The Current Between Us

Cora zipped the wetsuit bag shut and looked at the clock: 08:47, thirteen minutes until the introductions began. She had done this same course twenty-three times since coming back to the harbour, and the script hardly varied. Regulators, masks, the mnemonic she still recited in her sleep—out of air, buddy breathing, controlled ascent. She could deliver it half-asleep, hung-over, heart-bruised; she had.

The shop smelled of neoprene and brine, comforting as old bread. She carried the crate of gear to the quayside where the new intake waited, bright trainers and sun-creamed noses, cameras already out. They always took a picture of the rusted compressor, as if it were quaint. She set the crate down, wiped her hands on her shorts, and began.

“Morning. I’m Cora, your instructor. You’ll breathe today, or you’ll panic. Either way, I’ll know.”

A ripple of laughter, the ice broken by her own practiced bluntness. She ran through the medical checklist, the liability forms, the number of metres in a bar, the golden rule of never holding your breath. While she spoke she scanned faces, cataloguing problems before they happened: the overweight man who’d suck air too fast, the girl chewing her hair who wouldn’t clear her mask, the boy in the faded black T-shirt standing at the back.

He wasn’t a boy, not legally. Eighteen, the form said: Leo O’Donnell, Dublin. Tall, narrow shoulders, hair the colour of wet sand. He met her eyes and held them without smiling, as if measuring something inside her. The gaze lasted half a second longer than politeness allowed, then dropped to the clipboard she passed along the row. She felt it like a fingertip dragged across her ribs and dismissed the sensation as indigestion.

When the forms came back his handwriting was small and precise, each letter sitting on the line like a soldier. She assigned equipment: BCDs by height, fins by shoe size. He waited until the others had lunged for colours they liked, then took what was left, examining the buckles before pulling the jacket over his head. Efficient. Self-contained. She approved, automatically.

They walked the fifty metres to the harbour ladder. She explained confined-water objectives: flood and clear, regulator recovery, fin pivots. The tide was slack, surface oily and flat, reflecting a sky the colour of dishwater. Seagulls screamed overhead. She finished the briefing and asked for questions.

A girl asked whether fish would bite. A boy asked about Go-Pro mounts. Leo said nothing, but when she dismissed them to gear up she found him beside her, squatting to rinse his mask.

“Dish-soap film,” he said, rubbing the glass with a thumb. “Stops fogging.”

His voice was lower than she expected, a quiet baritone that didn’t match the thin wrists or the adolescent scatter of spots along his jaw. She grunted agreement, annoyed he’d stolen her next instruction.

They entered the water in pairs. She watched him descend: slow exhale, fins motionless, the perfect Buddha fin-pose she spent weeks drilling into clients. At three metres he stopped, waiting, lungs relaxed. She swam down, adjusted a hose here, purged a regulator there, and came to rest in front of him. Through tempered glass his eyes were pale green, pupils wide in the dim. He blinked once, equalised, then gave the O-K sign without being prompted.

She reached for his waist to test buoyancy, fingers slipping beneath the weight belt. The neoprene was cold, the flesh beneath it warm. She felt the faint tremor of his breathing, the narrow span of bone between hips and ribs. He didn’t flinch. She tightened the belt a notch, told herself the thud in her throat was nitrogen nerves, nothing else.

They practised mask removal. Water flooded his face; he blew out through his nose, cleared, looked at her again—still no smile, only that steady appraisal. She surfaced at the end of the session with salt on her lips and the imprint of his torso lingering against her palms, like wax that hadn’t cooled.

The second exercise was fin pivots: head-down, feet-up, hover like a seahorse. Leo’s legs sank the moment he stopped kicking, heels dragging through the silt. He jack-knifed upright, grabbed his regulator, and stared at the gauge as if it had betrayed him. Cora tapped his shoulder. He shook his head, the gesture sharp inside the frame of his mask.

She swam around him, positioned herself above. With one hand she pinched the dump valve on his BCD, with the other she pressed between his shoulder blades, forcing a trickle of air from the vest. Her thumb found the hollow at the base of his neck; she felt his pulse hammering against the rubber cuff of her glove. She held the pressure, counting seconds until his chest rose, buoyant. His hair drifted up, dark seaweed in the artificial light.

He twisted to look at her. The mask skirt distorted his eyes, made them rounder, younger. His mouth opened slightly around the mouthpiece, a small oval of surrender. She let her hand slide to his waist, fingers spanning the width of belt and nylon and skin that must be there beneath. She thought of nothing, then thought of the weight of a human lung: two pounds, give or take, the first thing she learned in rescue class.

She released him. He hovered now, perfectly neutral, arms out like a crucifix. A stream of silver bubbles slipped from his exhaust valve and brushed her cheek on the way up. She signalled thumbs-down, move on. He answered with the same sign, slower, deliberate, as if the direction were a promise.

They practised regulator recovery: out, sweep, replace. He dropped his twice, the second time letting it fall too far, forcing him to roll belly-up. The hose snaked behind his head; he flailed and sucked in a mouthful of harbour. Cora caught the regulator, shoved it toward him, purged the water with a sharp hiss. He took it, exhaled hard, cheeks ballooning. A thin line of mucus drifted from his nose, pearling in the torch beam. She looked away, embarrassed for them both.

When they surfaced the class was already clambering the ladder. She stayed behind, claiming gear count, watching him tread water. Salt crusted his lashes; he wiped them roughly.

“You’ll get it,” she said. The phrase sounded like something her own instructor had told her twenty years ago, the same gruff kindness she’d resented.

“I know.” He blinked, clearing the sting. “Just hate being bad at things.”

She laughed before she could stop herself. “Diving’s mostly being bad at things until one day you aren’t.”

He considered that, then nodded, satisfied. They floated in the shadow of the harbour wall, barnacles clicking in the swell. She felt the drag of her cylinder against her shoulders, the ache in her calves, and still she delayed, letting the others haul themselves over the rail, letting the space narrow to the two of them and the slap of water.

Back on the quay she rinsed masks in the barrel, dunking each faceplate until the silicone squeaked. Leo handed her his last. Their gloves were off; his fingers were pale, knuckles red from the cold. She took the mask, brushed the glass with her thumb, and returned it. The brief contact left a wet print on her palm that evaporated before she could close her fist.

The students drifted toward the café for chips. She locked the cage, coiled hoses, feeling the day settle into the familiar ache of shoulders and lower back. Yet every time she inhaled she tasted metal, as if some part of the harbour’s silt had lodged behind her teeth. She told herself it was the regulator mouthpiece, nothing more, and walked up the stairs to the flat, the echo of a heartbeat still pulsing against the pad of her thumb.

She was kneeling on the rubber mat, shoving regulators into the fresh-water barrel, when he spoke.

“Is the Aeolidiella alba still on the Kestrel wreck?”

The name, Latin and precise, startled her more than the question. She looked up. Leo stood with a mask in each hand, dripping, eyes fixed on her as though the answer mattered.

“Where did you hear about that?” she asked, keeping her voice level.

“Paper in the Irish Naturalist. Last year. They said the white nudis were spawning on the starboard rail at twenty-two metres.” He shrugged, almost apologetic. “I’ve never seen one.”

She plunged a gauge console under water, watching bubbles rise. “They’re still there. Tiny, the size of rice grains. You need a torch and no silt.”

“I’ve got a 600-lumen back-up.” He hesitated. “Would you show me? I mean—after the course.”

The request hung between them, stripped of student–instructor politeness. She could feel the day’s chill through the concrete, seeping into her knees. “You’ll need nitrox if you want bottom time,” she said, instead of no.

“I’m certified. Enriched air, deep, wreck. I did them in Gozo last month.”

She sat back on her heels. Most teenagers she met measured dives in Instagram selfies, not gas mixes. “Why bother with a slug that looks like snot?”

His mouth twitched. “Because it’s there. And because most people won’t ever notice.”

She understood. The Kestrel lay a mile east, broken open by winter storms, visibility usually crap. She had logged a hundred dives on her own, hunting for the same ghost-white animals, recording numbers on a slate because it gave the descent a purpose beyond the echo of her own breathing.

She handed him a bottle of disinfectant. “Rinse, don’t soak. The silicone rots.”

They worked side by side in silence, masks lined like empty faces. When the last one was stacked, he stayed while the others drifted toward the chip van. She locked the cage, wiped her hands, felt him waiting.

“Down there,” he said suddenly, “everything slows. Like the world’s on a dimmer switch.” He searched for words. “Up here it’s all… noise. Underneath it’s just breath and pressure.”

She leaned against the rail. Salt crusted the metal, flaking under her forearms. “You get that in a harbour puddle?”

“Depth doesn’t matter. It’s the weightlessness.” He met her eyes again. “You must feel it every day.”

She did. She also felt the cold, the equipment failures, the students who cried when their masks flooded. But she didn’t say that. Instead she heard herself ask, “You free-dive?”

“Sometimes. Before school. There’s a pool near the house. Four metres, nothing fancy. I hang on the bottom until my lungs burn. It’s the only quiet I get.”

She pictured him alone underwater at dawn, hair drifting like kelp, the same serious face watching the tiles. The image lodged under her ribs.

A gull landed on the roof beam, shook out its wings. She became aware of the distance between their shoulders: eight inches, maybe less. She could smell neoprene drying, and beneath it something faintly metallic, adolescent skin and salt.

“I should close up,” she said.

He nodded, didn’t move. “Thanks for the tip about the torch.”

“Bring two. And stay off the silt.”

He smiled then, small but real, and walked backward a few steps before turning. She watched the faded black shirt disappear around the corner, the same shirt that had clung to his spine when she pressed air from his vest. Her palms tingled, phantom pressure.

Inside, she coiled hoses, logged cylinders, the routine mechanical. Yet every time she closed her eyes she saw pale nudibranchs on rusted steel, and a boy who spoke of quiet as if it were a country they could share.

She microwaved leftover pasta and ate it straight from the plastic bowl, fork scraping. The flat smelled of rubber and brine, same as the shop below, but up here the scent settled into the wallpaper, into her clothes. Through the open window the harbour lamp threw a yellow cone across the water; inside it, moths jittered like faulty pixels. She watched them while she chewed, counting heartbeats the way she counted surface intervals.

When the bowl was empty she left it in the sink. The tap dripped once, twice, then stopped. She peeled off her shirt and sports bra, dropped them on the bathroom tiles, stepped into the shower. The water ran cold first; her nipples hardened, skin stippling. She turned her back to the spray, let it drill between her shoulder blades where the tank had sat. Soap slid down her spine, pooled at the cleft of her arse, rinsed away. She closed her eyes and saw Leo’s ribs under her palm, the faint tremor when she pressed air from his vest. Her hand moved without permission, fingers splaying over her own sternum, measuring the space that had held his heartbeat. She opened her eyes, killed the water, reached for the towel.

In bed she lay on her side, sheet twisted at her waist. The digital clock glowed 23:17. She could still taste metal, or imagined she could. She thought of the way he’d said weightlessness, the careful shape of the word, as if he were handling something fragile. Her mind replayed the harbour session frame by frame: the hose drifting behind his head, the silver bubbles brushing her cheek, the moment his body had gone neutral under her hands. She shifted onto her back, stared at the ceiling crack that looked like a fault line. The warmth in her chest spread lower, slower, a tide creeping over flats. She pressed her thighs together, not arousal exactly, more the memory of pressure, of holding something steady in surge.

She reached for her phone, thumb hovering over the class roster. His name was there: Leo Murphy, eighteen, emergency contact his mother in Dublin. She closed the app, opened weather instead: wind southwest, swell one metre, visibility ten. Diveable. She pictured taking him to the Kestrel tomorrow before the others arrived, just the two of them descending through green haze until the wreck materialised like a sunken sentence. She saw him spotting the nudibranchs, eyes widening behind glass, the small sound he might make around the reg. She saw herself guiding his hand, torch beam overlapping hers, their bubbles mingling upward in a single silver rope.

The phone darkened. She set it face-down, rolled onto her stomach, face buried in the pillow that smelled faintly of her own shampoo. Between her hips a dull ache pulsed, insistent, familiar as nitrogen. She ignored it, breathed through her mouth, counted four seconds in, four out, the way she taught panicked students. The ache stayed. She thought of his voice saying quiet like a password, and the ache sharpened. She slid one hand beneath herself, fingers pressing fabric against skin, nothing more, just pressure, just the weight of her own body anchoring her to the mattress. She kept her eyes open, fixed on the crack in the ceiling, and did not move again until the harbour lamp flickered off at midnight, leaving the room black and the sea outside invisible, its presence only the slow lift and drop of her own chest against the sheet.

The RIB nosed through the harbour mouth at ten, sun already high enough to bleach the sky. Cora sat aft, hand on throttle, watching the bow lift and fall. Six students knelt in two rows, tanks clanking. Leo was port-side, mask pushed up, hair whipping. He looked green but kept his spine straight, eyes fixed on the horizon like he could will the nausea away.

She cut the engine above the reef. Water here was clearer, sand showing through in pale patches. “Entry point two metres, max depth eight. Buddy checks, then negative entry. Current’s slack now, but it’ll run east when the tide turns.” She spoke to the group, yet her gaze snagged on the way Leo’s fingers tapped his regulator, steady, counting.

They rolled backwards. Cora followed last, purged, descended. The reef appeared as an orange-brown ridge, kelp streaming like long hair. She positioned herself mid-group, fins sculling, scanning. A novice—Sarah, nineteen, gum-chewing on the boat—was already flailing, kicking up a chalk storm. Cora moved to intercept.

Then the current hit.

A cold hand sliding across the ridge, turning kelp into whips. Sarah yelped through her reg, spun sideways, arms windmilling. Cora lifted a flat palm: stop. She kicked forward, planning to grab the girl’s cylinder valve, but someone else got there first.

Leo.

He had drifted above the reef, body horizontal, fins motionless. The moment the water shifted he tucked, pivoted, and shot downstream in a clean glide. One hand closed around Sarah’s shoulder strap; the other flashed the hold sign. He dumped air from his wing, brought her level, then pointed to the sandy bottom three metres below. Together they descended, planted knees, waited. His movements were economical, almost lazy, yet every inch deliberate. Watching him, Cora felt something tighten behind her ribs.

She joined them, gave Sarah the okay query. Wide eyes, shaky nod. Leo released his grip slowly, checking she could hold position. Only then did he look at Cora. Through tempered glass his irises were magnified, darker, rimmed with silver bubbles. He tilted his head: should we surface? She signalled stay, five more minutes. He answered with the okay, fingertip touching his mask, a private punctuation.

They drifted along the reef, current now a steady conveyor. Leo stayed beside Sarah, but his attention kept flicking to Cora, quick glances that lingered half a second too long. She found herself demonstrating fin pivots just to watch him copy: knees bent, ankles relaxed, each kick a slow scissor that sent him gliding. The awkward boy from the harbour was gone; in his place a silhouette that carved through water like it had been written for him.

Near the end of the reef a narrow canyon cut through rock, width of a doorway. She gestured: optional swim-through. Two students shook their heads. Leo simply adjusted his torch and waited. Cora led, he followed. Inside, the walls narrowed, orange sponges brushing their sleeves. Bubbles rebounded, silver coins racing upward. She felt him behind her, the faint pull of his displaced water against her calves. Halfway, she stopped, let him draw level. Torch beams crossed, illuminating a feather duster worm, magenta plumes unfurling. He raised a finger, traced the circle of light, then pointed to her: your find. She shook her head, directed the beam to his chest: yours. They hovered, regulators exhaling twin streams that mingled, rose, vanished.

The canyon opened onto sand. She checked her computer: three minutes to safety stop. They knelt together at five metres. Leo’s hose routed neatly under his arm, SPG clipped, perfect trim. She reached without thinking, flicked a stray strand of kelp from his shoulder. He caught her wrist, not hard, just enough that she felt the pulse in his glove. For three breaths they stayed like that, connected by the thin cuff of neoprene, while the water carried away the heat of his skin.

They broke surface beside the RIB. Sunlight slapped hard after the blue below. One by one students hauled themselves up the ladder. When Leo’s turn came he paused at the gunwale, water streaming off his shoulders, and looked down at her. “Thanks,” he said, voice rough from dry air. She nodded, couldn’t speak, the ghost of his grip still printing her forearm. He climbed aboard and was instantly surrounded by chatter, but she stayed in the water a moment longer, letting the current tug at her legs, tasting metal again and knowing this time it had nothing to do with regulators.

The engine idled, bow pointed into swell just high enough to rock the hull in a steady rhythm. Cora sat on the tube, tank between her knees, drinking from a plastic bottle that tasted of diesel and lemon squash. The others sprawled mid-bench, masks off, hair wild, comparing how many bar they had left. Leo balanced on the starboard edge, feet dangling, forearms braced, face turned to the water. Sun dried salt on his shoulders in white commas.

She watched him watch the sea, the way his eyes tracked a gannet’s dive, the small satisfied exhale when the bird surfaced with a silver twist in its beak. He spoke without looking round. “I start uni in October. Galway. Marine bio.” His voice carried only as far as her; the others were louder, but farther away. “I want to work on mesophotic reefs, the twilight zone. Nobody knows what’s down there.”

Cora screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Plenty of people know. They just aren’t publishing where sport divers can read.” She meant it neutrally, instructor tone, but it came out edged. He turned then, grin not quite erased.

“I meant really know. Name every species, map every ledge. The kind of knowing that takes years of watching.” He paused, eyes on her as if she were water he was trying to see through. “Why did you stay here? You could’ve worked anywhere—Red Sea, Caribbean, research vessels.”

The question hit flat between her ribs. She looked away, across to the lighthouse that squatted on the headland, paint flaked to raw stone. She had grown up three streets behind it, learned to ride a bike on the cracked pier, lost her virginity in the car park of the same pub she still drank in on Fridays. Familiarity sounded noble when you said it fast. “I like the tides predictable,” she said. “I like knowing which pub pours the best Guinness and which boat engine starts on first pull. I like coming up from a dive and seeing the same hills every time.” The sentences felt rehearsed, a script she’d recited to parents, ex-boyfriends, herself at three a.m.

Leo nodded, but his gaze didn’t retreat. “Doesn’t it shrink, though? Same reef, same twenty metres, day after day.” He wasn’t accusing; if anything he sounded curious, as if she were a specimen he was trying to place. “Don’t you wonder what the same animals look like under different moons?”

She felt heat crawl up her throat. “Repetition teaches you detail,” she said. “People who hop never learn the slow stuff.” She thought of the way she could predict a current shift by the temperature drop on her cheek, how she knew which week the tompot blennies would emerge from their holes bristling with eggs. Skills earned by staying put. Yet underneath the justification was a hollowness she hadn’t noticed in months, maybe years.

He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried softer. “I just think the ocean’s too big to choose one corner.” He flicked a drop of water off his thigh. “But maybe you’ve already seen the parts that matter to you.”

The engine revved; the skipper yelled for gear check. Conversation ended, but the words kept moving through her like a tide she hadn’t ordered. She stood, tightened straps, felt the boat lift and drop under her weight. Leo moved too, brushing past to collect fins. His shoulder touched hers, deliberate or not, and the contact held an instant longer than necessary. She wanted to catch his eye, to offer some amended answer, but he was already sliding his mask on, already somewhere ahead of her in the blue she had claimed was enough.

She dropped first, rolling backwards without looking, trusting the water to receive her. The reef rushed up in stripes of amber and violet. The others followed, a slow rain of bodies. She finned to the head of the column and angled toward the swim-through, a throat of limestone that pierced the ridge like a bullet hole. The entrance yawned at six metres, dark, fringed urchins guarding the rim.

One by one the students slipped inside, torches wobbling. She waited outside, counting bubbles. When the last pair vanished she checked behind: Leo hovered alone, torch doused, silhouette cut against the bright sand. He tilted his head—after you. She kicked, entered.

The passage narrowed immediately, walls brushing both shoulders. Light thinned to a single blue vein overhead. She felt the water cool by a degree, the way it always did in here, pressure squeezing sound to a heartbeat. Twenty metres in, the group bunched ahead, fins scraping rock, someone’s hose snagged on fire coral. She gestured for patience, squeezed past them, began to untangle the line. Bodies blocked her exit; she was sealed inside a tunnel of neoprene and panic.

A hand brushed her ankle. Leo. He had hung back, letting the others move ahead, and now he floated below her, perfectly trim, one finger tapping his mask. Look. She followed his gaze to a pocket where the wall folded inward. There, half shadow, half stone, the scorpionfish waited, skin the exact mottled grey of the limestone, only the filament fins trembling to prove it lived. Its eyes were tiny rubies, watching.

She felt her lungs pause. She had swum this tunnel maybe two hundred times and never seen it. The creature was ugliness perfected, spines like broken needles. Leo’s torch came up slow, beam low, catching the fish without flaring it into flight. He held the light steady for her, letting her look first, the way you offer someone the last biscuit. She lifted her own torch, touched the glass to his so the beams merged, a single column pinning the animal in shared possession. Their exhalations rose together, silver ropes that twisted once and vanished upward.

The group ahead untangled, fins churning silt. Visibility collapsed into a beige cloud. She should follow, keep them in sight, but Leo’s hand moved to her waist, not gripping, just resting against the weight belt, asking. She killed her torch. Darkness swallowed everything except the joint cone of light on the fish. She felt the ridge of his knuckles through her suit, the small lift of current between their bodies. The fish flicked a fin, decided they were stone, settled again.

They stayed like that until her computer chirped, thirty seconds at this depth remaining. She nodded once, switched off her light. Total dark. She kicked forward, shoulder brushing his chest in the narrow space, the contact deliberate, skin to neoprene, nothing more possible here. He followed so close his bubbles tickled the back of her neck, warm bursts that cooled instantly. When they emerged the others were already ascending, silver chains of bubbles rising to the bright ceiling far above.

She let them go, hung at the exit, neutral. Leo drifted beside her, eyes on her face instead of the fish now lost in silt. He raised two fingers, tapped his heart, then pointed at her. Not a heart sign, nothing so childish—just an acknowledgment, steady and clinical, the way you confirm pressure on a gauge. She answered with the okay, forefinger to thumb, but held it longer than necessary, until the shape of the gesture felt like something she might keep in her mouth.

Above, the safety stop glowed pale green. She kicked upward first, not checking if he followed; she could feel him there, a second pulse in the water. At five metres she grabbed the mooring line, wrapped two loops round her gloved hand, and waited. He copied, closer than needed, their thighs brushing once before the current parted them. She stared at the surface far overhead, counting seconds, and tried to remember whether she had ever felt this awake inside her own skin.

The engine cut and the boat drifted the last metre to the pontoon. Cora killed the ignition, tossed the stern line to Leo without asking. He took the weight like he’d done it every summer of his life, wrapped it once round the cleat, then moved forward to catch the bow. The others were already on the pier, voices echoing off the sheet-metal sheds, gear bags slung over their shoulders, planning whose couch would host the Xbox tonight. She watched them go, feeling the same flat exhaustion that always followed a charter, but also something else—an elastic pull behind her ribs that kept her from calling after them.

She stayed in the cockpit, unscrewing cylinder valves, bleeding the last bars of pressure so the regs wouldn’t whistle. Leo stepped down beside her, picked up the first tank, hefted it to his thigh. Water dripped from his shorts onto her boots. She could smell the salt drying on his skin, metallic and warm.

“Leave the twins,” she said. “I’ll wheel those.”

“I’ve got them.” He stacked two more against his hip, muscles sliding under the thin skin of his forearms. Eighteen, she reminded herself, but the knowledge felt theoretical, like reading the depth off a gauge; the body in front of her was already a man’s, shaped by years of surf club paddles and rugby preseason. She let him take the weight.

They worked without speaking, falling into the rhythm she usually performed alone: rinse masks, coil hoses, check O-rings for sand. The sun had slipped behind the headland, air cooling fast, and the shed lights buzzed when she flicked them on. Moths threw themselves at the bulbs, dropped onto the bench like pale coins. Leo’s movements were unhurried, precise; he hung each BCD on its numbered peg exactly straight, the way she liked. She found herself watching the line of his back, the way his shoulder blades shifted under the damp fabric, and felt the same underwater hush settle over them, as if they were still suspended at fifteen metres, sharing a single cone of light.

When the deck was clear he filled a bucket, sluiced fresh water over the transom. She heard the slap of the brush, the grit scraping away. I should tell him to go, she thought; instead she wiped her hands on a rag and listened to the cadence of his breathing, slower than hers, almost meditative. The space between them measured less than an arm’s length, yet neither moved to close it. She could feel the heat coming off him, or imagined she could, a low steady radiation that made her aware of her own skin under the damp neoprene.

“Tea?” The word jumped out, automatic as a reflex test. She gestured toward the kettle perched on the tiny shelf above the compressor. “I’ve got the proper stuff, not the bagged muck.”

He straightened, brush dripping in his hand. For a second she thought he would say yes; she saw it in the way his shoulders relaxed, the small intake of breath. Then his gaze flicked to the clock on the wall, the one with the faded PADI sticker peeling at the edges. “I should head. My aunt’s expecting me for dinner.”

The excuse was polite, probably true, but it landed like a closed hatch. She felt the disappointment precisely: a soft collapse behind her sternum, followed immediately by irritation at herself for feeling anything. She nodded, already turning to twist the kettle plug from the socket. “Another time, maybe.”

He dried his hands on his shorts, hesitated. “Tomorrow? I could come by early, help you load if you’ve got the advanced group.”

She kept her back to him, counting to three before answering. “Eight o’clock. Don’t be late.”

She listened to his footsteps fade down the pontoon, the hollow thud of his flip-flops on the planks, the final skip onto the concrete. When the sound stopped she let out a breath she hadn’t meant to hold, then reached up and killed the lights. The shed went dark, the smell of rubber and brine settling around her like a second skin.

The next morning he was there at seven-thirty, sitting on the bottom step of the shop’s back porch, hood pulled over wet hair. He had brought two takeaway cups from the bakery; hers was the bitter filter she drank when she couldn’t be bothered with the kettle. He handed it up without greeting, as if they had already been talking for an hour. She took the cup and felt the small shock of being known, even in this one detail.

Inside she flicked on the compressor. While it coughed awake she opened the logbook, intending to enter the previous day’s dives, but he leaned on the counter and asked how you calculated the partial pressure of oxygen at thirty-five metres. The question was textbook, something he could have googled in ten seconds, yet he asked it as though the answer were a secret she alone kept. She found herself explaining the formula out loud, writing the numbers on the margin of a receipt: 0.21 times 4.5, the decimal sliding cleanly. He watched her pen, nodded once, then asked whether she had ever seen oxygen toxicity in real life. She told him about a dive master in the Red Sea who convulsed at forty metres, how the regulator tore from his mouth and rocketed to the surface, the way the bubbles had looked like silver marbles spilling upward. While she spoke she felt the story rearrange itself for him, edges softened, made interesting rather than grim.

The bell above the door chimed; the rest of the class spilled in, loud with plans for breakfast burritos. The pocket of quiet collapsed. She slipped the receipt into her pocket and greeted them with the usual instructions about wetsuits and sunscreen. Leo drifted to the far bench, already masked by the others’ noise, but when she glanced over he was watching her, elbows on knees, as if waiting for the next private chapter.

Each day that week repeated the pattern. He appeared earlier, once at seven-fifteen, once at seven sharp, always with a question that felt like an excuse: how to plan a dive on a wreck that lay at the edge of recreational limits, whether she had used nitrox abroad, what the water temperature had been in Thailand in March. She answered, sometimes drawing diagrams on scrap paper, sometimes leaning against the compressor frame while the morning light crept across the wet concrete. The conversations never lasted more than ten minutes, cut off by the arrival of the others, yet they lodged in her mind with peculiar clarity. She caught herself rehearsing better versions of her answers while she lay in bed at night, the way she once rehearsed conversations with boys at university, except she was no longer nineteen and he was not a boy, not really.

On Thursday he asked about navigation. She pulled out the slate she used for advanced students, drew a crude reef outline, and made him plot a reciprocal heading. He took the pencil from her hand, fingers brushing hers—cold, still smelling of neoprene. When he calculated the bearing he turned the slate toward her, eyebrows raised. The number was correct. She felt an involuntary tug of pride, as though she had invented him herself.

After the others boarded the boat that day she realized she had forgotten to bring her own mask. She kept a spare in the office, an old frame with clear silicone yellowed by sun. She found it on the shelf, turned, and almost collided with him. He had followed her inside without asking. For a moment they stood too close, the doorway narrowing around them. He reached up, took the mask from her fingers, and rinsed it in the barrel, the gesture intimate simply because it was unnecessary. When he handed it back their palms touched again, this time for the length of a held breath. Neither moved. Outside, someone shouted that the engine was running. She slipped the strap over her head, the plastic still wet from his rinse, and felt the small circle of water he had left behind settle against her skin all morning.

The exercise was simple: descend to eight metres, swim a thirty-metre square, return to the start. She paired them herself—Leo with Aoife, a chatty pharmacy student whose buoyancy wobbled like a drunk seal. Cora hung back at the edge of the group, fins barely moving, watching through the scratch in her mask.

Leo waited until Aoife had cleared her ears twice, then gave the okay sign, slow and deliberate. He set the compass on his wrist, tilted the bezel with his thumb, and pointed. Aoife nodded too fast, exhaling a burst of silver that shot upward. He placed two fingers on her forearm, steadying her, then demonstrated the kick: knees soft, ankles loose, no bicycle. The gesture lasted three seconds, but Cora felt it in her own shinbones. When they set off he stayed half a body length behind, close enough to correct, far enough not to crowd. His fins tracked parallel lines in the sand; she could almost see the grid he was drawing in his head.

At the first turn he paused, let Aoife check the heading, waited while she over-corrected ten degrees, then tapped his own compass and shook his head gently. No impatience, no flourish. Just the facts. She adjusted, and they glided on. Cora followed at a distance, counting kick cycles, noting how his breathing remained unchanged even when Aoife grabbed his arm at a clump of drifting weed. He defused the scare with a shrug and a turtle hand signal, humour without words. The same calm she had once paid instructors a fortune to possess, now packaged inside someone who still got carded for energy drinks.

On the surface Aoife squealed, mask shoved to her forehead. “Leo, you’re lethal! You should be teaching this course, not her.” She jerked a thumb toward Cora, laughing so hard seawater dribbled from her nose. The others joined in, a chorus of youthful agreement that rang against the fibreglass hull.

Leo’s ears went scarlet instantly, the colour flooding down his neck until the hollow of his throat glowed. He shot Cora a look—wide eyes, slight grimace—an apology compressed into a single second. Sorry, the look said, I didn’t ask for the compliment, don’t be angry. Then he stared at his fins as if they held an escape route. The redness made him look even younger, and something in her chest performed a slow rotation, like a cylinder valve opening a quarter turn.

Cora busied herself with the slate, writing imaginary notes so no one saw her smile. “Flattery will cost you a round at the pub,” she called, voice steady. The students cheered; Leo risked another glance. This time she let him see the amusement, a quick lift of one eyebrow that told him she wasn’t offended, that she had registered the blush and filed it away like the receipt in her pocket. His shoulders dropped a fraction, relief visible even under the neon rental jacket.

Back at the shop the others scattered to change. Aoife still chattered about Leo’s “instructor vibe,” imitating his calm hand signals with exaggerated swoops. Leo busied himself rinsing masks, head down, but she caught him peeking through the hanging wetsuits, checking her reaction. She handed him a hanger without comment, fingers brushing his knuckles—cool, puckered from the hour in the water. He took it, held on a beat longer than necessary, the apology now a silent thank-you. The shed smelled of rubber and warmed algae; somewhere inside it her pulse knocked once, hard, like a tank tapping the concrete floor.

The pub smelled of spilled lager and vinegar, the Friday crowd already thick at six. Cora wedged herself into the corner bench the students had colonised, knees touching Aoife’s under the sticky table. Someone produced a tray of shots—something blue that smoked—and the group howled like they’d invented fun. She lifted her gin, took the smallest possible sip, and felt the ice click against her teeth.

Leo sat opposite, shoulders angled to avoid the jostling elbows. He had changed into a grey T-shirt still damp at the collar; the cotton clung to the ridge of his collarbone, darkened to charcoal. Each time the table lurched his hand shot out to steady whatever glass was closest, a reflex the others didn’t notice. His own pint remained virtually full, the head long collapsed.

She counted the seconds between his glances: seven, then four, then two. Each time his eyes found hers they paused, pupils wide in the low light, before sliding away as if pulled by an undertow. The thread between them felt physical, a filament tightening under the noise of chart music and drunken laughter. She imagined it glinting, visible to anyone who bothered to look, and twisted the glass in her fingers to keep from touching the place where it might be attached to her sternum.

Aoife leaned across, breath syrupy. “You should’ve seen him, Cora, he practically carried me through that kelp. Total hero.” The girl’s breast brushed Cora’s arm, warm, insistent. Cora smiled the instructor smile, non-committal, but her knee bounced under the table, restless. She pictured Leo’s hand on Aoife’s forearm earlier, steadying, professional, and felt an unexpected flare of heat that tasted metallic, like regulator mouthpieces left too long in the sun.

Someone started a drinking game involving flipping coasters. Leo participated half-heartedly, flicking too softly so the cardboard sailed into Aoife’s lap. Laughter erupted; he shrugged, palms up, but his gaze flicked again to Cora, asking wordlessly whether she had noticed the deliberate failure. She raised an eyebrow—yes, I saw—and the corner of his mouth lifted, a private receipt tucked into the folds of the evening.

The barman dimmed the overheads; faces dissolved into warm blobs of shadow. Cora’s watch read nine-thirty, late enough to leave without seeming rude. She drained the last lukewarm mouthful, the tonic flat, quinine bitter on the back of her tongue. Standing, she shouldered her bag and felt the gin sway through her bloodstream, not drunk but loosened, joints slightly adrift. She circled the table saying good nights, fingers brushing shoulders, until she reached him.

“Walk me out?” she asked, voice casual, the sentence aimed somewhere over his head so the others could pretend it was nothing. He nodded, already sliding from the bench, and the filament between them snapped taut, humming.

Outside the air carried salt and diesel, the harbour lamps drawing orange cones on the black water. She led the way up the narrow lane, heels clicking, aware of his steps a pace behind, the soft scuff of trainers. Halfway to the shop she stopped under a streetlight that flickered like a faulty strobe. Moths battered the glass.

“I shouldn’t have come tonight,” she said, not turning.

“But you did.” His voice was lower than in the daytime, thickened by the pub’s smoke or maybe by something else. She felt him move closer, the heat of his chest radiating through the cotton that had dried now to a lighter grey. Thirty-five years pressed against her spine, heavy as a weight belt, yet her skin prickled with the absurd desire to lean backward, let it buckle.

She turned. The light caught the fine down on his cheek, the last vestige of adolescence, and she thought absurdly of the peach-coloured nudibranch he had asked about that first day—delicate, uncommon, easily damaged. His eyes searched hers, asking nothing, confirming everything.

“I prefer talking to you,” he said again, softer, as though the sentence had been practising itself all evening, waiting for silence. The admission hovered, a bubble neither of them broke. She felt the filament pull, insistent, and knew that tomorrow she would wake up tasting this exact moment, the gin and the salt and the faint citrus of his shower gel mixing in the back of her throat like a forecast she could no longer ignore.

She started walking again, not trusting herself to speak. He fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets, the distance between them measured in inches that felt like miles. The street narrowed past the chip shop, its neon sign flickering CLOSED against the wet pavement. Their footsteps echoed between the buildings, two sets becoming one rhythm.

"I don't know how to be eighteen," he said to the ground. "I keep trying to say the right things, laugh at the right jokes, but it's like I'm watching myself from outside my own body. Like I'm already looking back on this version of me and cringing."

The honesty of it stopped her. She turned to face him under the next lamp, watching his mouth form words that seemed too heavy for his face. "But with you, I don't have to perform anything. You see through all that bullshit immediately."

She should say something responsible here, something about how everyone feels that way at his age, how it passes. Instead she heard herself ask, "What do you see when you look at me?"

His eyes met hers directly, unflinching. "Someone who's stopped waiting for her life to start."

The words hit her solar plexus like a weight belt dropped from height. She felt exposed, as if he'd peeled back layers she didn't know existed. The streetlight caught the gold flecks in his irises, and she realized she was cataloguing details again—memorizing the way his pulse jumped at his throat, the slight parting of his lips between sentences.

"I'm twice your age," she said, but it came out wrong, not as a warning but as a kind of wonder.

"I know." He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the lingering trace of his shampoo mixing with pub smoke. "I know it's impossible. I know you could lose everything. I know I'm supposed to want Aoife or girls like her, and I know you're supposed to see me as just another student." His voice dropped. "But I also know that when I watch you explain decompression theory, you get this tiny line between your eyebrows like you're solving the world's most interesting puzzle. And I know that you pretend to hate the town but you touch the pier railing every morning like you're greeting an old friend. And I know that when you think no one's looking, you stare at the horizon like you're trying to remember something you've forgotten."

Each observation landed precisely, surgical strikes against the wall she'd built between herself and the world. She felt her breathing change, shallow and quick like she was ascending too fast without a safety stop.

"Leo—"

"I'm not asking for anything," he said quickly. "I'm just telling you that you're the only person who makes me feel real. And I needed you to know that before I leave for Dublin."

The dive shop appeared ahead, its dark windows reflecting them back as shadows. She could see her own outline—shoulders rigid, hands clenched at her sides—and his, taller than she'd realized, standing at an angle that suggested both deference and determination. Between their reflected forms, the space seemed to pulse with possibility and danger in equal measure.

She reached for her keys with fingers that weren't quite steady. The metal ring felt cold, real, grounding. "This can't happen," she whispered, but she was already picturing his mouth on hers, already feeling the weight of consequence she'd carry for wanting it.

"I know," he said again, but he didn't move away. They stood there in the artificial glow, two silhouettes cast in light and shadow, balanced on the knife-edge between what they knew was right and what they were already too far gone to resist.