The store's plastic tag still dangled from the shorts' pocket. I'd been too anxious about the morning to remember to remove it.
"I brought coffee," I managed, gesturing toward my abandoned cup. "Though you said that's against the rules."
"Good memory." He set his cup beside mine, keys jingling as he unlocked the pool door. "No more caffeine until after the lesson. Wouldn't want to interfere with your perfect biomechanical understanding of pool water."
The teasing in his voice drew an unexpected smile. "Are you mocking my dissertation, Lieutenant?"
"Never." His eyes crinkled at the corners as he held the door. "Though I am curious how someone writes seventy-thousand words about swimming without getting wet."
The pool area echoed with our footsteps, bouncing off high ceilings and empty bleachers. Early morning shadows gatheredin the corners, making the water appear deeper and more ominous. The familiar scent of chlorine triggered tension in my shoulders.
Marcus noticed. He spoke softly. "We're starting at the shallow end, and we're not doing anything you're not ready for."
I forced my fingers to unclench from my towel. "I assume you have a methodical approach planned?"
"Of course." He gestured toward the pool edge. "The first step is sitting here, close to but not touching the surface. We get comfortable with the water's presence. No pressure, no expectations."
The ceramic tiles were cool and slightly rough beneath my palms as we sat by the pool. I focused intently on removing the price tag from my swim shorts, grateful for the mundane task, until movement beside me drew my attention.
Marcus removed his UW Athletics shirt with the efficiency of someone who'd done it thousands of times, each motion optimized through repetition. My research brain immediately began reciting the visible muscle groups inside my head—deltoids developed by countless freestyle strokes, latissimus dorsi shaped by years of butterfly kicks, and the specific adaptations of a body trained for both explosive firefighting power and endurance swimming.
A light dusting of dark hair tracked down his chest, and a scatter plot of small burn scars marked his left side. The scientist in me wanted to map each marking and understand the forces that had shaped this particular specimen of human anatomy. The rest of me needed to look away before he noticed my clinical observation had become something else entirely.
I forced my jaw to relax.
Hesitating with my hands at the hem of my shirt, I twisted my fingers in the worn cotton. Marcus had turned to set ourtowels on a nearby bench, offering me a moment of privacy that somehow made undressing feel more intimate instead of less.
"The water's perfect," he said, still not looking at me. "They keep it at exactly 81 degrees for morning training sessions."
The casual fact offered something for my brain to latch onto. I recited the thermal conductivity coefficients of water under my breath as I finally pulled my shirt off, exposing myself in a way that had nothing to do with bare skin. Despite regular running, I remained researcher-slim, all angles where Marcus was sculpted, curved muscle.
When I glanced up, I found him watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read. His eyes lingered for a moment on my shoulder, where an old rock-climbing scar interrupted my body's otherwise unremarkable terrain.
"Ready?" he asked softly, turning to face the water. His hand settled warm against my lower back, steadying me as we sat side by side at the pool's edge and finally dangled our feet in the water.
"Define ready," I managed, intensely aware of every point of contact between us—his palm against my skin and our shoulders barely brushing. Our legs aligned, perfectly parallel, with our feet disappearing beneath the pool's surface.
"Ready means trusting me to keep you safe." His thumb moved in a small arc against my spine. "Tell me about wave propagation patterns since that's your comfort zone."
The gentle understanding in his voice made it easier to breathe. I focused on the water lapping against the pool wall, trying to ignore how his hand hadn't moved.
"Wave propagation patterns result from the interplay between surface tension and gravitational forces," I began, latching onto the familiar terminology. I raised my right foot, and my toes skimmed the water's surface, creating tiny ripples that spread in precise mathematical arcs.
"Each disturbance creates a wave train, with amplitude decreasing as energy dissipates according to the square of the distance traveled. The fascinating part is how multiple wave sources interact, creating constructive and destructive interference patterns that—"
My voice caught as Marcus slid into the water beside me, the motion so fluid he barely disturbed the surface. The wave patterns from his entry spread and collided with the ripples from my feet, creating the interference patterns I'd been describing.
He turned to face me, water streaming from his shoulders. Observing how the droplets clung to his muscular chest made me completely forget the rest of my wave theory lecture.
"The thing about fluid dynamics," he said softly, moving to stand between my knees, "is that eventually you have to trust the water to hold you."
"I trust physics," I managed. "Water is merely hydrogen and oxygen in a particular molecular arrangement that—"
"James." His hands remained steady, waiting. "Trust me instead."
Looking back, I couldn't say what made me reach for him—the patience in his voice, the early morning quiet, or maybe how he made science sound like poetry. Something shifted in my carefully ordered world when his fingers closed around mine—warm despite the pool's chill.
The water embraced my legs as Marcus guided me into the shallow end, each ripple sending tiny shockwaves through my nervous system. My mind frantically calculated the pool's volume in gallons, liters, cubic meters—anything to avoid focusing on my memories of dark quarry water.
