After-Hours Pool: Her Best Friend's Father

The backyard smelled of chlorine and cut grass, the kind of late-summer heat that clung to skin even after midnight. Imani slipped the sliding glass door shut behind her and stood barefoot on the warm concrete, listening. The house was empty. Petra and her mother had flown to Miami three days ago; Franklin was supposed to be in Chicago until Friday. House-sitting meant watering the plants, bringing in the mail, and—according to Petra’s last text—using the pool whenever she damn well wanted.

She wanted.

Imani peeled off her tank top and shorts in one smooth motion, then hooked her thumbs in the sides of her plain cotton panties and pushed them down. The air kissed her bare breasts, her stomach, the soft thatch between her legs. She was twenty-two, lean from mornings at the campus gym, dark skin gleaming under the underwater lights that turned the pool into a glowing turquoise rectangle. For a second she just stood there, nipples tightening, already half-wet from the thought of cool water and cooler silence.

She dove.