More comfortable does not translate to trusting.
“I’m not nervous,” she snaps.
The blood drains from her face as my eyebrows rise in surprise. She only snaps at me when she’s nervous, overwhelmed, or I forgot to turn my socks the right way before she does the laundry.
I raise my hands in submission.
Few things calm my mind like editing, but diving has a similar effect. It’s loud in a different way beneath the surface, only the sound of the planet and your breathing. Diving on Catalina Island is spectacular, with massive kelp forests stretching from the seabed toward the sky.
The guide, Cathy, and Sofía exchange hushed whispers.
Whatever they’re talking about is not business I need to stick my nose in, not if I ever want to get into the water.
I ignore them, yanking the thick wetsuit on and checking my gear before I hike the vest and tank over my shoulders. A signature cherry scent wafts beside me. My throat dries at the sight of Sofía in her pink wetsuit—the one I bought for her in Australia when we snorkeled together.
Once her gear is on, she methodically works through the safety check, ensuring my buckles are secure and my tank is on and oxygen flows to my respirator.
Her arms fly up to make a T-shape. “Okay, now check me.”
“Am I searching for ticks?” I tease, flying through the same steps. At her unamused look, I add, “All good.”
Excitement threatens to overtake me on the short walk to the dive spot right off the shore. Cathy chatters about the wildlife we can expect to see, the difficulty of the dive, and the visibility, and explains we may see other dive groups while we’re underwater.
Sofía absorbs the information in silence, holding the shoulder straps of her vest with a white-knuckle grip. One by one, we descend the stairs and enter the ocean, slipping on our fins.
Frigid water seeps past the neoprene, and Sofía hisses, ramming into me for body warmth. A pink mask frames her wide brown eyes.
I can’t put my finger on it, but she’s acting weird, flustered like the first time we ever “shenaniganed” together. Checking escape routes. Establishing backup plans. I’ve learned over the last two years that her threshold for breaking the rules is sneaking candy into the movie theater. Anything more, and the guilt eats her alive.
“We’re gonna start at the deepest point of the dive site and then work our way around the kelp forest before a safety stop,” Cathy says. “I’ll check in about your air, and we’ll readjust if you are low.”
With a plan in place, I deflate the air from the back of my BCD and drop beneath the waves, equalizing as I go. Cathy and I linger at the bottom as Sofía takes a cautious approach, a glacial descent.
Her buoyancy is awful—common with new divers—and she drops like a rock to the seafloor. A plume of sand stirs in the water, and I stay back, enamored with her as she works through the problem. There’s a frustrated gleam in her eye, so I lend a hand, adding some air into her BCD for her until she’s hovering beside me.
I wink, and she squeezes my hand in thanks.
Cathy signs to ask if we’re all good, then gestures to start the dive. Following behind our guide, Sofía refuses to loosen her grip, and the memory of our time snorkeling together smacks me in the chest.
Fuck, I love her.
At least here, there’s little chance I’m going to be bitten by a triggerfish.
Massive kelp leaves sway in the current, and we weave through the underwater forest, schools of sea bass scurrying away. Rockscover the ground, creating a plethora of hiding holes for lobsters and eels.
I drop to the bottom, hovering over a pile of rocks coated in algae and seaweed, to search for nudibranchs. An abalone, still alive and striped in green and brown, sits on an outcrop. Sofía follows along, identifying the creatures and pointing at her species ID sheet, which appears from thin air.
The current is mellow here, and I gesture for her to remove her respirator. Her eyes widen in panic, head shaking, but after I pucker my lips, she understands my meaning and quickly removes the mouthpiece, kisses me, and shoves it back in, inhaling a deep, dramatic breath.
Another dive group wanders past us, and we spend fifteen minutes floating above the sandy bottom, pointing out halibut disguised beneath the substrate, all but their two eyes.
One minute into our safety stop, I spot a beard I would know anywhere. Long, salt and pepper, becoming more like Gandalf the Gray by the day.What on earth is Doug doing here?
Another diver appears beside him and hands him his camera, protected in waterproof housing. Molly winks at me, wiggling her fingers and then pointing to something behind me. Confusion rips through me, and I spin, finding Sofía hovering behind me, a dive slate in her hand. On the board, it reads:Will you marry me?Followed by two checkboxes, one for “yes” and another for “no.”
Under the denial box, in tiny letters, she wrote, “This is not an actual option. I found the ring.”
Air bubbles out of my respirator as I laugh. Tears spring to my eyes, fogging up my mask, making it difficult to see anything but her. She extends the slate and the underwater pen, and with shaky hands, I check one of the boxes as if there was even a choice.
