Coming up for Air

There are many benefits to being a marine biologist. Artistic liberties taken regarding coral reproduction.

***

At the beginning of every semester, I think to myself, 'I can do it. I can take this 8AM class. I can be a morning person.' And every semester, without fail, I find myself here, bolting down the halls, perpetually late. My converse shoes squeak on the vinyl floor as I burst through the doors of room G2.16, a solid half hour late.

'Sorry! Sorrysorrysorry!' I tumble in, red-faced and out of breath.

Professor Strand greets me with a wide grin. 'Minerva! Thirty-one minutes late this time; I think that's a record!' she says, adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses. 'You haven't missed a thing--I'm sorting the class into groups of three for your first field report project! You--' she pulls a piece of paper off the desk with a flourish, '--are in group three, with Rebecca and Otis.'

Becca and Otis. Only the two cutest people in Coral Ecology, the two classmates I've been lusting after since the beginning of the year. I look towards the back of the class. There's Otis, the one too large for his chair, his curly black hair haphazardly pulled back into a bun. He gives an enthusiastic wave as he balances his chair on its two rear legs, an accident waiting to happen. Next to him sits Becca, the athletic blonde who looks like she's just walked out of a swimsuit catalogue. Her boardshorts seem to get smaller and smaller every time I see her, and it takes every ounce of restraint not to ogle her like a creep. She shoots finger guns at me and winks, and my stomach swoops.

I take the seat next to her, and she grabs my arm and leans into me, whispering, 'Thank god we're together, Minnie.' She's so close I can smell her sunscreen. 'I don't think I can wrangle this terror with anyone else.'

'Terror?' Otis says, offended. 'I think you mean--'

As if on cue, he loses his balance and his chair tips backwards. He lands in a sprawl with a loud thud, and his shirt rides up, exposing a strip of brown skin and the trail of hair beneath his bellybutton. My mouth goes dry, and I have to force myself to tear my eyes away from the sight.

I do not objectify Māori men

, I remind myself, face hot.

Otis rights himself, tucking stray curls back into his bun with a self-deprecating chuckle.

'See what I mean?' Becca whispers conspiratorially, breath hot against my ear. 'The guy can't even sit on a chair.'

Strand interrupts us. 'Settle down, you three. Your assigned coral is Porites Porites--write that down, I won't repeat it. Moving on to group four...'

Tuning Strand out, I immediately flip open my textbook, thumbing the pages until reaching the aforementioned coral species. Becca leans over my shoulder and reads aloud. 'Porites, also known as hump coral--'

Otis sniggers. 'Heh, I bet this coral knows how to have a good time.' His shit-eating grin is blinding, but Becca only rolls her eyes.

'Otis please, I am begging you to take this seriously,' she says, her voice stern.

'I don't know what you mean,' Otis replies, all mock innocence, 'I'm being very serious. Look how serious I am. Let's be serious and study...

hump

coral, heh heh.'

Ignoring the way my face must be lobster-red by now, my fingers clutching my textbook for dear life, I clear my throat and continue reading from where Becca left off. 'Also known as hump coral, or finger coral--'

Otis guffaws loudly. 'I bet this coral--'

'Please, no,' Becca begs, holding her face in her hands. 'You really aren't as funny as you think you are.' But her voice betrays her--I can tell she's biting back a smile.

Otis pouts. 'I don't have to take this abuse. I'm going to sit next to Minnie.' He pokes his tongue out at Becca before dragging his chair with a horrendous screech until he's sitting to my left. 'You won't bully me like Becca does, will you, Minnie? You're nice to me.'

'I'll certainly try my hardest,' I reply sweetly.

'See, Bex?' Otis says, leaning over me, 'Minnie is nice to me.' He drapes his arm around me, and suddenly I struggle to breathe.

'Um, anyway,' I manage to choke out. 'Let's get back to Porites.'

'Minnie's right,' Becca says, and she scoots her chair even closer to me until I'm sandwiched in between the two of them quite comfortably. I can't bear it. Becca leans even closer to see my textbook and taps on the page. She says, 'We must Porite-ise the Porites, ha-ha. Get it? Because Porites kinda sounds like prioritise? It's a play on words--'

'Quit while you're ahead, Bex,' says Otis drily, and I can't help but giggle. I'm a little lightheaded at the proximity between the three of us, and my thoughts are a mess. A filthy, filthy mess of other ways in which I could be sandwiched between Becca and Otis.

Becca has no comeback, so she pokes her tongue out at him instead.

Don't look at her mouth like that!

'Anyway, my two good friends,' Otis says, 'once this project is all over, and each of us are top of the class, you two ladies are formally invited to engage in some Porites Porites activity in my dorm, if you get what I mean.' He waggles his eyebrows. He doesn't know how enthusiastically I would take him up on that offer.

But Becca looks sceptical. 'What do you think he means by that, Minnie?'

I respond with a wide-eyed and innocent blink. 'Form symbiosis with zooxanthellae, maybe?'

Becca tilts her head back as she laughs, and I want to lick her neck.

Strand continues droning on about the field project--diving next Tuesday at eleven--but it barely registers. I'm too busy thinking about something else entirely, getting myself all worked up and praying nobody notices.

That I manage to make it out of class alive is nothing short of a miracle.

***

I met Becca for the first time on my first day, signing into the dorms. I waddled into the building, hunched under the weight of my massive backpack, dragging yet more luggage behind me, and there she was. The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, lounging at the sign-in desk, flipping through a dog-eared paperback. She had a classic swimmer's build: athletic and broad shouldered, tan skin and windswept blonde hair. A sticker plastered to her chest declared her name: '

BECCA

'.

I was taken aback at her beauty, and when she glanced up from the novel she was reading, I just stood there, staring blankly, gulping like a guppy. She shot me a lazy smirk and I knew I was done. She tossed her novel to the side and stood.

'You look like a hermit crab under all that! Let me help you,' she said. She eased the bag off my shoulders with warm, strong hands. She towered over me--I barely reached her shoulder, in eyeline with her breasts.

'Let me sign you in.' She turned around, bent over the desk, and shuffled around for something, her miniscule blue boardshorts riding up her ass. I tried not to look, I really did. My face flushing, feeling like a creep, I couldn't tear my eyes away from her long, lean legs, the curve of her ass, the smooth contours of her hamstrings.

Straightening up, she pulled out a clipboard. 'Name?' The way she bit her lip as she smiled at me--she must have caught me leering.

'Minnie. Um, Jeong. Minerva Jeong. It might be written as Jeong Min-ji, but my English name is Minerva,' I stammered. I was sweating.

She ran a pen down a list of names. 'Jeong, Jeong... Ah, there you are.' A tick, turning around once more for a quick shuffle through a drawer (did she... stick her ass out further than before? Surely not), then suddenly she was tossing me a set of keys.

I missed.

I was looking at her ass again.

Awkwardly I grabbed the keys from the floor and when I stood up again, she was right there next to me.

'Nice to meet you, Minnie,' she said, holding out her hand. 'I'm Becca. I'm the RA for this dorm.'

I shook it, praying she didn't notice how I was trembling like a chihuahua. 'Hi Becca. Nice to meet you.'

She leaned over to look behind me, still holding my hand. 'Anyone helping you move in?'

I shrugged. 'Just me.'

'Bummer.' Then, without asking, she grabbed both of my bags and hoisted them over her shoulders like they weighed nothing at all, then marched down the hall. 'Your room is this way,' she called back to me.

I had to stop myself from swooning. From behind, I could see the muscles of her arms working--her triceps, her shoulders, her forearms. With her arms lifted like that, her shirt rode up, exposing the two dimples of her lower back. I scuttled after her.

'That book you were reading looked pretty interesting,' I said, desperate to make conversation.

She chuckled. 'Ha, yeah. Some pulp shit about killer sharks. It's my guilty pleasure.'

'Sharks are pretty cool,' I replied. I was looking straight ahead, trying my best not to drool over Becca's breasts bouncing under her low-cut shirt. She clearly wasn't wearing a bra, which was completely unfair. Truly, I was no better than a dirty old man. I kept my gaze firmly ahead.

Becca's face lit up, and she started rambling. 'Sharks are my favourite creatures. The apex predators of the ocean, elegant and beautiful and terrifying... Sharks are the reason why I'm studying marine biology. I'd love to work with sharks one day, help with conservation.'

She bounced on the balls of her feet, and her enthusiasm was adorable. It made me a little dizzy. I giggled along with her. 'That's so great that you've found your passion!'

'Hey, look, I'll show you a secret.' She stopped to lean down, dumping the bags on the floor. She pulled aside her hair like a curtain to reveal a small tattoo of a hammerhead, curved on the skin between the back of her ear and her hairline. 'Look, I have a tattoo behind my ear.'

I stood on my tiptoes to get a better look. She smelled like sunscreen and salt, coconut and pineapple. I traced my fingers lightly over the ink--all I really wanted to do was lick up the shell of her ear, whisper filthy things that would make her shiver beneath me, hear what she sounded like with my lips on her skin--

Okay, okay. Solidly in creep territory now. Turned on by an ear? Pull yourself together, woman.

I yanked my hand away like it had been burned. 'That's beautiful,' I said, avoiding eye contact.

She turned to me and gestured her head to the door to our right. 'Well, anyway, we're here. This is your room.'

I cleared my throat and my head, and held out my hand. 'It was nice to meet you, Becca.' I said, very prim and polite.

She looked amused as she shook my hand, steady and strong and powerful, just like the rest of her. I thought about what her hands could do to me. Where they could stroke, massage, plunge, choke--

'Nice to meet you too, Miss Jeong.' Her voice broke me from my disgusting thoughts, and I gasped, face hot, mouth dry. I couldn't look at her.

'Listen, hey. Minnie. Look at me.' She rested her hand on my shoulder, and I looked into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. 'Don't be nervous, okay? You're gonna love it here. If you need anything at all, you know where to find me.'

Then she smiled--a shark grin. I felt like helpless seal pup, begging to be devoured. I'd let her, too. I'd let her do anything she wanted to me, and I think she could tell.

'Well, see ya round!' she said, then turned on the balls of her feet and skipped back down the hall.

Thus began my hopeless crush on Becca.

***

I met Otis for the first time a few days later, running late to my very first class--the beginning of my tardiness habit. I was late, lost, and flustered, sprinting at full speed when I literally crashed into a massive, solid man, nearly twice my size. I gawped up at him from where I lay sprawled on the ground, and he seemed unfazed, standing tall in his green Henley shirt. His dark hair fell in loose curls down his shoulders, and he was casually popping sour lemon drops into his mouth.

Immediately, I started babbling, already in a tizzy, scrambling around on the floor for my scattered pages. 'Oh, my god, I'm so sorry, I'm just--I'm so late, I'm really late, and I don't know where room--' I paused to check my crumpled schedule, '--G3.04 is?'

'Hey, chill, tiny.' His laugh was deep and rumbly as he hoisted me up, lifting me with no effort at all. Snatching my schedule out of my sweaty hand, he gave it a once over. 'That's the lecture theatre,' he said, 'Fishery with Andrews, yeah? I'm heading there too. And don't worry--' he glanced his diving watch, '--we're not late at all. Andrews likes to faff around for at least twenty minutes before actually starting.'

I mustn't have looked convinced.

He nudged my shoulder. 'This class is such a bludge, don't even stress.' He smiled, teeth white against the brown of his skin, and I felt the knot of anxiety loosen slightly.

He held out his hand. 'Otis, at your service.'

'Minnie,' I replied. His hand swallowed mine, so big was the difference in size. It was warm and calloused, and my impromptu cardio session must have made me delirious--all I could see was filthy visions of what those hands could do to me. What his broad shoulders might feel like under my hands, him beneath me, clutching my thighs as I rode him. How his lemony sweet mouth would taste as I sunk my fingers into his hair, pulling at the nape.

'Minnie! Mini miniscule Minnie. An apt name for such a tiny lady.' He pulled me out of my obscene daydream by patting me on the head, as if I were a puppy. I could feel a blush forming on my skin as we walked together towards the lecture hall. 'I could just put you in my pocket and steal you!'

I pouted. 'Miniscule! I'll have you know I am named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and war.'

'Oh, Minerva, huh?'

'You know your ancient mythology?'

He shot me a crooked grin. 'I'm named after a myth too, you know. Otus the insatiable, a giant who stormed Olympus with his twin brother.' He crunched the lemon drop in his mouth.

'Giant, insatiable Otis? Now there's an apt name if I ever heard one.' I gestured to his packet of lemon drops.

He looked from the packet in his hands to me, then back again. 'You want one?'

I don't know what possessed me, but as response I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out. Delicately, he placed the lolly on my tongue, and I closed my lips around his finger, holding his stare. The air was electric between us until he cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly awkward.

My face heat further. Fuck. What could have possessed me to do something like that? Something so overtly horny? Shame curled through me, and I scurried to catch up with Otis as he strode ahead, still sucking on my lemon drop.

It couldn't have taken more than a few minutes to reach the lecture hall, but awkwardness stretches time. An eternity later, Otis opened the door to the hall for me. He placed his hand gently on my lower back to usher me in, and my knees wobbled. But I took a deep breath and carried on like I wasn't completely, stupidly consumed with lust.

Unfortunately, the darkness in the theatre only served to fuel my imagination further, as I spent that hour and forty minutes ignoring the lecture in favour of filthy fantasies of his fingers sinking into the flesh of my thighs, my own fingers tangled into his damp hair, his curls clinging to his skin as I make him sweat.

So anyway, needless to say I'm failing fishery.

***

The morning of the field trip hurtles into me and before I know it, I'm squeezing my pudgy belly into my wetsuit. It's a bit of an ordeal, but once I'm snugly inside I decide I look cute. Like a seal. A cute, fat seal.

The field trip is at eleven, and the sun is already high and scorching by the time I arrive, having slathered copious amounts of oxybenzone-free sunscreen over every visible inch of my pale skin. I'm jittering with excited energy--my first field project! This is what I've been waiting for, the opportunity to really get out there, see reef life up close and personal, teeming with fish and creepy crawlies. As I wait, I listen to the birds of the beach, the shrieks of seagulls and peeps and squeaks of welcome swallows. I dig my toes into the warm, wet sand, feel the sun on my face, and I'm at peace.

That is, until I spot Otis and Becca jogging up to me together, waving enthusiastically, both of them in their skin-tight wetsuits, leaving nothing to the imagination. Every curve, every bulge, every jiggle. My heartbeat kicks into high gear. I have no idea how I'm going to contribute anything of value to this project, what with them looking like that--Otis with his thick, muscular thighs, Becca looking effortlessly graceful, even jogging on hot sand. Their suits look painted on. I'm panting like a fucking dog.

'Got enough sunscreen, there, Minnie?' Otis jokes.

'Not all of us were blessed with enough melanin to avoid turning into a lobster,' I retort. 'If I make it to the end of the day without being burnt to a crisp, it will be a success.'

The three of us make our way to the boat, and the calm peacefulness I felt before is nowhere to be found. The closer we get to the boat, the more skittish I become, stomach turning jittery and cold as I think about what this project really entails.

On the boat, I fidget with my gear. There's an ocean of nerves roaring inside my head, I can barely hear a word of what the instructor tells us.

Becca squeezes my thigh. 'Nervous?'

'That obvious, huh?' I say. I attempt a laugh, but what comes out is more akin to a seagull's squawk.

'You'll be fine,' she assures me. 'Exactly the same as the practice rounds in the pool. Safer, even, because you've got Otis and me looking out for you.'

I give her a grateful, if wobbly, smile. 'I know.'

Otis leans over. 'Don't worry, Minnie, I'll punch any shark that takes a bite outta ya.'

'No you won't,' says Becca. She shakes her finger at Otis like a cross schoolteacher. 'All the sharks out here are adorable. If I see you harassing a wobbegong, I

will

end you.'

Professor Strand hands out our diving slates to take notes, and soon enough we're taking the plunge, diving down with a splash.

There's a swell of anxiety when I first take in the open sea. The disorienting blue eternity, the weight of water pressing in around me, the waves crashing above me. Otis takes my hand, the slates tied to our wrists clacking together in slow motion, and hand in hand we dive down, down.

The reef comes into view, and my nerves melt away.

Because there it is. The reef, full of colour and life, shoals of fish darting to and fro between swaying seaweed. Becca and Otis by my side, we float along, pointing out the familiar lifeforms. There are the yellow branches of the staghorn coral, there are the vivid, wiggly polyps of flowerpot coral in bright lilacs and greens, and there are the domed cups of honeycomb coral, and further on several more I couldn't begin to name, waving jellylike and soft, or rigid and stony, ruffled or smooth, neon bright or bone white.

And the fish! Fish of every colour imaginable: from the black and white polka dots of the barramundi cod to vibrant teals and fuchsias of parrotfish, grumpy looking little yellow gobies and a school of vibrant blue tangs.

From my right, Becca gestures, come look, and points to a white tipped reef shark, sleekly gliding along the depths. She holds her hand out and makes a circle with her thumb and index finger, the signal for okay. The shark isn't dangerous; it ignores us, and I watch on in awe. Otis squeezes my hand twice, and even though his mask I can see he's smiling. I realise I am too, smiling so wide it's uncomfortable around the scuba gear, but I can't help it. I can't remember ever being this happy.

Together we swim further out until we find our coral: the blunt, yellow-orange branches of the Porites Porites. We study the coral, take notes, and inspect. I feel at home here among the reef life, seeing and learning; I know this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.