Naked. Tonight would be the night that he would go completely naked. He wasn’t sure at all if this was a brilliant or a terrible idea. He’d see what the others did. Tom would absolutely, yeah of course he would. Josh probably would too. As for the girls – well that seemed to depend on so many things: the weather; the light; the atmosphere; the mood. He really didn’t know if he wanted her to go naked. In one way it was so obvious that he should want her to, in another it would sort of spoil things, but he wasn’t quite sure why or how.
He shook his head. What on earth.
He’d been sat in the pub, with all his mates, and for the last two minutes, whilst they chatted, and drank, and laughed, and took the piss, and rolled roll ups, all he’d done was think about who would be naked later on. Pitiful really.
“Hey Ben, penny for ‘em?” That was Charlie, beautiful Charlie with the easy smile, and the freckles, and the gentle laugh that made him melt, ache and be sad, all at the same time. Way out of his league.
He turned to her and smiled “Trust me Charlie you really don’t want to know. “ Should he tell her what he was thinking? Are you joking!
She fixed him with those big brown eyes and the rest of the noise, the chatter, the laughter, melted away, faded into the distant. She tilted her head, smiled, a little sadly he thought, and mouthed “You ok?” He smiled back, nodded and turned away, tears brimming in his eyes. Maybe tonight would be the night when he told her how he really felt about her.
“Hey Ben, up for it?” yelled Tom.
“Course mate, course”, he replied.
“Bout an hour then. Get going before they all kick out.”
They tumbled out forty minutes later, full of beer, and smoke, and laughter, and friendship. Five of them. Two sort of couples and him. At the back whilst the others, a few feet in front, laughed and sang and nudged and flirted. Tom and Charlie, Rach and Josh, and Ben.
They stopped for roll ups and Tom started singing, whirling about in the road, windmilling his arms about:
“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I’m miserable now.”
And then they all joined in, even him, everyone singing the last five words over and over again, whirling about on the pavement in a big, young, glorious, drunken mess.
They headed out of town, the street lights getting fewer, the houses sparser, until they reached the outskirts. Here, where there were no streetlights, it was properly dark, and, what with the beer and everything, they kept bumping into each other until Charlie produced a small torch from her bag. She shone the thin beam along the road as they all pretended to walk on on it, like tight rope walkers, fearless of the drop below.
As they neared, a sense of purpose fell over the group; getting in wasn’t difficult, but tonight it was a little darker and they all felt a little drunk. It had become a late summer ritual. Not always the same group, but a core of about three or four. Ben was always one of them; always one of them because he had never left home, never left the small market town that he longed to leave but didn’t know how to. And so whilst the others went off to university, or worked and travelled abroad, or fell in love, he was the one constant, the one that would always be reliably here in the long summer holidays. The ritual had been taking place for the last six or seven years, in the melancholy, dog days of summer.
The big outdoor swimming pool was on the outskirts of town. In their childhood they had spent the long summer holidays there, almost every day. Get an all day ticket, meet in the morning, cycle home for dinner and then go back in the afternoon. They’d lounge about on the grass, reading books, running to the pool when it got too hot, lazing about, chatting, enjoying life, not knowing or caring what would happen to them later in life, when it all got tricky, difficult, serious.
Then later, when pubs and relationships took hold, they would wait until dark and climb over the fence, revelling in the danger and the illegality of it all. And the excitement of night swimming.
Climbing over the fence was the easy part, keeping quiet the hard part. The pool had been shut now for a few days, the summer over. They’d been caught once before, been given a ticking off by the police, warned not to do it again, parents would be contacted etc etc. They all knew the layout of the pool, the changing rooms. The girls, with small torches, headed for the changing area.

Ben wandered off alone, keen to get in, to feel the water completely enveloping his skin. He was always happiest in the water, free of the restrictions of clothing, the lightness and caress of the water.
He saw a light moving slowly towards him, a small beam pointing at the ground. Charlie.
She walked right up to him; so close and quiet that he could feel her breath.
“Tom’s such a pain, isn’t he?” She whispered in his ear.
Ben nodded. She had the small beam pointing up between them both, lighting up their faces.
Charlie was a good head smaller than him and was peering up into his face, smiling that smile that broke his heart. He was aware that she was wearing a swimsuit. That was good. In the small beam of light he could see the freckles on her face, notice the soft hairs on her arms, the small scar on her collar bone. His heart raced.
She took a small step forward, their bodies almost touching, put her hand on his shoulder, leant up and kissed him softly on his cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here Ben.”
And she smiled once more and walked over to where the small group was already giggling quietly, suppressing the excitement to come.
Yes tonight he would tell her, and she would understand, and she’d tell him that she felt the same way about him.
He stepped out into the pool area, just making out the shape of the raised edge of the pool itself and the diving boards. He kept his hands outstretched waiting for the touch of the steps and the rails. He put his foot on the first step, carried on past the two foot springboard (mustn’t use that, it rattled noisily), past the five foot board, scraping his shin lightly on the metal rung, up until he reached the broad top board, the one with the railings around the edge. Although it was dark (there was no moon at all) he could tell he was high up, could see the outskirts of the small town, the lights in the distance.
He stood on the edge of the board, his toes just over the edge. He swayed forward slightly – whoa there. It was a full twelve feet into the dark water below. If it were light he’d consider diving, but not tonight. Tonight would just be a careful drop off the end, legs together, enter the water straight as an arrow. With any luck he would just touch the bottom of the pool, twelve feet below the surface. He calmed himself down, took a deep breath and looked up at the stars, winking and twinkling in the pitch black sky. He thought again about what she had said. And that soft, soft kiss on his cheek, lingered just long enough to mean more than, well more than just a peck on the cheek. Was this as good as life got? Was this the happiest he was ever going to be?
And so with this thought, Ben stepped forward, and dropped into the darkness.
There is some small consolation I suppose in that the last words Ben heard, before his poor, young, beautiful body was shattered beyond repair, were the words of Charlie, the Charlie who he would never kiss, never hold, never make love to. And even though she shouted these words out loud as he was falling through the air, he seemed to only hear them softly inside his head, as though she were whispering them gently into his ear:
“Ben, come back inside, they’ve drained the pool. “