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We float, slowly at first, moving together as one, like a giant fish. It doesn’t seem possible but it really is getting darker, so dark that even the light from our headlamps seems to be swallowed up. No one is talking but I can hear their breaths echoing off the low walls. Even though the water is cold, Gemma’s contact keeps me warm. All I can think about is how close she is, and I lament the layer of wet suit between my hands and her skin. I want to feel her again. This is my only chance. I slowly run my hands up and down her shins, gently squeezing her calves as I go.
I know I shouldn’t be doing it. I know it’s risky, wrong. It’s not a friendly gesture, and I think she knows that. But I’m still doing it, still massaging her as she’s draped over me, with her own boyfriend draped over her. With each press, I’m trying to tell her something in case she doesn’t know it.
I want her even though I know I can’t have her.
But it doesn’t change anything. So I keep feeling her as much as I can while the river below us twists and turns until a collective “oooh” rings out from in front of us. The walls above us suddenly widen and it feels like I’m staring at a giant night sky.
Everywhere I look there are bright blue-white dots of glowworms shining down on us. They reflect faintly off the water, and it’s as if we’re astronauts, soaring through the Milky Way. I briefly think about Vera and her love for astronomy. She would love to float among the stars like this.
“It’s beautiful,” Gemma whispers in awe, so faintly that I can barely hear her.
“Don’t you have this all over your country?” I ask, still massaging her legs.
“I’ve never seen it like this before.” Her voice is full of childlike wonder that does funny things to my gut. She almost sounds vulnerable. My fingers tighten.
As the cavern widens, the ceiling lifting, the walls stretching out, the current slows down and we’re no longer moving in a perfect line. I can see the dim lights of the group in front of us, but they seem farther away than they should be, their voices growing fainter.
“What’s the hold up?” Nick grumbles, and I hear a splash from behind me.
Gemma says, “Nick, what the hell?” and I turn my head to see him loose and floating past us, his hands paddling him along.
“You guys are too slow,” he says, as if this is supposed to be a race, and he floats down, disappearing in front of Amber just as the cavern starts to narrow again and the current quickens.
We whip back into the dark, the glow of the worms fading behind us as the cave’s ceiling begins to press down on us oppressively.
I can hear Nick let out a “woo-hoo” from down the river as the current picks up speed and feels more like the rapids I had imagined.
Suddenly someone cries out in annoyance and I hear a scraping sound that travels back down the tunnel. We twist with the river and Amber bumps into part of the wall that juts out. She lets go of my legs and pushes off but the current spins her away and she’s loose up ahead, her headlight shining around the walls in a circle.
Amber lets out a cry that’s half scared, half having fun and she stays in my sight until Gemma hits the same spot on the wall as she passes. For a moment she seems stuck and is jerked out of my grasp.
“Agh!” she cries out, and I hear her splashing as she tries to push off back into the current. I spin around so I’m facing her and reach out with my hands, just managing to grip the edge of her foot. I pull her toward me, wrapping my arm around her tube, squeezing in between it and her thigh.
The light from my helmet catches her eyes and she looks afraid, her brows raised high, the whites of her eyes shining. I don’t know if she’s scared because the others are no longer in our sight, if she thought she was going to lose me, or because I’m even closer to her now.
She swallows, her throat bobbing, and I have the urge to lick her there and feel her pulse under my lips. We might be wearing the unsexiest things on earth, but she’s still radiating that same sexual energy as she did when we first met. Here in the dark caverns with me, she is more luminous than the glowworms we just passed under.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her, my voice automatically going lower as the swift river sweeps us forward.
She smiles, close-lipped. It’s not quite a smirk but it will do. “I think we lost everyone else,” she says. Her voice is hushed, delicate.
Even though it’s not easy to maintain eye contact without blinding each other, we do it. Her eyes are even darker in here, blacker than the water we’re floating on. “I’m sure we’ll eventually run into them,” I tell her reassuringly, even though catching up with everyone else is the last thing I want. “Unless the river branches out and we go down the wrong arm and over some underground waterfall.”
“You’re just full of the wrong things to say,” she says, smacking my arm.
I can only grin at her, which means I’m not looking at where we’re going as my foot catches the side of the narrow wall, sending me spinning off. I remain attached to her though, my arm still wrapped tight around her tube. We drift side by side until the passage narrows like a tie and I’m still holding on. I don’t want to have her legs wrapped around my shoulders; I want her as close as possible. The voices of the rest of the group occasionally drift toward us from the never-ending darkness and I know we’re in no real danger.
We’re alone. Very alone. I want to take advantage of this.
“So,” I say, keeping my voice low so it doesn’t bounce off the walls and down the tunnel. Even so, it echoes, mixing in with the sound of the gurgling water. I rub my lips together, my words waiting. I could make things a lot more awkward for us. “Why didn’t you . . .” I begin and then start over. “How long have you been seeing Nick?”
