Page 144 of Damaged

I stare at her. From this distance, there’s not much more detail than an outline of the woman I love.

“Oh… James… Fuck this.” The line goes silent.

“Sophia?” I say. I turn my phone and see the call has ended. I watch her straddle the railing on the third deck and climb so she’s on the other side.

“Sophia!” I shout.

She’s thirty feet over the water. And if she jumps, she’s two hundred feet from shore. The water is calm, but what if there are currents?

“Sophia, don’t—” But my words aren’t reaching her anyway. I freeze as I watch herleapfrom the deck. Time stands still in the second it takes her to disappear into the water.

I throw my suit coat off. I’m not even thinking as I jump off the rocks and into the warm water. I swim furiously, stopping only to keep her bobbing head in sight.

“Sophia!” I shout, taking in a mouthful of saltwater.

“James!”

My arms and lungs burn by the time I can make out her facial features, and she’s switched from a breaststroke to a tired dog paddle. She looks childish. Wet. Afraid. Her dark hair is soaked and tight against her skull.

“Sophia,” I say with relief as I pull her to me and kick to keep afloat in the water. We stay like that for several seconds as we catch our wild breaths.

“I can be dangerous, too,” Sophia says.

“That was just stupid.”

She looks right at me, her eyes mere inches away from mine. “As stupid as spending thirty days without you?”

“Perhaps not,” I say, and we kiss slowly. The water is warm but cold on our lips. Our kiss is passionate. Salt. The taste of Sophia.

It’s only broken as we both hear shouting and turn towards the boat. Bernard is pacing up and down the deck where Sophia jumped. We can’t tell what he’s saying, but he looks furious.

“Hold on,” Sophia says and gives him the finger, followed by a salute. This seems to make him even madder.

We watch him pace a little longer before I squeeze Sophia’s shoulder. “We should get back to shore. A little secret… I’m afraid of sharks.”

“James, are you telling me you wouldn’t just beat up a shark?” she says jokingly.

“I’m kind of at an aquatic disadvantage here.”

I move so our heads face the same direction, out to sea, and then I hold on to Sophia with one arm and begin to swim backwards. We do this until we can stand in waist-deep water.

But we don’t walk up onto the beach. Instead, I lift Sophia up by her thighs so I’m holding her, and we kiss.

Again, the kiss doesn’t last long. It’s interrupted by the sound of sudden cheers and applause.

The posse of press and bystanders who had been watching the boat depart from the pier have run to the beach. A few are taking pictures.

They must’ve seen Sophia’s dive.

“I don’t want to be famous again,” Sophia says.

“Tell me about it. I was about to fuck you,” I say, smiling.

She slaps my shoulder. “We could still give them a show?” She looks at me naughtily.

“Yeah, keep it PG?”

She shrugs and leans back in for a kiss. “Maybe PG-13,” she whispers.

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