Where the Stars Still Shine(60)

“Absolutely.” His curls bobble as he nods. He leans forward to kiss me again and I come away with a rash of goose bumps, and I’m not sure if they’re from the cool breeze sweeping in from the gulf or his hands on my bare hips.

“The water temperature is about seventy-five, which is fine for splashing around in shallow water at the beach, but it gets cold when you’re in the water for an extended period of time, so this will help keep you warm.” He hands me a wet suit, but instead of being the full-body style the divers are wearing, it has short sleeves and thigh-length legs. “You do know how to swim, right?”

Mom taught me one summer at a lake in Indiana, and there was a lifeguard at the community pool in Michigan who let me in free so he could stare at my chest. Not that Alex needs to know about that. “Yep.”

We put on the suits at the truck and carry the rest of our gear down to the water. We leave the dive bags, beach towels, and cooler far enough up in the sand to keep them from being washed away. The borrowed boots are the right size for me, and once I have them on, we move out into waist-deep water to put on our fins. Tiny streams of cold trickle up my thighs, taking my breath away, and I have to stop to let the water in my suit warm up.

“Oh my God, how do you do this every day?”

“This is a picnic compared to what I do.” He puts on his fins, and I watch and do the same. “There are a lot of mornings I’d rather stay in my warm bunk than jump into water this cold and then spend hours walking along the bottom of the gulf, most of the time against the current, cutting sponges off the sea floor. It’s hard work, but more than that, it’s boring and lonely. But calling in sick doesn’t pay the bills, and you’ve seen what happens when the harvest isn’t enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

The tilt at the corner of his mouth absorbs my apology. “Warm enough yet?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Now take your mask and spit in it.”

“Seriously? That’s a real thing?”

“It helps keep it from fogging up.” Alex spits in his own mask, smears the saliva around the lens, and then rinses it in the water. “And before you ask, I have no idea why it works. It just does.”

I do the spit-smear-rinse technique, then peer at him through the lens. He looks exactly the same. “How will I know if it worked?”

“If your mask starts fogging up, it didn’t work,” he says. “Then surface and do it again.”

“Now what?”

Alex positions his mask on his face. The strap mats down his curls where it circles around his head. He shrugs. “Swim.”

“But—”

He takes my mask and eases it down over my head, being careful not to tug my hair. When it’s centered on my face, he moves his hands away. “Does it feel okay?”

“How would I know?”

“It would feel loose here”—he gestures toward the sides near his temples—“or the strap might feel too tight around your head.”

“I think it’s good.”

He holds the U-shaped end of the snorkel out where I can see it. “So now all you do is put this end in your mouth and use it to breathe while you swim.”

I lift my legs and put my face in the water. The world goes green and quiet, except for the sound of my own breathing. At first I breathe too fast, as if I’m somehow going to run out of air, even though the snorkel connects me to the world’s supply. In shallower water, the sand is dotted with puffy brown sand dollars that look nothing like the bleached white ones we sell in the shop. Tiny minnows hover and dart just above the bottom, and prehistoric-looking horseshoe crabs bulldoze tracks in the sand. For yards, the only change to the landscape is the addition of larger fish and coral fans that look like lone trees in an underwater desert.

Then we reach the Spanish Rocks.

The reef is covered in green and red algae, and corals of white and yellow and even orange. The water around the reef is teeming with silver-striped fish, flashing in the muted sunlight and moving together as if they’re dancing to their own silent song. It feels as if the world has gotten so much bigger and I start to understand—if even just a little—why Alex doesn’t want to be confined to one small part of it.

“Oh my God,” I say into my mouthpiece, but the words funnel up through the snorkel and are lost to the sky above me. I stretch my arm out toward the fish, but the water is deceptively deep and I’m disappointed they’re not close enough to touch.

I lift my head out of the water and pull the snorkel away to catch my breath. Alex surfaces beside me as I push the mask up onto my forehead.

“Everything okay?”

I nod. “It’s just—this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. It’s—there are so many fish and it looks like they’re right there—” I know I’m babbling, but I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t stop. “—and I could touch them, but they’re too far away. And it’s so beautiful. I want to get closer. I want to see it all.”

His smile is so wide and through his mask his eyes are half-moons of happiness. “Diving is even better.”

“I want to do that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever converted anyone that fast before.” Alex laughs as he slides his mask up and kisses me with saltwater lips. And this time it’s not my imagination, because mine are saltwatery, too. “Lucky for you, I happen to know a guy who can teach you.”