She carried on with a modified barre, brushing her bare feet gently over the concrete in tendus as he snapped away. Behind her, the sky was shifting into a steady cornflower blue, promising another bright and punishingly hot day.
After a few more minutes, she stopped moving and shook her legs out. “This is where there’d be grand battements, but I’m not warm enough for that,” she said, and he nodded.
“Lean your back against the railing for me?” he said, and she obliged, crossing her feet at the ankles and resting her elbows on the railing. He eyed the lens as he came closer to her, picking his way around the edge of the pool. He zoomed in and saw that her cheeks were slightly flushed, either from the wind or the exertion, and the freckles across her nose seemed more pronounced today than they were even yesterday.
He was so focused on her face that he barely felt the ground disappear from under one of his feet, but he saw through the lens as her eyes widened in alarm, and what came next happened so fast that he had no chance of preventing it: he wobbled perilously on the foot that was still on the concrete, she lunged for him with grasping, open hands, he tumbled backwards and felt the strap yank sharply at his neck, and then his back hit the water with a huge, ungainly splash.
A second later, he scrambled to his feet and his head broke the surface. His nose was full of saltwater and his back stung, but he ignored all of that and spun around, looking desperately for his camera. He grabbed a deep gulp of air as he searched for a telltale blob of black, perhaps floating next to him or already sunk to the bottom of the pool. In the back of his mind, he knew it was hopeless, knew that being submerged in seawater would have ruined it beyond repair—fuck, how could he have been so careless,again?—but he cast around for it anyway. Maybe he could salvage the SD card, he thought desperately, his clothes swirling and dragging around him. Or maybe he was just a giant failure who had walked away from the only career he’d ever known and was floundering in his new one as spectacularly as he was floundering in this pool.
“Where is it?” he growled, exasperated. Furious at himself and at this entire miserable situation. “Where did it—”
“I’ve got it.”
Nick froze and looked up. Carly was standing a foot from the edge, clutching his camera to her chest like a child with a stuffed animal.
He sloshed to the side of the pool, hauled himself out of water, and stumbled towards her, reaching for the camera, desperate to check that it hadn’t been damaged. Carly took a step back and turned her body away, shielding the camera from him.
“Let me see it!” he said breathlessly.
“No, you’re all wet!” she objected.
“Carly, I swear to God—”
“I just rescued this damn thing from going down like theTitanic; I am not going to let you get water all over it!” she said, outraged.
Nick stopped and took a deep breath. He breathed out, feeling saltwater rattle unpleasantly in his nose.
“Please, just hold it up so I can look at it.”
Carly eyed him warily, then turned her body back towards him. He examined it from a foot away, careful not to drip on it. It looked fine. He couldn’t see so much as a drop of water on the lens or anywhere else. But if he could just dry off and get his hands on it to check, he could—
“It’s fine, Nick. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to it.” She sounded annoyed.
“Sorry, I just—”
“I know, you care about your cameras more than life itself. Why do you think I saved the camera and let you fall into the pool? You weren’t very graceful, by the way.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t trying to be graceful.”
“Clearly.”
“I just want to dry off and check that it still—
Click.Carly lifted the camera to her face and snapped a photo of him. “Say cheese.” She didn’t wait for him to smile, which was a good thing, because she’d be waiting a while.
“Can you please stop taking photos of this?”
“In a second.”Click, click, click.Carly snapped away, no doubt delighted to capture this mortifying moment. Nick looked down at himself, at his grey T-shirt plastered against his chest and his shorts clinging to his thighs. He lifted one foot and felt his sneaker squelch against concrete. He must have looked like an absolute disaster. But the camera was apparently working just fine. Now that the adrenaline of the last few minutes was wearing off, he could think back and replay the seconds right before the fall. He’d watched Carly’s face transform into a mask of horror as she realized what was happening, and then, right at the last second, she’d lunged for him. No, not for him. For his camera.
“Carly, stop.”
“No, I’m making art here. Soggy, drowned-rat art.”
“Carly!”
“What?” she finally pulled the camera away from her face. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, the posture Nick was coming to think of as trademark Carly, all challenge and sarcasm, and a thin layer of humour draped over spikes of anger. She had a few droplets of water on her jumper and on her face, and they sparkled in the rising sun, decorating her flushed, freckled cheeks. In the warm golden light, her eyes were a deep, luxurious brown, and even though they were currently regarding him with skepticism and impatience, Nick couldn’t unsee the alarm he’d seen there as he’d teetered on the edge of the pool and she’d reached frantically for his Nikon. Saved it for him.
“Thank you.”
