank and for a moment he couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel his extremities. His whole body felt numb. “Jamie,” he murmured under his breath. He couldn’t look at the bed. Didn’t want to see her like that. “I’m so sorry.”

Letting Go

The prompt: You come home late at night, after a hard day. The message light on the answering machine is blinking. You press play and listen. "Dumping you on graduation day was the worst mistake of my life. Terry and I didn’t work out—Terry—was the second worst mistake. I will be at La Petite tonight at eight. I asked the chef to prepare a lemon soufflé, and to put white tulips—your favorites—on the table. Please, please, come."

I froze, my hand hovering over the phone to delete the message. It had been years since I’d heard from Lynn. We hadn’t spoken since graduation day itself which had been one of the worst days of my life. And now to have it all coming back three years later, after I’d moved on and made a new life.

“So..” Anna stood in the doorway, the dark shadows obscuring her face. I looked at her in surprise. None of the lights had been on in our apartment and I hadn’t known she was standing there until she spoke. I hoped she hadn’t heard the message, or at least all of it.

Lynn hadn’t been her favorite person back when she and I were a couple, but after she’d broken up with me at graduation Anna’s feelings had grown stronger. “Hey!” I said, pasting a smile on my face. If Anna hadn’t heard I wasn’t going to tell her. It would only make things worse between us.

She frowned and glanced at the machine. My stomach churned. “Are you gonna go?”

So she had heard the whole thing. Or at least enough of it to get the gist. “What? Things with Lynn aren’t- I mean we haven’t spoken in-” I stumbled over my words trying to find a way to tell Anna what I was thinking. It was especially difficult considering even I didn’t know what I was thinking. Everything happened so quickly. I hadn’t had the chance to process yet. And Lynn, I’d been in love with Lynn. It was all those years ago, but I couldn’t quite shake the strength of what I felt for her.

“You’re going to go, aren’t you?” Anna sounded sad, not upset but resigned to the fact that it was out of her control.

That made my decision. “She dumped me at graduation, left me with mascara streaks on all my pictures and a summer that was suddenly too open. I’m not going back to her. I wouldn’t ever leave you for her.”

Anna took a step closer to me, coming out of the shadows and looked up into my eyes. “I don’t want to keep you from her if she’s going to make you happy. I don’t want to be that girlfriend, to guilt you into staying.”

“You’re not!” I burst out. I calmed myself and continued in a lower tone. “I want to be with you and I made that decision a year ago. I didn’t choose you as my backup.” In an attempt to convince her I pushed the delete button on the answering machine, clearing away Lynn’s voice for good. “There, see? It’s all gone.”

Anna smiled gratefully and her face relaxed for the first time that evening. I was glad that she was happy, but I couldn’t help but feel a slight twinge. For so long I had wanted nothing more than to receive a phone call like that, for Lynn to beg my forgiveness. It wasn’t what I wanted anymore, but still hard to let go completely.

I pushed these thoughts out of my head and matched Anna’s smile with my own. That was all in the past. I was happy here and now with Anna. That was all that mattered.