Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

Ness hesitates.

“I’m joking,” he says.

“Come lie back down,” I tell him. “And by lie back down, I mean curl up in an awkward ball on top of me while the edge of this armrest gouges into my spine.”

“I have to get us surfacing,” he says. “We’ve almost stayed down as long as we can.”

I groan in complaint. I’m as scared to leave this place as I was to come here. I don’t want to go back to the old rules. I like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rules. “Have them send the other sub,” I say.

Ness laughs. “It’s a two-hour ride back to the top if we start now. You’ll be sick of me by the time we get there.”

“I doubt that,” I tell him.

The sub rocks slightly as it leaves the sea floor. A small motor whirs somewhere behind us. Ness checks one more gauge, then asks me to get up. He arranges himself on the small bench and motions for me to get on top of him. I curl up across his chest and lap, my head on his shoulder, my lips brushing his neck, and he smooths my hair, which has largely come loose from my braid.

“That was amazing,” I say. I feel like a teenager, where kissing and fondling are as extreme and satisfying as sex. More satisfying. It’s like we both knew to dance along that last line, not wanting to cross it, not wanting to mess up the moment.

Ness kisses my forehead. “I forgot to ask if this was going to be off the record or not.”

“Definitely off the record,” I say, laughing. “And look, I won’t make this hard for you—”

“Don’t,” he tells me. “Please don’t break up with me at the bottom of the ocean. It’ll make the next two hours really awkward.”

I laugh.

“Besides,” he says, “I like you. I have since the moment you stormed out of my house and called me a sociopath. So you’re the one who’s gonna have to decide what comes next, not me.”

“The story,” I say. “My job.” I think of all the complications that would’ve been ridiculous to ponder an hour ago but which now swirl all around me, the myriad reasons this is a dumb idea. I think of the five-hour drive back and forth, how much a pain in the ass dating would be, how everyone in the office will think the wrong things but will be partly correct. How they’ll say the wrong things, which will be partly true. What my sister will say if I tell her I’m dating Ness Wilde. What Henry will do. His mustache will spin if I tell him about this. Agent Cooper will flip. I think about the rest of my story and my responsibility to our readers, and how hard it’ll be to write that last piece. All this and more haunts me in the space of a heartbeat.

“Stop stressing,” Ness says. He runs a finger across the worried furrow in my brow. “Let’s take it one day at a time, see if we can even get through this week.”

“Is that how long this usually lasts?” I ask him.

Ness kisses my temple and doesn’t respond. I choose not to press him, not to mess this up. Instead, I nestle into his arms and tell my worrying brain to take a vacation, to think on these things later. I allow myself to enjoy this moment, me and Ness in a sphere of twinkling lights, the black world outside fading to a dull crimson, and then a deep, rich blue, as we rise toward the surface and I fall in and out of sleep.

Ness wakes me and says we’re fifteen minutes away. So begins the strangest search-for-clothes-after-making-out that I’ve ever encountered. I get my bra arranged and my shirt back on, then wiggle into my coveralls, trying not to hit any switches with my elbows. As Ness puts on his headset and takes over control of the sub, I comb out my hair with my fingers and then put in a new braid.

“Okay,” Ness says into the mic. “I’ve got you now. Not sure what that was all about. Comms acting glitchy. No—no, I don’t think we need to tear anything apart to sort it out. Everything else is online. Yup. See you in five.”

He smiles at me. I push his microphone out of the way and kiss him quietly. I want to see if the rules of the deep still apply this close to the surface, and they seem to.

“Holly will be so proud of us,” I say.

Ness laughs. He covers the mic with his hand. “I’ve got her next weekend if we want to plan something. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

“I’d like that,” I say. I feel a shiver from having crossed some new line, some thermal barrier.

“Maybe together, the two of you can explain how the cover to my Shelby ended up in the guest house bathtub.”

“Is a Shelby a car?” I ask.

Ness shakes his head. “You were so much sexier fifteen thousand feet ago.”

“Thanks. How do I look? Is it obvious we made out? It’s obvious, isn’t it.”

“No. You look like you had a claustrophobic fit.”

“Excellent.”

“And then somehow ripped off your jumpsuit and put it back on with the buttons snapped all wrong.”

I look down and see that the top snaps don’t line up, that all of the snaps are off by one. I start redoing them. “You better have that mic off,” I say.

“Whoops,” Ness says, but I can tell he’s joking. I’m beginning to be able to read him. He takes a bit more getting used to than even Melville.

Outside, the water brightens, like the sun is rising. But we’re the ones coming up. We’re in a golden sphere, approaching the horizon. Ness takes the controls again and guides us toward the underbelly of the ship. Along with the great hull of the craft, and its massive propellers, I see the fins of a diver treading water. We break the surface just a few feet from him; the diver gives a thumbs-up through a porthole, has a cable in his hand. Ness arranges the arms of the sub to provide a ladder to the top. There’s the clanging of metal on metal, and then the slap of a hand on the hull.

“Locked in,” Ness says into his headset. And up we go, softly spinning again, water sheeting across the portholes, the sea falling away beneath us until the railing of the great ship swings below our feet once more.

We touch down with a clang, and Ness pops the hatch, water dripping down in a veil. As I crawl out of the sub, I feel like I’m in possession of some incredible secret. Like a kid sneaking kisses behind my parents’ backs. All the questions the deck crew has for Ness are about the sub, not about what happened between us. I marvel that no one suspects anything, that such an incredible moment—making out with someone for the first time at the bottom of the sea—could be contained by the two people involved. Part of me is dying to get on my phone and tell someone; the other part wants to keep this selfishly for myself and never tell another living soul.

The next hour is a blur, my head still swimming, my hormones coursing and adrenaline raging. I barely have time for a shower and a quick lunch before Ness is saying we need to leave. After I grab my bag from my room, I track down Ness’s room with the help of a crew member. He startles when I walk in, was just in the act of stuffing the last of his things into his bag. As we navigate the tight corridors of the ship together, I brush his hand with mine. He turns as he ducks through a doorway and is grinning from ear to ear.

The helicopter ride back to the island is smoother this time, the rain having slowed to a trickle, the sky clearing. We land on that small island about as far from civilization as one can be, and get back on the plane. I look forward to the flight. The time to think. To relax. Ness stows our bags and then walks to the rear of the plane, past the eight leather recliners, beyond the bathroom, and to the door at the very back.

He opens it and waves me toward him. The flight crew folds the steps behind me and shuts the door, and the jet engines whine as they power up. “Ladies first,” Ness says, in what has become a little mantra of sorts, a private joke between us.