“I should say goodnight,” I told him, a little hesitantly.Part of me wanted to invite him in again, to feel the way the gravity of the house shifted - somehow both imperceivable and yet unmistakable - when he was there with me.A feeling both attractive and terrifying.
“It is a school night, after all,” Kai observed, wryly.
I imagined being in the office, going through the routine that once had seemed so reassuring in its repetitions.Somehow that comfort had soured, now.
“Some of us do have to get our beauty sleep,” I joked, smiling awkwardly.I could see him shake his head in the shadows.
“Shut up and kiss me,” he said, “before the self-deprecation starts up again.”He took a half-step forward, closing the gap between our bodies.
A beat, and then I leaned into him.
It was a kiss that felt new, different somehow.Not quite the tentative, exploratory touch of lips upon lips that had been our first, and yet not the hungry, sexual clinch of earlier in the evening.Something that spoke of familiarity, even amid the newness.
“Thank you for the date,” I whispered, my mouth so close to his cheek I could feel the fine hairs there brushing against me.“I had fun.”
Kai smiled; I could feel it more than I could see it, the telltale way his muscles shifted.“Let me take you out again, sometime,” he suggested.
I pictured him, across from me in the restaurant, face lit up as he told me the punchline to a story.His strong hand on the stem of the wineglass, fingers a sudden reminder of how he’d touched me just hours before.It was an intimacy I’d told myself I wouldn’t succumb to again, and yet here I was, gladly stumbling back into it now.
You can either fight these things, or embrace them.
“Okay,” I told him.“Sure.”
Chapter Ten
Iforced myself toget up early the next morning.Cursed the alarm I’d set 45 minutes before it would usually sound, but dragged myself out of bed anyway.Pulled on the swimsuit, still a little damp from the previous night, and grumpily eyed the coffee machine while I waited for the pool cover to scroll back.
The water still had dawn’s chill to it, sharp and bracing.I felt my muscles tense, my whole body seeming to clench, until I forced myself to accept the temperature; to embrace it, even.
As I pushed off from one end, I tried to remind myself of the coaching advice Kai had given me.Attempting, at the same time, to convince myself that this sudden new leaf of pre-breakfast exercising was entirely self-motivated.Not, indeed, because of the hot swimmer next door.
With each lap, I started to remember what I’d actually enjoyed about swimming back in school.The feel of the water sluicing around my body; the way your brain focused in on nothing but the repetition of each stroke.Forcing every other thought, every doubt and fear, out of your consciousness.
It was liberating, in a way.Sure, those same anxieties had always come flooding back in, by the time you were in the locker room again.That was a given.Yet for however long you were swimming, it was just you and the water, nothing else.
I’d told myself I would aim for thirty minutes, but was secretly convinced that I would make it to the 45 minute mark.I probably should’ve realized I was overestimating my stamina levels, hardly making it to twenty of solid back and forth, back and forth, before my muscles were complaining loudly.There was just enough strength in my arms to drag myself up the ladder.
