“Well, cancel them because this is the only thing I want.” Bryn yanked off her shirt and discarded her underwear and just like that she was naked.
Vivian knew they were completely safe from prying eyes, but the sight of Bryn in the nude and outside made her pulse jump anyway.
“Are you going to make me go in alone?” Bryn propped her hands on her hips, and it took all of Vivian’s focus not to be swayed by her beautiful body.
“Bryn.” Vivian leaned back in her seat, arms crossed.
“Suit yourself. I’ve been dying to get in your pool since I saw it.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and then turned away.
Watching her saunter away, Vivian was on her feet before Bryn hit the water.
“You’re a brat,” Vivian said, pulling open her robe.
Bryn looked up at the sun, eyes closed and arms open as if to feel as much of the sun as humanly possible. Then she stepped up to the deep end and dove in head first.
“And it’s heated?” Bryn exclaimed when she popped up in the shallow end where Vivian was walking in using the steps.
“My aesthetician is going to kill me,” Vivian muttered when the water hit her waist and the sun hit her shoulders and she couldn’t decide which was more offensive to her skincare regimen. “Do you know how long it took to undo the damage from my twenties?”
She stopped before going into a diatribe about her last fractional CO2 laser resurfacing. She couldn’t speak when Bryn was moving toward her. Wet hair slicked back and darkened to auburn, her skin was a canvas painted with light.
Every freckle, every faint scar Vivian hadn’t catalogued yet was illuminated without mercy or filter. The sun didn’t flatter Bryn as much as it confirmed her. Bare and luminous and unbothered by the exposure that had governed Vivian’s entire life.
Despite Bryn having caught her staring, she didn’t preen or make a joke. Bryn just smiled, easy and unhurried, and sank into the water until it touched her chin.
“See?” Bryn drifted closer. “Not so bad.”
Not so bad, Vivian silently agreed with her heart hammering its way into her throat.
It wasn’t bad at all. That was the terrifying part. Standing in the pool she’d never used, in the sun she’d spent decades avoiding, watching the only person who’d ever made her feel happy down to her marrow, Vivian understood. Understood everything. Understood the point of living.
She stepped fully into the pool. Submerging herself to her chest so she could drape her arms and legs around Bryn. So that she could look in her prismatic blue eyes while weightless in the water. So that there was nothing but Bryn’s arms around her waist and her undivided attention.
Neither of them spoke. The water stilled around them and Vivian noticed every point where their bodies met. Bryn’s palms against the small of her back. Their stomachs pressed together beneath the surface. The sun on her shoulders and Bryn's breath on her lips, slow and patient and steady.
“I love you.”
There they were. Three words, bare as Vivian was, standing in the water with the sun on her face. Vivian fought the reflexive urge to add a caveat or toss in a quip. She didn’t say anything else. Didn’t take back a confession so enormous it defied physics by fitting into three wispy syllables.
Bryn blinked and then her face ignited into a smile Vivian felt in her own racing heart. Blue eyes so bright in the unforgiving light they could have powered the whole damn city. Bryn didn’t cry. She didn’t even have the generosity to look surprised.
She just tightened her grip on Vivian and grinned harder. “I love you, too,” Bryn said, easy and warm. Like it was a fact she’d been carrying around for so long it was unremarkable. Likeof course. Likefinally. Like it was nothing and everything and the simplest truth either of them had ever spoken.
Vivian exhaled. Not a breath she’d been holding for the last thirty seconds, but one she’d been holding for decades. The warm water caught it and dragged it under the gentle waves their bodies created.
Allowing herself to be held, Vivian let the sun do its worst.
Let the light find every line and imperfection and tender swath of skin.
Let Bryn see her.
Let herself love and be loved in a way that felt like magic.
Like a miracle. Like recompense.
Epilogue
Three YearsLater
