A House at the Bottom of a Lake

26

They ate lunch on the raft. Turkey sandwiches and chips. Bottled water. They were exhausted. Diving itself was more of a workout than either of them usually got, but the experience in the basement took something extra out of them.

The sun felt good. Being above the surface felt good, too.

It always felt like night down in the house.

“You look good when you’re tired,” James said, his toes at the edge of the raft. Neither dangled their feet in the water.

“I was really scared for a second there.”

“I know you were. I was, too.”

The raft bobbed on steady undulations.

“I honestly thought somebody had found us,” Amelia said. “I thought somebody had seen the canoe and come searching for us.”

James wondered at this. He hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Not at all. When he saw the dress floating above the pool, his mind had gone to a much darker place than hers. And yet maybe being found out was as dark a thing as Amelia could imagine.

“I love you,” James suddenly said.

“I know you do. You didn’t swim away when I was scared.”

“Is that how somebody knows?”

James recalled how he felt immobile beneath the dress. How nothing in the world could have moved his flippers from the indoor pool.

Amelia smiled. It was good to see her smiling.

“That’s how I know,” she said.

They stared into each other’s eyes, then Amelia looked down to the roof. James watched her breasts against the red fabric of her bikini top. Despite being so afraid less than half an hour ago, any movement of her muscle beneath her skin, any view of her skin at all, excited him.

Amelia suddenly kicked her feet to the edge of the raft and shoved off into the water. She swam out a few feet so that she was directly above the roof. She stared into James’s eyes as she treaded water, the whole huge house beneath her.

It was a challenge, James thought. Something like one. Amelia was telling him she wasn’t scared. Or perhaps she was telling herself.

We got spooked today, James thought. So do we continue?

This, he thought, was Amelia’s way of saying, Yes. We continue.

He jumped in after her. For the first time since discovering the house, he experienced that nerve-burning sensation of something much bigger than himself beneath the water. Like the famous poster from Jaws, he was the very small swimmer cresting the surface, the many teeth of the house below.

When he reached her, they embraced. James did so partially out of fear. But Amelia, he could tell, had already moved on from the floating dress. They kissed and their mostly naked bodies pressed against each other, as their bare feet propelled them, kept them stationary above the roof of the house. Amelia stuck a hand deeper into the water and felt James’s hard penis through his yellow bathing suit. She wanted to make love to him then, right there, high above their secret.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered in his ear.

James pulled his face from hers. It was easier to forget about the basement now.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “One hundred percent, yes.”

They laughed because it was both awkward and assured. They laughed because they were embarrassed and they were brave, too.

These feelings warred and mingled within them both, as the water beneath experienced rotations of its own: pockets of warm, pockets of cold; pleasing water across their legs, their bellies, replaced, suddenly, by the icy tips of unseen fingers and the tips of tongues, tickling their bare skin from the deep, wanting perhaps to take hold of them, wanting to pull them deeper, deeper into the lake, deeper into the house, deeper in love, deeper…

Tomorrow.