Skinny dipping (and the part I didn't tell Dani)
This happened Labor Day weekend and I've been sitting on it for almost a month. Partly bc I didn't know how to write it. Partly bc Dani sometimes reads my stuff (not this blog, she doesn't know about this blog, PLEASE god let her never find this blog). Anyway. It's been living in my head rent free so I'm putting it here.
Dani's aunt has this little cabin up in the Catskills, on a lake that's honestly more like a big pond. There's maybe six houses around it and half of them are empty after August. No streetlights. No service unless you stand at the end of the dock and hold your phone up like you're offering it to god.
It was just the two of us. Her aunt was in Florida and gave Dani the key with one rule: "don't burn it down." We drove up Friday after Dani's shift, stopped at Stewart's for ice cream and way too many White Claws, and got there right as it was getting dark.
Saturday was perfect. We lay on the dock all day, read, napped, talked about everything. Her ex, my ex, whether we'd ever actually move to the city, her dad's new girlfriend who's like 31. Normal stuff.
Then the sun went down and it got really quiet. The kind of quiet you never get on Long Island. You could hear the water lapping against the dock and frogs going crazy somewhere and that's it.
We were sitting at the end of the dock with our feet in the water, kind of buzzed, and Dani said, "I've never been skinny dipping."
"Seriously?"
"Have you?"
"No," I said. Which was true.
She looked at me. I looked at her. She had that grin she gets right before she does something dumb.
"Dani."
"Nobody's here," she said. "Literally nobody. The Hendersons left last week."
"Who are the Hendersons?"
"Doesn't matter, they left." And she stood up and pulled her sweatshirt over her head.
I was laughing, nervous laughing, and she was laughing too, and then she just... kept going. Shorts. Bra. Underwear. Kicked it all into a pile and stood there for one second completely naked in the moonlight, and then she jumped.
The splash was so loud in all that quiet. She came up gasping and screaming "OH MY GOD it's so cold, Hannah, get in, GET IN."
And I stood up.
I want to get this part right. Taking my clothes off on that dock was the most free I've felt in maybe ever? There was nobody. Just trees and sky and Dani treading water below me. The air was cool and soft and I could feel it everywhere, in places air doesn't usually get to touch. I stood there a second longer than I needed to. Just feeling it.
Then I jumped.
The water was FREEZING. It punched all the air out of me. I came up and Dani was right there, dying laughing, and we were both screaming and splashing and my whole body was buzzing.
And then it stopped being cold. That's the thing nobody tells you. After like a minute your body adjusts and the water feels like silk. Like it's holding you. Swimming naked is SO different than in a bathing suit, I can't even explain it. There's nothing between you and the water. You feel it moving over every inch of you.
I loved it. Like really loved it. I floated on my back and looked up at the stars, there were so many, and I could feel the water on my chest, between my legs, everywhere, and I was thinking, why doesn't everyone do this all the time?
"Han," Dani said. "This is amazing."
"I know."
She swam over. We were both floating, and our hands bumped, and she grabbed mine and held it. Just holding hands, floating, naked, under the stars. Sounds so innocent when I write it like that.
It didn't feel innocent.
Here's the part I didn't tell her.
When we finally got out, she climbed the ladder first. I was still in the water, holding on, waiting my turn. And I looked up.
I've seen Dani in a bikini a million times. We've changed in front of each other a million times. I don't know why this was different, but it was. The moon was on her back, and water was running down her spine, and her hair was stuck to her shoulders in these dark wet ropes, and she bent down to grab her towel and I just... watched. I watched her the way I've always secretly wanted someone to watch me.
And I couldn't stop.
She turned around, wrapping the towel around herself, and caught me.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing."
"You're being weird."
"I'm cold," I said, which was the dumbest lie ever bc I'd literally just been going on about how warm the water felt.
She held her hand out to help me up. I took it. And when I was standing on the dock, dripping, completely naked, she didn't look away right away either. Just for a second. Her eyes went down and then back up to my face.
Or maybe I imagined that. I've been going back and forth for weeks.
She handed me my towel. "Come on. I'm starving."
We made grilled cheese at midnight. We sat on the couch wrapped in blankets with our hair still wet and Dani put on some dumb movie. And the whole time I was so aware of her. Where her knee was touching mine under the blanket. The fact that she was wearing just a big t-shirt and nothing under it. How she smelled like lake water and that coconut shampoo she always uses.
There's only one bed in that cabin that isn't buried in her aunt's stuff, so we shared it, which we've done a million times. Sleepovers, hotels, whatever. Never thought twice about it.
That night I thought about it like 400 times.
She fell asleep fast. She always does. She was on her side facing me with her hand on the pillow between us, and I lay there with my eyes open in the dark, listening to her breathe. I kept thinking about her back in the moonlight. Her hand holding mine in the water. The way she looked at me on the dock. If she did.
I wanted to touch her. That's it. That's the confession. I didn't even know exactly what I wanted, I just wanted to reach over and put my hand on her hip and see what happened.
I didn't. Obviously. I lay there completely still with my heart pounding, so turned on it actually kind of hurt, and I didn't move until the birds started up outside.
So. Things I've thought about since then, in no particular order:
1. I've never been into girls. I'm pretty sure. I mean I've thought girls were pretty, everyone does. But never like THIS.
2. Or maybe I have, and I always filed it under "I want to look like her" instead of "I want her." Which, I'm realizing, might not be the same thing.
3. Is it Dani specifically? Or is it the lake, and the dark, and being naked, and everything feeling allowed for one night?
4. Did she look at me? Did she??
We drove home Monday and everything was normal. We sang to the radio. She fell asleep in the passenger seat somewhere around Harriman. She texted me "best weekend ever 🖤" when she got home and I stared at that heart for like ten minutes.
I want to go back. Not even just to the lake. To that exact moment, standing on the dock with no clothes on, the air on my skin, and its so quiet, and she's right there in the water calling my name.
I think about it every night. Every single night. I'm a little embarrassed by how often.
I'll let you know if anything ever happens. Or doesn't. Probably doesn't.
But maybe.
xo, H