So there she floats. Down one of the intersecting waterways. And I'm just watching her. As she slowly pokes around beneath the surface. As she casually raises her head to drain water that leaked into her mask. As she lays there so unassumingly.
Then I'm in the water too. I'm coasting over to her raft and when I make contact, there's a brief moment of fear that I've disturbed her research. Compromised her project. Maybe I shouldn't have intruded.
But she greets me with a smile and a laugh. Pulls her dirty blonde hair from her face. Sinks me with those royal blues.
She slides her legs off, providing room for me on the raft, and I grab onto the opposite side. Our feet drift underneath, coming together in short, almost rhythmic patterns. Joining, then parting.
I ask how her day is going and she begins to explain the greater aspects of the search, identification and successful gathering of certain organisms or entities, but I must shift my weight at some point because as she's speaking the raft folds in the middle and our heads meet. A swift bonk.
I'm embarrassed but she's laughing again, and as I'm trying to asses the damage, apologizing and scanning her forehead for bruising, I realize our lips are closer than they've ever been.
My body tingles. Heart races. Time slows to focus on me.
And she notices. She feels the pause as she glances at me. The split that occurred from the moment we were having to the one I've created with my desire for her. And though she holds me suspended there for an eternity, poised on my elbows with the grey haze of the day settling down around us, she leans forward to join me. To lend her lips to me.
And the rush consumes me. The release of tension and inundation of ecstasy is almost too much. But I bear it. I bear it to float with her for a little longer.
