Rebound Flames: Aquarium After Midnight

I still can’t believe I did it. Twenty-eight years old, Black, freshly single in the ugliest way possible, and instead of crying into another glass of cheap wine I broke into the public aquarium after midnight like some reckless teenager. My ex had been balls-deep in some random girl when I walked in on them two nights earlier. The image wouldn’t leave me alone. So there I was, Monica, slipping past the unlocked service gate I’d noticed on a school field trip years ago, needing the dark and the water and the silence more than I needed dignity.

The main hall was blue. Everything glowed that deep underwater cobalt, tanks humming soft and constant. Sharks drifted like lazy thoughts behind thick glass. I walked the empty corridors in my tight black jeans and a thin white tank that clung to my braless tits, nipples already hard from the chill. My dark skin drank in the light; every curve looked richer, almost liquid. I told myself I just needed to breathe. Then I saw him.

He came up from the access stairs near the big reef exhibit, still damp, a white maintenance diver in a half-zipped wetsuit peeled to his waist. Tall, maybe six-two, solid muscle under pale skin that looked almost milky under the blue lamps. Wet blond-brown hair stuck to his forehead. Tool belt. Name tag that said Trent. Thirty-two, I later learned. He stopped dead when he spotted me.

“We’re closed,” he said, but there was no bite in it. His eyes did a slow, obvious travel down my body and back up. “You know that, right?”

“I know.” My voice came out huskier than I meant. “Needed the quiet. Don’t call security. I’ll leave in ten.”

He didn’t reach for a radio. He just tilted his head, studying the way the tank light painted my bare shoulders, the deep brown of my collarbone, the contrast of my dark hands against the railing. “You’re not the first person to sneak in after hours,” he said. “Usually it’s drunk college kids. You’re… different.”