Underwater

by Doe, Anna B.

I can feel it, and I’m not doing anything to stop it.

  I can’t… not anymore…

  Marissa

  Without thinking twice, I jump into the ocean, clothes and all. The cold water is a shock to my organism, but that doesn’t slow me down. Nothing could stop me now.

  The image of Caleb being crushed by the wave is still alive in my mind.

  Still terrifying.

  I don’t stop to pretend. I don’t swim out to grab air because I don’t need it. The moment I connect with the salty ocean and feel my body change, I use every ounce of my power to swim faster, swim harder.

  I can feel the energy of the ocean run around me as my human body turns into a mermaid.

  With every ounce of strength, I swim farther away from the beach, my eyes scanning the water for that familiar dark hair.

  Where is he?

  The farther I go, the more scared I become. Panic squeezes my throat, and my heart is twisted so painfully I’m afraid it’ll break any second. The hurt and fear I’m feeling are so strong, but I push them down. They won’t help me find Caleb, and not finding Caleb isn’t an option.

  It’s like déjà vu.

  Trying to save Ty not so long ago got me into this whole mess, and now it’s happening all over again, only this time it’s Caleb that’s drowning.

  My Caleb.

  Tears gather in my eyes, but I squeeze them shut for a few seconds to push the tears away. There is a time for crying, and then there is a time for taking action. I can have a pity party later.

  Traces of silver and red catch my attention.

  Caleb.

  I dive deeper, my tail cutting through the dark ocean.

  “Oh Caleb…” I murmur, my hands reaching for him.

  Dark hair is floating around him. His skin looks pale and lifeless. And his eyes, those bright green-brown eyes are closed.

  He looks almost dead.

  Tears once again burn in my eyes, making the world go blurry, and I know this time there is no way I’ll be able to hold them back. So I don’t. I let them fall freely.

  My hands find their way to Caleb. I cup his cheeks, moving closer to him.

  Being this close, I can feel his body pressed lightly against mine, his soft skin against the scales of my tail.

  One tear slides down my cheek. Even underneath the ocean I can feel it roll down, mixing with the salty water.

  Pushing a strand of hair off his face, I lean forward, my lips brushing against his.

  They’re cold.

  Still.

  Tilting his head back, I open his mouth, exhaling the air out of my lungs and into his.

  I have no idea if it’ll work or not; after all, we’re still underwater. But then again, I’m a mermaid, so what the hell do I know.

  Curling my hands underneath his arms and over his shoulders, I hold him close to my chest. Slowly, I switch between soft kisses and pumping air into his lungs as I try to take us to the surface, tears running down my cheeks the whole time.

  I’m so messed up, my heart and mind a mix of emotions, I don’t notice it at first.

  The brush of his fingers against my cheek.

  My eyes snap open, trying to concentrate through the blurriness caused by the tears, the tears he’s wiping away.

  “Ma-Marissa…”

  CALEB

  Consciousness creeps on the edge of my mind. Darkness surrounds me, and I can feel myself floating.

  Where am I? What’s happening?

  Although I feel weightless, my whole body hurts and I frown as the pain grows stronger as I regain consciousness.

  Like flashes, the images start appearing in my mind.

  Marissa and Ty.

  Smiling at the beach.

  My heart slowly breaking.

  The wave.

  Catching it.

  Falling over me.

  Pulling me under.

  The burn in my chest is strong, almost unbearable. It’s hard to breathe and my mouth is heavy, dry. I let my tongue dart out to wet my lips, and only then do I feel it.

  The brush of soft lips against mine.

  The touch of a silky tongue.

  My eyes snap open, but the saltiness is making my gaze fuzzy.

  “Ma-Marissa…”

  Salty water enters my mouth, so I close it quickly. I try to clear my eyes, but it’s hard. The water around me is dark, making my vision gloomy.

  How deep are we? Are we drowning? Why is she here? Wasn’t Marissa at the beach? With Ty?

  “I’m going to get you out,” Marissa whispers. “I promise.”

  Her arms tighten their grip around me, but I try to get out of her reach.

  What the hell is going on? Did she really just whisper at me? Underwater?

  I’m imagining things now. I have to be. There is no other explanation for this craziness. I’m drowning, and my mind is playing games with me.

  I struggle again to get out of her arms, move away from her, just enough so I can take her in from head to toe. One last look, before…

  “What th―”

  Water starts entering my mouth again, suffocating me. Marissa moves closer to me, and I can see the panic dancing in her eyes as she puts the tip of her finger to my lips, silently asking me to keep my mouth shut.

  “I can explain, but first I have to take you to the surface.”

  Her ocean eyes plead with me, asking me to understand. Begging me not to ask questions. Not that I could even if I wanted to. I’ve swallowed enough ocean water to last a lifetime. But holy shit, she has a tail.

  A freaking tail.

  My eyes dart toward it once again, only this time my sight is so fuzzy the only thing I can see is a blur of aqua green where her legs are supposed to be. Frustrated, I close my burning eyes.

  Her arms curl around me once again, pulling my body closer to hers. I can’t see it, but I feel the shift of water around me as she starts swimming toward the surface.

  Every once in a while, her tail brushes against my legs, making me shiver. The scales are sharp and rough, but the skin underneath it and her fins are silky soft.

  I want to trace it with my hand. See how it feels beneath my touch and not just passing brushes of it against my skin.

  Crazy, I’m going crazy. There is no other explanation for it.

  I don’t know how long it takes; time is all mixed up. Closed in darkness that’s forced on me, it feels like forever, but it’s probably just minutes before I can feel the air touch my skin.

  I take one sharp breath as I get to the surface, letting my lungs fill with much-needed fresh air.

  As soon as she realizes I can swim on my own, Marissa lets go of me and moves away.

  Brushing the salty sting out of my eyes, I slowly open them to look at her.

  Marissa’s cheeks are pale, her eyes wide as she nibbles at her lower lip nervously.

  “What are you?” I ask her, the words coming out harsher than I want them to.

  “I―”

  “Risa! Caleb!”

  I turn around and see our friends swimming toward us. We aren’t too far away from the place where the wave came crashing over me.

  “Oh shit!” Marissa’s words make my head turn back to her. The panic on her face has skyrocketed in the last few seconds. “I have to go.”

  “What? No!” I shake my head, my hand outstretched toward her.

  “Caleb…”

  “I need some answers, Marissa. You can’t just come to me like this.” I point in the general direction of her tail. “And then disappear on me.”

  Aqua-green eyes fill with tears. And it slays me. Deep into my soul. Seeing the tears in her eyes, the tears I put there, slays me to the core and my world shakes on its axis.

  “I can’t, not now. They don’t know…”

  “That’s why you…” The realization dawns on me. That’s why Marissa has been avoiding the beach and ocean.

  She looks over my shoulder, and I don’t even have to turn around to know our friends are coming clo
ser.

  “I have to go…”

  “I need to…” We start at the same time, but she’s adamant.

  “Later. I’ll tell you what you want to know later.” Marissa starts swimming away from me. I follow after her, but she shakes her head slowly.

  “When?” The desperation in my voice is evident.

  “Tonight. The cove where we met before. Come once the sky gets completely dark.”

  I look at her as she swims away, my mind still trying to wrap around the fact that this is real. I don’t want to believe it, but the glimmer of green beneath the surface tells me otherwise. Marissa really is a mermaid.

  “And Caleb?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nobody can know.”

  With those words, she dives in and I can’t reach her anymore. The only thing left behind is her secret weighing on my shoulders.

  Marissa

  I can hear soft footsteps near, suddenly stopping once they reach me. I don’t have to lift my gaze or turn around to know who’s behind me, so I keep my eyes looking at the soft shape of the moon illuminating the surface of the sea while millions of tiny stars twinkle around it.

  Night has always been my favorite time. Some would call me a night owl, and maybe they’re right. I love the simplicity of the night.

  When all things slow down and there is no noise.

  No people.

  Just the silence. Peace and quiet. Everlasting ocean and sky.

  Quiet rumbling fills the silence around me, and then the soft cotton touches my naked shoulder. “Put this on.”

  Caleb’s voice is quiet. Deep. Unnerving.

  I can hear him turn around, giving me some privacy to put on his shirt.

  Once the night fell over our small town and I was sure I was alone, I dragged myself out of the ocean. There was no sun and no towel to use to dry off, so I had to wait to air dry before my body returned to its normal, human state. Which left me naked as the day I was born. Vulnerable. And I hate feeling like that.

  Quickly, I pull the shirt over my head, making sure that all the important parts—not that Caleb hasn’t seen them already—are covered before I lean against the rock behind me.

  Caleb’s body falls on the sand next to me, imitating my stance. “You saved Ty. That night, he didn’t imagine it. You saved him, dragged him out of the ocean.”

  His words are a statement, but I nod nevertheless. “Yes. He didn’t imagine anything.”

  “You saved him because you’re a…” He swallows hard. “A mermaid.”

  “No, I became a mermaid to save him.”

  CALEB

  I look at Marissa, still trying to wrap my mind around the whole situation. When she left me in the ocean and swam away, I didn’t believe her completely when she said she’d meet me here. But when I got to the cove and saw her curled around herself, protecting her naked body, something in me just broke.

  Looking back to that day feels so different now. Seeing her as a mermaid explains so much. Like the nakedness when I found her that first morning. The confusion on her face. Her avoidance of the ocean and the beach in general, while at the same time sneaking out in the middle of the night for a swim.

  She’s a freaking mermaid, and now she tells me she became that way to save Ty?

  How can I compete with something like that?

  “How…”

  Sighing, she gets up only to lie down on the sand, watching the stars. My shirt that’s big enough to fall to her knees and cover her completely rises up a little, revealing tanned skin. My Adam’s apple bobs in my throat as I avert my gaze from her exposed flesh.

  “Noel and I were on the beach that day…”

  Quietly, I listen as she tells me her story. A story of how she became what she is now. Her hands are by her sides, and I don’t think she even notices it, but she taps the empty space next to her a few times, so I get up and lie down next to her.

  Watching the stars, I listen to her without uttering a word. I have questions, so many questions, but they can wait for her to finish.

  Marissa tells me how she returned to the beach to find her sunglasses but saw a huge wave falling on Ty and pulling him in, so she jumped after him. Darkness falls over her face as she remembers the drowning. How she wanted to give up, but then she thought of everybody who was waiting for her on land. Her parents, her friends and family, Ty, who was drowning alongside her. So she used all her strength, but it wasn’t enough.

  When the nymph came, she thought it was just an illusion, but once she realized it wasn’t, she agreed for Nymph to help her. Nymph gave her the tail and disappeared, leaving her to find Ty and save him herself. Which she did, but when she was back on land, she didn’t return to her human state. So when Taylor started waking up, she had to go back to the ocean, until she figured out what was wrong with her. And then I found her, stranded in the sand, completely naked.

  The whole time she was talking, she felt somehow detached, like the story she was telling me was just that, not something that actually happened to her.

  Once she’s done, silence falls around us. My brain is still trying to wrap around everything I’ve just heard.

  When you live on an island, you hear a lot of stories and myths about sea creatures. Mermaids are the things legends are made of, but not once have I believed in any of them. Not for real. Not until today.

  “You love him so much that you risked your life to save his?” I murmur quietly.

  The question leaves my mouth before I can stop it.

  Why? Why did it have to be the first thing I asked her after everything she just told me?

  Normal people wouldn’t ask something like that first. They’d be in denial. Trying to figure out how it is that she transforms into a mermaid when ocean water touches her body. Or how she transforms back. But not me. It’s magic. Maybe not the kind of magic I’m used to seeing in my everyday life, but magic nevertheless.

  No, I had to know the answer to the question that bothers me the most. Is her love for Ty so deep that she would give up her own life for his? I guess the answer is yes. And it hurts. It freaking hurts that she can love somebody like that and that somebody isn’t me.

  Because I love her like that.

  I love her so much I would give everything for her, be anything, but she doesn’t see it.

  The only thing she sees is him.

  Taylor.

  “I saved yours today, too,” she says, a soft smile playing on her lips. “I’d like to think I would do it no matter who was drowning. But I’ll never know. First it was Ty, and then it was you. Maybe it’s destiny trying to tell me something?”

  More likely it’s trying to tell me something. Like stay the fuck away from their written-in-the-stars love story. But there is no way I can do that. If I can’t have her for myself, I can use the time I have left with her to the fullest.

  “Will you show me?”

  “Show you what?” she asks me, a small frown of confusion appearing between her brows.

  “You.” I cup her cheek, brushing the soft skin with my thumb. “Will you show me the real you?”

  She looked so beautiful. The ocean has always been her element, and watching her fight with herself the last few weeks to stay away from it has been hard.

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Please?” I smile my lopsided smile, hoping to soften her.

  Finally, Marissa nods her head once, the movement so small it’s barely visible. Standing up, she brushes the sand off her long, silky legs.

  “Can you close your eyes?”

  “Why?”

  She tugs at the hem of my shirt that falls to her mid-thigh. Automatically, my eyes go down, taking in her whole body. My shirt is so big on her, the soft, black material swallowing her completely.

  “I’ll need this for later.”

  My eyes grow wide, realization dawning on me. She’s naked underneath it. Her story had me so transfixed, I actually forgot that little detail.

  Swallowing the lump
in my throat, I try to reign in my emotions, but it’s hard.

  Really fucking hard.

  I shift in the sand, suddenly uncomfortable. But the bulge in my pants is hard to hide.

  Giving in, I close my eyes, but that doesn’t change anything because I can still hear everything. The soft rustling as she takes off my shirt and throws it in the sand. Her light footsteps as she walks toward the edge of the shore, where the sand meets the ocean.

  Then she dives in, and I can hear the water splash as she swims into the ocean, so I open my eyes and start running after her.

  I jump in, welcoming the cool water on my heated skin. Some people like to wait, let their body adjust to the difference in temperature between the air and the water, but not me. I always jump head first into the ocean and hope for the best.

  Marissa isn’t out when I get back to the surface. I don’t expect her to be; after all, when she’s in the ocean she’s a marine creature, not a human. She can talk underwater, for fuck’s sake. I can’t even begin to imagine what else she can do.

  Movement to my right catches my attention. Mesmerized, I watch her swim back to the surface. Her head is tilted back, dark hair lifting in the air, droplets of water splashing all around as it falls behind her, touching her back.

  It’s entrancing, watching her in her element like that. I always thought she was beautiful, but looking at her like this, it’s completely different.

  Magical.

  “Let me see you.”

  Her back tenses, probably because she didn’t expect me to be here with her.

  I wait for her to turn around, but she doesn’t. Marissa dives back in, a flash of aqua-green flying through the air, shining underneath the soft light of the mood. I try to look for her, but I can’t see her until she emerges right in front of me, startling me so much I take a step back.

  “Sorry,” she giggles. “I’m too used to playing with dolphins.”

  I watch her, mesmerized by her beauty. The tips of her fin peek on the surface of the water between us. My hand reaches forward on its own, touching the rough scales covering the soft skin beneath. Beautiful and lethal.

  “That was you?” I ask, absentmindedly remembering that day when I saw a figure in the distance swimming with the dolphins. The silhouette did look familiar, but it was too far away from me to actually be sure.