She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his neck and inhaled the scent of him. That cologne she’d come to know so well. That cologne that made her wonder, Can Tom smell it on me? Which was followed by the thought, I hope he does. God knew she’d smelled enough perfume on his clothes in the last year.
Mark reached for her chin and brought her face up to his. He kissed her.
“Wait,” Vanessa said.
She waded over to the edge of the pool and slipped off her wedding ring. She ran a finger over the indented skin, now naked without its protection.
She looked down at her hand, its silhouette dark as night against the blue green illuminated pool beneath her. The little groove where the band usually sat curved the skin inward toward the bone of her finger. She stared at it for a moment, and for a moment she felt the slightest bit of guilt. But then she looked back at the house, listened to the party that raged on inside, and let her hand fall to the waterline of the pool. She turned to see Mark floating on his back, eyes wide, looking at the stars.
“Too much light pollution here,” he mused. He stood back up and ran his hands through his hair. Water beads ran down his forearms, jumping from his elbows to the pool.
Vanessa stepped toward him. Water lined his forehead like a sheen of sweat.
“I’ve never done that,” she said.
“Done what?” he asked.
“Been able to float on my back. I always feel like I’m about to go under. Like I’m falling in the water,” she said.
“Come here,” Mark said.
He reached out for her hand and she let him take it. He kneeled in the water.
“I’m going to help you,” he said.
Vanessa laughed.
“Come on,” Mark smiled. “Sit on my knee.”
She looked down at his distorted leg under the water. He knelt, almost like he was proposing. She stepped around and sat down against him. He wrapped his arm around her back.
“Lean back,” he said.
She did as he said, leaning into his other arm while the one in front of her scooped up her legs. She balked momentarily.
“Trust me,” he said.
She relaxed again, letting him lower her back into the water. He cupped his hand around her neck and placed his other palm beneath the backs of her thighs. Water rushed into her ears, the sound of the pool jets roaring dull in the distance, the party guests laughing and smoking on the patio momentarily obscured.
Mark looked down at her and she met his eyes. And then, before she could speak her apprehension, he was stepping away. She felt his hand release the back of her neck, his palm no longer on her thighs. She was floating.
Water washed over the tops of her legs. She let her body relax, breathed in the scent of the bromine pool chemicals, somehow refreshing to her. Finally, she stood.
“How was it?” Mark asked.
“Nice,” she smiled. The air was frigid on her skin and fog lifted off of it like one of those monks, steaming a rag on his back. Vanessa dipped back down into the water, kneeling in the shallow end. Mark did the same, making his way to her.
He wrapped a long, strong arm around her waist. She straddled his, letting her legs lock behind him. He stared at her for a moment.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful,” he whispered as he brought his free hand out of the water to brush a strand of errant hair from her forehead.
Vanessa inhaled the scent of the pool chemicals coming off his skin and felt the warmth of his palm radiating against her cheek. She longed for him to touch her, to kiss her. And he did.
He reached for her waist, pulling her into him. She clenched her thighs, squeezing herself as tightly against him as possible. She didn’t want tonight to end. She didn’t want him to go home to his family and leave her with Tom. She entertained a thought for only a moment: the idea that Mark would leave his wife. He’d never made the absurd promise, but as things got worse with Tom, she almost wished he would. Even if he didn’t mean it.
Even if that meant getting her heart broken by a second man, she didn’t care. At this point, her heart was a shadow of its former self. What difference did it make?
As Mark slipped a hand between her skin and the fabric of her underwear, commotion broke out on the patio. They both stopped, Vanessa still wrapped around him, and listened.
A door slammed; footsteps followed the sound out onto the concrete.
Walking towards them from the patio was Tom.
“What are you two up to?” Tom asked almost casually. He stepped up to the side of the pool so that he was no longer just a silhouette in the darkness, but instead a person, illuminated by the green light casting upward from the water.
“Such a nice night for a swim, don’t you think?” he asked sarcastically as he shrugged out of his sweater.
“Tom, stop,” Vanessa’s words were soft as dough, pliable against Tom’s ire.
Tom stripped from his pants into his boxers and ripped the buttons out of his shirt in a fury to get it off.
“Tom, we can talk about this,” Mark said.
Tom dove, hands parting the water for him and came up only a foot short of Mark. When he stood, he arced back a fist and, Mark, who had turned to face Vanessa again, was blindsided by the punch.
“Fuck!” Mark howled.
Blood poured from his nose. The liquid iron feathered into the green water, tendrils reaching out for Vanessa’s waist, reminding her of the wine she’d spilled in the pool the night things started with Mark. She stepped away from it.
“Tom, stop!” she yelled. Then she rushed towards the
