He leans back into his seat, and now it’s just the constellation of indicators and dials around us, the distant red glow of lava leaking from the Earth, the shadows of animals that should not exist, and this, between us, which should not be possible.
I run my hands over his chest, that swimmer’s chest. I touch the black pearl on that thin leather strap, study him for a moment, then lean in for another kiss. Ness cups my breasts through my shirt, and I arch my back with pleasure. I press myself into his hands and grab a fistful of his hair. Arching my back further, I bang my head on a pipe. We both laugh. “This thing was not built for this,” I say.
“The arms go down,” Ness tells me. He fumbles between the chairs, and the armrests slide down level with the seats. It makes a short bench. “I’ve never done this before,” Ness says, seeming to read my mind. “I promise. But I have considered the various complexities.”
“Show me what you’ve considered,” I say, kissing him. In this moment, I don’t care if I’m a one-night stand. I don’t care if this is the last time we touch. I don’t care if being in the same room together is awkward later. I want this, whatever the costs. Something about being so close to death, about this inhospitable place, makes me want to feel alive. And something about being trapped with Ness, about the last three days spent in each other’s company, has me craving what I know I’ll soon regret.
Ness places a hand on the top of my head, an odd gesture, but when he lifts me up, I realize it’s to keep me from banging into anything. I hold his arms, can feel his muscles flex. To be lifted and moved so easily feels exhilarating. My desire to be in control of every situation is gone. I am floating. Bobbing on the sea. Ness lays me down on my back. He pushes my shirt up, slowly, as if asking permission. I lift my arms up over my head in assent. Starting at my neck, he kisses his way across the smooth hollow of my collarbone, sending trills of electricity through me, then works down to my breasts, kissing them, cupping them with his hands, and I place mine on top of his and make him squeeze harder. My nipples ache with pleasure. I pull my bra down and guide Ness’s head. His tongue circles my nipple before taking me between his lips.
Ness slowly kisses his way up my chest, up my neck, finds my lips again. He brushes loose strands of hair from my face. The frenetic energy is gone, replaced by a comfortable caressing, a writhing embrace, a pleasurable squirming. I wrap my arms around him and squeeze. I kiss his neck.
“Maya,” Ness whispers in my ear. If there is more, it is lost as he buries his head in my shoulder. The steel shell around us groans. We are the torus inside. There is no space nor time. No concept of being. Just a floating feeling, a sense of escape and flying, another Icarus kiss, completely free, the empty cosmos around us, exploring each other there at the bottom of the sea.
Part V:
Surfacing for Air
32
“Shit, I think the mics were on,” Ness says. He finds one of the headsets and places it back on its rack. I’m pretty sure I knocked it off trying to get my arm out of my coveralls. “The operators on the ship must’ve heard everything.”
“Tell me you’re joking,” I say.
Ness hesitates.
“I’m joking,” he says.
“Come lie back down,” I tell him. “And by lie back down, I mean curl up in an awkward ball on top of me while the edge of this armrest gouges into my spine.”
“I have to get us surfacing,” he says. “We’ve almost stayed down as long as we can.”
I groan in complaint. I’m as scared to leave this place as I was to come here. I don’t want to go back to the old rules. I like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rules. “Have them send the other sub,” I say.
Ness laughs. “It’s a two-hour ride back to the top if we start now. You’ll be sick of me by the time we get there.”
“I doubt that,” I tell him.
The sub rocks slightly as it leaves the sea floor. A small motor whirs somewhere behind us. Ness checks one more gauge, then asks me to get up. He arranges himself on the small bench and motions for me to get on top of him. I curl up across his chest and lap, my head on his shoulder, my lips brushing his neck, and he smooths my hair, which has largely come loose from my braid.
“That was amazing,” I say. I feel like a teenager, where kissing and fondling are as extreme and satisfying as sex. More satisfying. It’s like we both knew to dance along that last line, not wanting to cross it, not wanting to mess up the moment.
Ness kisses my forehead. “I forgot to ask if this was going to be off the record or not.”
“Definitely off the record,” I say, laughing. “And look, I won’t make this hard for you—”
“Don’t,” he tells me. “Please don’t break up with me at the bottom of the ocean. It’ll make the next two hours really awkward.”
I laugh.
“Besides,” he says, “I like you. I have since the moment you stormed out of my house and called me a sociopath. So you’re the one who’s gonna have to decide what comes next, not me.”
“The story,” I say. “My job.” I think of all the complications that would’ve been ridiculous to ponder an hour ago but which now swirl all around me, the myriad reasons this is a dumb idea. I think of the five-hour drive back and forth, how much a pain in the ass dating would be, how everyone in the office will think the wrong things but will be partly correct. How they’ll say the wrong things, which will be partly true. What my sister will say if I tell her I’m dating Ness Wilde. What Henry will do. His mustache will spin if I tell him about this. Agent Cooper will flip. I think about the rest of my story and my responsibility to our readers, and how hard it’ll be to write that last piece. All this and more haunts me in the space of a heartbeat.
“Stop stressing,” Ness says. He runs a finger across the worried furrow in my brow. “Let’s take it one day at a time, see if we can even get through this week.”
“Is that how long this usually lasts?” I ask him.
Ness kisses my temple and doesn’t respond. I choose not to press him, not to mess this up. Instead, I nestle into his arms and tell my worrying brain to take a vacation, to think on these things later. I allow myself to enjoy this moment, me and Ness in a sphere of twinkling lights, the black world outside fading to a dull crimson, and then a deep, rich blue, as we rise toward the surface and I fall in and out of sleep.
Ness wakes me and says we’re fifteen minutes away. So begins the strangest search-for-clothes-after-making-out that I’ve ever encountered. I get my bra arranged and my shirt back on, then wiggle into my coveralls, trying not to hit any switches with my elbows. As Ness puts on his headset and takes over control of the sub, I comb out my hair with my fingers and then put in a new braid.
“Okay,” Ness says into the mic. “I’ve got you now. Not sure what that was all about. Comms acting glitchy. No—no, I don’t think we need to tear anything apart to sort it out. Everything else is online. Yup. See you in five.”
He smiles at me. I push his microphone out of the way and kiss him quietly. I want to see if the rules of the deep still apply this close to the surface, and they seem to.
“Holly will be so proud of us,” I say.
Ness laughs. He covers the mic with his hand. “I’ve got her next weekend if we want to plan something. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
“I’d like that,” I say. I feel a shiver from having crossed some new line, some thermal barrier.