live like we're { dying } tomorrow // koi + ev

Koi answered towards the sea. “Hey, my favorite thief. Gills are gross. Too slimy.”

He checked the gold watch on his wrist, a souvenir from their debut. He’d had a feeling that Evelyn wouldn’t be able to refuse his challenge from the day they’d met, but he was still pleasantly surprised to see she’d been on time. Seven on the dot—the sun would be setting fairly soon.

Returning her grin, he pushed himself up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the cliff, his feet dangling over the edge. Just sitting there, looking down at the ocean, made his heart race. Of course, he wouldn’t tell Evelyn that he’d been an hour early. He didn’t want to seem too excited, but he definitely was very excited.

Koi looked her over. Since he always took his shirt off, he never worried about what he wore diving, but Evelyn was clad in some sandy shorts and a loose blue top. Hopefully it wouldn’t fly off.

“Are those your diving clothes? You know, you could just go shirtless like me,” he offered.

As Evelyn took a look at the scenery, Koi fought the urge to fake-push her off the cliff, just to see if she’d yell. So far she’d been perfectly cool and collected about things that had seemed risky to him. How far would that coolness go when she jumped?

“You won’t kill yourself, this is an easy cliff. Have you ever dived before?” It was a rhetorical question, because he immediately began demonstrating with his arms in the space around them. “Good technique is key. You’ll want to stand up really straight, arms above your head, knees bent, like this. Then push with your legs. When you’re in the air, arch your back until you feel yourself straightening out. Got it?”

He paused to make sure she was taking it in, then continued. “You’ll want to land with your legs down. Point your toes towards the water.” Koi pointed his toe at her. Please don't try to show me up and land on your face, he begged silently.

“When you hit, stretch your body out, like a star. Make yourself big. Bam!” With a big jump, he punched the air and threw his legs out to his sides. He realized he probably looked ridiculous, but it was better than giving her bad advice. Although he'd said she wouldn't kill herself, he really just didn't want her to be too nervous to think straight. “That will keep you from going under too deep.”

“Okay Sea Legs, show me everything I just showed you.” 

Ev’s demonstration made it impossible for Koi not to laugh, but he mostly held it in as he watched. Everything she was doing looked right so far; he just hoped she could apply it while in midair, plummeting to the water a hundred feet below.

“So who goes first?” she asked.

Koi laughed. “Nice try,” he said, ”but I know if I go first, you might leave me hanging down there.” And if she went first, he wouldn’t be close enough to make sure she was okay. ”We’ll jump together. Same time.”

Unclasping his watch, which was a few sizes too big for his skinny wrist, he tossed it onto Evelyn’s shirt heap. Turning his back to Evelyn, he freed himself of his T-shirt, tossing that aside too. He knew his ribs were visible against the skin on his back and chest, and he liked it—but he didn’t know if Evelyn would. He’d never cared much about what people thought of his appearance, but she was different, someone he was afraid to scare away. As he stepped slowly towards the edge, he crossed his arms over his bare chest.

“You ready?” he asked. He thought about offering her his hand, but he was scared she’d forget to let go, and that could be dangerous for the both of them. ”Don’t forget to breathe, okay? I’ll meet you at the bottom.” Koi bent his legs, stretched his arms high up over his head, and waited for Evelyn to do the same.

“Here we go.

One.

Two.

Three!”

Each jump was a little different, but the sensation was the same each time.

The adrenaline pumping through his temples, his toes, his fingertips; the hush of the wind rushing past his ears; the embrace of it on your bare skin. He always felt like howling as he fell, but he had always hesitated to break that perfect shroud of silence, this quiet space that you could feel on your skin on your way to the water. The space between the ridge and water was holy—each inch of it was only to be experienced for fractions of a second. Only the seagulls could hang there suspended, gliding through it.

The fall felt like forever, but for Koi, it was never long enough.

The water was colder than he’d expected, and it sent a shock through his limbs that threatened to steal his breath away. Holding onto that air for dear life, he kicked his legs hard until the crown of his head broke through the surf, his black hair flattening against his face. Right as he surfaced, he saw Evelyn hit the water, and he grinned.

He waited for her to come up. Precious seconds passed. His smile faltered. Finally, he saw her red hair break through the surface, her arms thrashing at the water.

“Koi!”

Something was wrong. She’d never said his name before.

“Evelyn!”

This was the visceral adrenaline, not the kind he was used to. It took over his body, and his vision was a tunnel pointed straight toward Evelyn. With all the strength he had, he swam towards her, taking hold of her body in his arms, holding her on his back. They weren’t far from the shore, but it was far enough to make the prospect of carrying her there seem risky. But he had no choice. “I’ve got you!”

It was a battle against the waves, and Koi was giving it everything he had. He was a strong swimmer by himself, but he’d never carried anyone else, and it was showing. She was heavier than he’d thought—she might have been more muscular than him. Water flowed into his mouth, and he coughed it back out, kicking hard against the evening tide. He had to keep her head above the water. Progress was slow and painstaking.

The wet sand under his toes was the most wonderful thing he had ever felt.

Gasping for air, muscles aching, his heart on its knees, he pulled her weakened body by the wrists into the shallows, where the tides lapped against their ankles. He kneeled beside her, propped her shoulders up on his lap, moved her hair out of her face. “Evelyn! Talk to me, are you okay?”

“’m fine,” Evelyn croaked, but Koi knew that she wasn’t fine when she had tried to reposition herself and flopped back into the sand. For a second, he couldn’t believe the way she’d jerked out of his arms, like she was disgusted that he’d been trying to help her. The gesture had knocked him right out of his adrenaline rush. Couldn’t she at least say thank you for saving her life? There was no way he’d been overreacting; she had definitely been in grave danger of drowning.

”You don’t seem fine,” Koi insisted. She was stubborn, but he was sure he would have to be too. If Evelyn was badly hurt, it would be his fault, and he had to do something about it.

What would his parents do? He leaned over in front of her so he could check her eyes—they were shaky and unfocused. Judging by the way she was talking to him, though, she didn’t seem to be in shock. And Koi had never heard of any cliff diver experiencing a major spinal cord injury from a backflop, so it was unlikely that she was seriously injured. But it was still possible that she was badly bruised.

”Just hold onto your pride a sec, I need to check you over.” Hesitantly, he raised a hand to the skin on her back and hovered over it, then pressed gently against a spot that was red. “Does it hurt here? Can you give me a scale of one to ten?”

“Negative three,” Evelyn hissed. Koi shook his head and watched her expression carefully as she tensed up, then relaxed. “Maybe a five,” she corrected. Although he hadn’t known her long, he knew enough to guess that the pain was more than a five. And that meant she probably had some serious bruising on the lower back of her ribcage. “Your little dive beat me black and blue, huh, Bird Boy?”

“It’s just a lot of red so far,” he said. But it will be. Under different circumstances he would have engaged her clever banter more easily, but right now his mind was elsewhere. What if there was something under the bruises that was worse? Something he couldn’t fix on his own? No, he needed to trust his instincts on this, or it would haunt him for the next month.

”Looks like you just have some nasty bruises on your skin and your ribs. It’s gonna hurt for a week or two, bad. But it’s not as severe as it could have been.” If I hadn’t saved you, that is. If you had drowned. But he had to stop thinking of it that way, he reminded himself. It was his fault for not training her well enough in the first place. Maybe there was something he could have done better to avoid all of this. It was like there was this burden on his shoulders and he'd blamed it on her obstinance as a reflex, but he knew he was the root of the problem. Now he had to make up for it however he could.

”It’s gonna be hard for you to stand up straight. Can I walk you home? Give you a piggy back ride, or at least prop you up on my shoulder? Koi hoped to high heaven, Please don’t try to walk by yourself. He knelt with one knee up, arms at the ready in case she needed help standing.

“Yeah, that’s for sure.”

Another thing was for certain—Evelyn was constantly surprising Koi with just how strong she really was. Of course, sometimes that strength was mostly stubbornness. Right now though, he had to hand it to her. Suggesting diving again right after something as traumatic as this could have been? Walking by herself, with a few bruised ribs? That was definitely tough, mind and body.

He wondered if the fall had hurt her pride as much as it had hurt her back. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too hard on herself for it, but seemed all too likely that she would be.

As Evelyn stepped ponderously through the sand, Koi walked slightly behind her to maintain a watchful eye. Though it might have been a trick of the sunset, her back was starting to turn purple now. It had always been easy for him to get lost on the beach, because it all looked the same to him after a while, but he did his best to pay attention to the route they were taking in case he needed to find her in an emergency.

Soon, Koi found that he’d been paying a little too much attention—Evelyn was really passing him up. Striding back towards her, he picked up the conversation. “You might not believe it, but I’ve had a few bad jumps too. My third time diving, I landed flat on my chest. Knocked the wind out of me real good.” He laughed, but the memory still made him uneasy years later.

There was a pause, then his voice lowered, pensive. “The most important thing is to get right back to it, though. As soon as possible. Otherwise, the memory of the pain cements itself in your head, and it’s all you’ll be able to think about when you try to jump again. So I guess what I mean is, you have to go with me again.”

Awkwardly, Koi realized that he’d made a statement rather than a request. But he let the words stay there in the air between them, hoping she would agree, hoping to hear that she wasn’t too scared to try again with him.