It came from Outer Space

Jennifer, the best friend of the Ex, did not like me. She never even bothered to hide it. On my part, I had long ago analyzed our curt exchanges and discovered that we both put on poker-faces before we looked at let alone said anything to one another. That was our highest mutual courtesy.

We met at the swimming pool. She was in swimsuit, with a towel around her waist. I pulled on my frozen expression and prepared for a cold and very short conversation.

But she was strangely more socially inclined this day. "Are you crazy? Killing yourself for [The Ex]?"

 

Apparently, she had seen me swimming with a mindset far beyond fitness. She settled down next to me on the concrete, said "Don't take it too hard, she'll come around."

"She can keep Bryophyta if she wants," I said dismissively. "It's an insult!"

Jennifer listened patiently while I ranted and vented. How attentive she was! Or perhaps I had become quite a sight and steam was pouring out my ears at high pressure as emphatic condemnations exploded from my mouth and my hands wagged gestures all over the poolside. A vein also emerges at one side of my forehead while under duress.

I rarely hit the roof in the presence of perceived enemies. This was new. Perhaps I secretly wanted Jennifer to go and gossip to that best friend of hers about the strength of my feeling towards the new developments.

"Now you know how betrayal feels," said Jennifer when I finished.

The silence that followed was oddly comfortable, considering that this was Jennifer, and our interests hardly ever overlapped.

"You've got to teach me how to do butterfly," said Jennifer, after the mood had mellowed somewhat. "Without the madness."

"Right." Now that I allowed myself to smile at her it didn't seem so bad. "You've got to warm up first."

Jennifer immediately dived into the pool and swam to and fro, a powerful front crawl. I was using the time to recover my strength. And observing her lithe movements. And the way her booty cut the surface. It wouldn't be too hard to teach her butterfly. Might even be fun.

The lesson took almost an hour. Perhaps my teaching style was unconventional, but after a shallow introduction to technique, focus shifted irretrievably to rhythm and glide. "Coordinate! Breathe!" I called out repeatedly. When it became too theoretical I demonstrated practically. Eventually, Jennifer was able to cover two lengths of non-stop butterfly stroke. For a first time student, I thought it was splendid and said so. She congratulated herself by whooping and shaking her clenched fists above her head. Her excitement was infectious.

Time froze. There was a ticklish transitory lull as we stood in the shallow end, our chests rising and falling with heavy hyperventilation. A meaningful anticipation hung in the atmosphere. My vision was filled with shapely, full-bodied Jennifer in a wet swim-suit, breathing heavily.

The idea came from outer space. My hands found her waist. "Can you keep a secret?"

Without removing my hands from their comfortable perch, her hands rose to my shoulders, she leaned forward and said in my ear, "Depends what the secret is."

Hypothesis: our still-racing hearts had already given us a head-start of sorts. (Certain scientists say the same hormone - whatsitsname - is released during exercise that is released during an orgasm.)