The Girl in the Water - A Grayson J

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– heads first, with the requisite crack, and then chests and arms and hands to keep each other from falling.

      The way things begin.

      ‘Oh, Hell, I’m so sorry,’ he said, reaching out to stabilize me. ‘That was entirely my fault.’

      ‘No, it was mine,’ I freed a hand to rub my forehead. And I looked up, wincing in the slanted light that suddenly felt too bright.

      That’s when our eyes connected for the first time. That magical, painful, wonderful moment.

      David’s eyes were, and are, a stranger hazel than most I’ve seen before. Blue and green in equal mixture, but they have brown centres, just around the iris. Something unique. I must have stared into them longer than social norms would allow because the next words were his, awkward and accompanied by a glance that broke mine and tried to find some other landmark on the barren horizon at which he could stare.

      ‘At least we’re both still upright.’ His words were cheesy and superfluous, but I didn’t care.

      ‘I should pay more attention to where I’m going,’ I offered. Sheepish grin. Foolish girl. I wished I had stronger words to say, but I had’t been feeling myself, and those words didn’t come.

      ‘It happens,’ he answered. The profundity of our conversation was truly epic. ‘These surroundings, they can … they can take you in.’

      And there was his smile. The first time I’d seen it. The one I’ve grown to know so well over the years. One too many teeth in an otherwise nicely balanced mouth. That cute, very cute, face, bordered with slightly disorderly locks of black hair and a refreshingly masculine touch of stubble on his chin. I’ve never understood women who don’t go for stubbled chins and hairy chests. They’re an incomprehensible demographic, too influenced by the wax mannequins that pass for men in magazines. I’ve always gone for the Chia Pets of the race.

      The skin around his eyes bunched as he smiled, full of warmth and sincerity. ‘I’m David,’ he’d finally offered, reaching out a hand with its glove considerately removed. ‘And these guys over here’ – he gestured towards the men a short distance behind him, who didn’t seem to notice – ‘are my work colleagues.’ One of the men might have nodded, but seemed too chilled to consider approaching and reaching out a hand himself. He was huddled with a third member of their party, stood a few steps away, engrossed in a gathering of sea birds diving for fish over the edges of the cliffs. I might have been on Mars for all they appeared to notice me.

      I raised my hand to David’s and felt a powerful grip.

      ‘I’m Amber,’ I answered. ‘It’s … it’s lovely to meet you.’ The words were almost flirtatious, like nothing I’d ever uttered before.

      It made him smile again.

      Then, the strangest thing of all. I spoke not only flirtatiously, but with an openness completely uncharacteristic of everything inside me.

      ‘I’m staying just up the way, by Muir Beach. At the Pelican Inn. If you … you know, ever wanted to bump into each other again.’

      In the midst of my confusion, wit. Spectacular.

      Or maybe not quite spectacular, but definitely more than was normal for me.

      I cringe at the memory, but it’s that wonderful cringe of something so horrible, something that could have gone so terrifically, spectacularly wrong, that ended up going just the opposite. It wasn’t two nights later, or three, that David crouched his big frame through the short, barrel-wood door of the Pelican Inn, ‘just stopping by’ with the hope to say hello. It was the same evening. The very same.

      There was something magical on the coast that day. That’s the only explanation. Something magical that brought me out of my shell. That brought us together.

      And now we’re here, in our kitchen in the little town of Windsor, California, standing in front of the refrigerator on which an orange paper cutout of the word ‘Bump!’ remains the perpetual reminder of our first meeting. We’re still locked together, bodies close, though the kiss has ended. There’s beer on David’s breath – the scent of more than one. Usually means a long day in the shop, and the need to get out from behind the pharmacy counter for one or two before heading home. I have a fleeting desire to ask him about the mundane details of his day, but it passes quickly. Work is work. For today, his is behind him, mine’s behind me.

      But I’m not wholly in control, and that conviction bends. The thoughts that come are an invasion, not an invitation. Into the swirl of memory floats a river with a bend I don’t recognize. The woman I’d read about on the computer and thought about so vividly on the drive home. The unexplained.

      In this intimate moment I can feel goosebumps rise on my arms.

      It almost happens. I almost touch that buzz of electricity that pulls my world out of order and into the mêlée of impulse and memory. I can tell I’m right at the edge of it. There are so many draws.

      But I’m anchored in an emotion that’s more powerful than them all. I have my means of resistance. My solidity and my rock, firm and stable in my arms, with his big, beautiful smile.

      I pull David’s face towards mine again. I can taste the beer on his lips, and I push him towards the door.

       9

       Amber

      It happened in the night, somewhere in the darkness of the drawn curtains and the muffled lampshades, beneath the cotton sheets and in the midst of the heady scent of all that goes on in the dark room of a husband and wife who’ve found their way there by stumbling up their staircase, falling into bed as clothes are thrown at walls and ceilings.

      Somewhere in the midst of all that, the strangeness closed in.

      Our bodies were as tightly wound together as two bodies can be. My chin was pressed into his neck, my lips somewhere near his ear, his whole body slippery with anticipation. His breathing was heavy, rhythmic. Mine was keeping pace.

      Then came the flash of light. An image, bursting into my mind. A stranger’s face, loving and peaceful and kind and wicked and cruel, all at once. One of Cinderella’s sinister stepsisters, only far more beautiful.

      I suddenly remembered the bookshop. The headline, my hours on the Internet, and something beyond all the details I’d read. Someone else’s games and mysteries and … wrongs. My whole body suddenly felt the immense, overwhelming wrongness of the world. And I remembered the highway, the flashes of my thoughts and fears on the drive instantly back before my eyes. The image. The face.

      And I can hear whimpering, and crying; the utterances of a creature, crying out and asking me to know its pain. A judgement, cascading into my present.

      And in my embrace with my solidity and my rock, my arms wrapped around David’s fiery chest, I said it. The single word that echoed out to me from that strange, white darkness.

      A name. Her name.

       ‘Emma.’

      I don’t know where it came from, why it made my lips move. But her name was suddenly there, and I couldn’t keep it to myself.

       ‘Emma.’

      I could feel David’s body go rigid beneath me. There was ice. The cessation of everything. And then the world stopped, and started to fade away.

       10

       David

      It pains me to think that Amber might start to understand.

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