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There’s a tidal wave coming my way, followed closely by an explosion of laughter. I duck under the water for the former just in time to catch the latter.

“Gotcha!” Beth giggles. “I got your hair wet!”

“You naughty thing,” I say. “You know I didn’t want to mess it up.” And then, without warning, I sweep my arms wide, gather water, and fling it at her.

Beth pinches her nose and ducks under the water in turn to avoid getting splashed. I throw more water at her, hoping to catch her on the way up, but it’s useless. She’s swimming under the water towards me. Before I can even think about backing up, she’s got a hold of my legs and she’s pushing me up until I capsize, laughing.

“I win,” she cries as she surfaces.

And then, she pauses, leaning over to side. I watch her bring her hands up to her mouth. I count, one-two-three… and then, whoosh, it rushes out of her.

“Psheew! Hep-shew!”

“Bless you,” I say.

***

In my head, I’ve suddenly taken a trip back in time. Rewind thirteen years, back to when my hair hadn’t started to thin and having bills to pay was a foreign concept. Summer seemed to stretch on forever and I remember those days being just like this one: the sun dazzlingly bright, not a cloud in sight, the heat stifling. I was a boy, almost fourteen years old, and my best friend was a freckled brown wisp of a girl named Andrea.

She lived only two blocks away. Her parents had more money than mine, so her house was nicer and she had a big room all to herself where we played together during the winters. In summer though, we hung out together in her back yard. She had a round aboveground pool that her Dad kept meticulously clean. We’d spend days there, coming out like wrinkled prunes after hours of swimming, diving, and playing with inflatable toys. Then we’d lie on her sun deck and dry off, only to jump in again as soon as we began to feel hot.

One day stands out especially brightly in my memory. It was sunny and hotter than hell. Naturally, I’d wandered down to Andrea’s place and we were cooling off in the water when we decided to have a contest to see who could hold their breaths under water longest.

I went first. Andrea had a waterproof Timex, and I still remember that I managed one minute and twenty-two seconds. I came up gasping for breath, my chest feeling tight like it was going to explode. When it was Andrea’s turn came up, she beat me by five seconds. She came up laughing, saying she was seeing spots.

“I beat you!” She laughed, waiving her suntanned arms into the air. “Ha ha, I’m the underwater queen of the world!”

I was furious with her for having beaten me. Well, not angry angry, just sort of pissed off in that I was beaten by a girl kind of angry.

“Oh yeah? Well since you like water so much, here’s some more!”

And with that, I started whooping and windmilling my arms, splashing water in her direction. Andrea shrieked and tried to swim away, but I was enjoying my little revenge and throwing water at her for all I was worth. When she decided to fight back, I forgot all about the battle I’d lost and became determined to win this new one. We were flinging water at each other with such gusto, I think we must have emptied half her pool. It was everywhere, filling our arms, up in the air, in our eyes, and-

“Stop, stop!” Andrea shrieked. “I’ve got water up my nose!”

I stopped immediately. Like she’d uttered some incantation. I’m glad I did; without that barrage of droplets between us, I could look at her face. Mouth trembling, dropping open while her brown eyes squeezed shut, she looked to be in agony. She stayed like that for a few minutes, ponytail dripping into the pool, then her face scrunched up, and she started to sneeze.

“Ettchew.”

And sneeze.

“Et-chew!”

And sneeze.

“Ettchew! Ettcheew! Et-cheww!”

And then, she just dived under the water. She didn’t stop sneezing though. I saw her head bob down and this little flurry of bubbles broke through the surface of the water. She gave a kick that drove her to the opposite end of the pool, sneezed again under the water, and then came back up for air.

I think that was the moment I first realised that Andrea was not just a friend, but also an actual girl, in the sense that some of my male friends had started using the word. They said it with a mix of respect and deep hunger, and in those few seconds, that’s how I was looking at Andrea. She was starting to grow breasts. Her wet hair shone in the sun. Her big brown eyes were looking red from the chlorine in the water. And she was sneezing.

Because something else hit me then. There was something interesting about seeing someone sneeze. I knew even then that ‘interesting’ was the wrong word – but at that age, I was too young to really put my finger on what it did to me. I just knew that the sight and the sound crystallised in my groin and made heat and hardness bloom there. I’d seen people sneeze before, and I’d found it sort of interesting, but not like that. Not like when Andrea did it that day in the pool.

“What’re you looking at?” Andrea asked.

“You. Sneezing.” I didn’t have any reason to lie.

“Well, stop it. It’s your fault for getting water in my nose.”

“It was sort of cool,” I grinned.

“Stop it,” she smiled back.

“It was funny when you sneezed under the water. You could see all these little bubbles come up.”

“Really?” Andrea gave a few strokes and swum closer to me. “Like how?”

I dipped under the water and blew water in between my teeth, as though I was sneezing. I wasn’t really, but after what I’d just seen, even pretending to sneeze like Andrea had just been doing gave me a sort of fluttery feeling. I did it twice in a row, and then I came back up.

“That is pretty funny,” Andrea agreed. And then, my heart started pounding when she said, “Oh, hold on, I need to sneeze again. I’ll do it under the water.”

And true to her word, I saw her start to look sneezy again, her cute little nose - peeling slightly from all the sun we’d been getting – wrinkling as she dove down under the shimmering surface. From my vantage point, I had an excellent view of her face as she tilted it upwards so I could see. Even now, I can still picture her, and the sight is one of the most erotic things I can imagine.

Her eyes tightly shut. Teeth bared slightly as she tilts her head back. That unmistakable expression as her brows knit and her mouth opens. Then, her chest heaves and she releases pent up air. Big silvery bubbles jetting not just from her mouth but through her nose too, filtering through the surface as her head is forced down by the sneeze.

Exquisite.

When Andrea came back up laughing, she said, “How was that?”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Hey, what’s wrong with your swim trunks?”

I don't think there was a thirteen-year-old boy on Earth that wouldn’t have been mortified by that question. I looked down and saw that I had an erection. I’d gotten a few before, especially waking up in the morning, but I was really embarrassed to have that happen in front of Andrea. Blushing and tongue-tied, I said,

“Maybe I’ve had enough water. I’ll go sit on the deck and dry out for a while.”

“Okay, suit yourself,” Andrea had shrugged. “I’ll swim a bit more and I’ll come out too.”

***

Back in the present, Beth asks: “Hello, anyone home?”

I smile as if I’ve just woken up. In a way, I suppose I have. “Sure.”

“Wow, you went really weird just now. What happened?”

“I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Beth sidles up to me, curious. And then, giving my crotch a rather obvious look, she adds, “Sure seems interesting.”

Feeling caught out, I flick water at her with my fingertips. “Just this girl.”

Beth gets that look I call her sourpuss face. It’s an expression she gets when she’s jealous. I’ve never told her, but secretly I think it’s dead cute. Her green eyes narrow and they get this kind of hooded, cat-like intensity. Her mouth tightens ever so slightly and I can see her dainty nostrils quivering. She pulls that face when she wants to pretend nothing’s bothering her when in fact something is.

“Oh,” Beth says. “Well, that’s nice.”

I put my arms around her waist and hug her to me. “Don’t be like that, you silly rabbit. I was thinking about a girl I haven’t seen for over ten years. We were just kids. I think she must’ve been my first ever crush. We played in her pool a lot when we were growing up.”

Beth is only slightly mollified. As though we weren’t just married three months ago and Andrea was someone I still regularly frequented.

“Not that kind of game,” I add, squeezing Beth against me. “We were too young, and besides, I didn’t love her like I love you.”

It’s trite but it works. Beth softens. My hard-on approves. I feel it give a twitch against the bottom of her swimsuit.

“Why were you thinking of her?” Beth asks.

“Actually, it was seeing you sneeze just now,” I say.

“Huh?” I think this is a perfectly acceptable answer. I think I would have said the same if I were in her shoes.

“I just remembered this one time when we were playing in the pool and Andrea – that was her name – sneezed. Only she did it underwater. We thought that was sort of cool.”

Beth gives me a weird look. “Isn’t that a bit unhygienic?”

“Darling, who cares? We were just kids. There were bubbles. It was funny.”

One of the things I like about Beth, asides for that cute face she pulls when she gets jealous, is that she’s very astute. “And that gave you a hard-on?”

“Uh, yeah.”

And then I laugh, because I can’t think of anything to say. To save myself further embarrassment, I let go of her and dive under the water. I push against the edge of the pool to drive away from her. I figure maybe a lap or two will cool me off. If only I could get the image of Andrea’s pretty preadolescent face out of my mind. The way she sneezed, the way it sent hundreds of tiny bubbles rushing towards me like ethereal promises…

“No wait, I want to hear this,” Beth says as soon as I go up for air at the end of the pool. “She sneezed under the water, and then what happened?”

“Nothing. That was it. Sneezing. Bubbles. We were just kids, that’s all.” I feel stupid.

“I’m always sneezing when I’m in the pool,” Beth says. “Do you find that interesting?”

I do, actually. I’d noticed Beth seems a bit sensitive to the chlorine in the water. One of the many reasons why I don’t regret having gotten our swimming pool installed even though it means I’ll have to work overtime for the next year to pay for it. My wife’s gorgeous when she sneezes. In a different way than Andrea, but she’s got a style that’s just appealing.

“Kind of. It’s no big deal. Lots of things you do turn me on. Hey, are you hungry? I could do with a bite to eat.”

“We just had lunch,” Beth says. She smiles. I’m treading water.

Then, without warning, Beth dives under and comes to join me. When she surfaces, I can see her eyes gleaming. She’s got that hungry look that lets me know she’s feeling frisky. And then, giving me a full view, she twitches her nose. Her eyes crinkle ever so slightly. I catch the subtle rise and fall of her small breasts and then I’m feeling hot all over again. I watch her tilt her head back and her eyes slowly shut. She looks like she’s concentrating. Then, without a word, she takes a deep breath and crouches under the water in front of me just like Andrea did all those years ago.

I can see it all happening as if I were in a dream. There’s a barrier of water separating us but I feel like it’s much more than that, as though time were winding back on itself as my wife’s brows knit and her nostrils flare. I see a flash of teeth before the sneeze over takes her, those magical bubbles flowing out of her mouth and nose in a silent torrent. It’s beautiful. And then she does it again. My view is still obscured by the bubbles of her first sneeze but I still get a good look, air being forced out under pressure as the itch in her nose forces her to convulse.

Spectacular.

Beth joins me above the surface. “Think I swallowed some water,” she chokes.

I’m too caught up to say anything, so I just stroke her back as she coughs.

“Whew,” she says when she’s done. “I think I must have gotten water up my nose too. It feels kind of irritated now.”

I wonder if she has any idea what she’s doing to me. “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself,” I say. And then, I risk asking, “How did it feel?”

“Weird,” Beth says. “I needed to sneeze and it just came out, but it was like I had to push it a bit harder than usual. You were right, there were bubbles. And they did feel sort of funny.”

I smile at that. Funny indeed. I can’t resist: “Did it feel unhygienic?”

“Okay, I know,” Beth gives a mock pout, “that was a stupid thing to say. Don’t make fun of me.”

“You know I’m just teasing.”

I go forward to gather her in my arms, but Beth takes a deep breath and slides back under the water’s surface. It only takes a few seconds for her head to snap forward as she delivers a liquid stream of sneeze-bubbles right against my crotch.

“Okay. That’s it, you asked for it,” I say as she comes up again. “That was so unhygienic, I’m going to have to teach you a lesson.”

In answer to my challenge, Beth takes off her swimsuit. I’m always amazed at how gracefully she undresses, while I’m always fumbling and nearly falling over taking off so much as a pair of shorts. So in about two seconds she’s feeling water swathing her naked body while I’m going, while desperately trying to get my trunks off before I suffocate. I suspect I’ve lost all macho credibility by the time I’m done, but Beth doesn’t seem to mind. She’s waiting for me, eyes closed, floating on her back with the sun catching the droplets of water on her flat stomach. At moments like this, I’m always stunned that a woman like that agreed to marry me.

But of course, I don’t tell her. “Don’t fall asleep on me now,” I say.

Beth pretends to snore. Then, one eye sparkles open and she says, “Oh, are you back? It’s been so long, I was getting worried you’d drowned.”

I dunk her down into the water next to me. When she breaks back to the surface, she’s laughing, and then-

“Hep-sheew!”

Good thing I took my trunks off. This gorgeous woman naked and sneezing next to me in the pool is just too much. She has time to do it one more time – “Psheww!” – before I’m on her. Beth laughs as I press my face against hers and kiss her deeply, tasting chlorine on her breath. Her lips press against mine, warm and liquid, as we melt into the water in a tangle of limbs. She takes my shoulders in her arms and presses down until we’re below the surface, kissing, water swirling around our lips, in our mouths and in our eyes. Beth’s skin feels hot against mine, her legs twining around my calves. We kiss until neither of us can stand it anymore and then we push back up into the air, only to start all over again.

We’re under the water when I enter her. I’ve heard wives’ tales about getting stuck because a vacuum gets created, but it’s all rubbish. Beth feels warm and slippery, and I have to force back a gasp of delight at the contrast between her and the cool water that’s tickling my balls. The two of us are like Siamese dolphins, joined at the middle, barely able to stay upright but past caring as I start making love to her in earnest. Beth leans against the side of the pool for support as I push her up again and again with my hips. The feel of the water heightens our arousal, and then –

“Psheww! Heh-epshew!”

***

I remember Andrea swimming around the pool while I dried off on the deck. She looked like she could have been part carp, zigzagging under the surface like she’d been doing it her whole life, a tawny brown streak with legs and arms moving in perfect fluid motions. Her hair shone when she came up for air, droplets sparkling on her eyelashes, making them look like gilded glass.

“I think I’ve got water up my nose again. I’ve got a tickle that just won’t leave.”

The sun’s rays were unrelenting, I remember, baking me as though I was made of clay. It was hot but the rays weren’t the only thing making me sweat. I watched my best friend, my best girl friend, laugh and caper under the water, still sneezing occasionally. Sometimes she’d do it above the surface and sometimes below, but the latter especially caught my fancy.

“Hey watch this, I’m gonna- guh- heh…”

I remember my groin throbbing, my erection not having subsided as I lay there to dry out. She had no idea what she was doing to me; I didn’t understand it myself, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off her. Her big brown eyes squeezing shut. Her budding breasts rising and falling in an oh-so-subtle rhythm. The freckles on her nose stood out as her nostrils quivered. Framed in the sun’s harsh light, she was breathtakingly beautiful, a girl of not yet fourteen preparing to sneeze.

“Heh-eh… heeeh… heh- oh God, it’s stuck… Heeeeh… Eh-eh-eh…”

Operating on pure instinct, I brought my hand down between my legs, squeezing my aching erection with my hand. It felt fabulous. My eyes never left her face; I was drinking in every single detail as though I’d been out in the desert without water for the first thirteen years of my life. I loved the way her small nose was tinged red from all the sneezing; I pictured it as a mess of tickles, irritated beyond belief. All the chlorine in the pool was conspiring to make this girl sneeze for my sole pleasure, over and over, teasing every molecule in her body into a state of frenzy.

“It’s gonna come out, I- ehh… I feel eehh-… feel it… Heeeh…”

In my head, watching her, I was replaying all the times she’d sneezed up until then, every bob of her head, every flex of her neck, every gasp and every release, until I was drunk on this exquisite cocktail of images, my hand squeezing my erection tighter and tighter.

And then that sneeze, that glorious, amazing sneeze.

“Eh… Eh-eh-eh… EttCHEEEW!”

I felt something happening in my groin, something leaden and hot and exquisite that I didn’t then have words to describe. I didn’t understand what was happening – I only knew that Andrea had just released the most amazing sneeze I’d ever seen.

Only it wasn’t just the one sneeze.

“Et-chew! Ettchew! Het-sheww!”

I saw her try and fail to pinch her nose shut against them. She just kept on sneezing, completely caught up in her nose’s irritation. And then, she did as she had earlier: she went underwater.

I lost it when that first bunch of bubbles hit the surface. I saw Andrea’s distorted image flickering under the water’s skin, convulsing as she sneezed again, and when that trapped air jetted out of her mouth and nose, it was just too much for me. The cloud of bubbles curled upwards and I groaned, aching to catch them and swim around with them until I lost myself. It was the first time I masturbated to climax. Intense spasms shook my penis and I felt warm liquid spatter against my shorts again and again as I watched Andrea give more sneezes down below.

I was as short of breath as she was when she came up. We were both red in the face, she from the violent sneezing, and me from the exhilaration of my first bona fide orgasm. Naturally Andrea had no idea what had come over me. I admit I wasn’t sure myself. I did feel, however, that telling her about what had just happened was probably not a good idea.

“Oh, that was bad. Did you see me sneeze? Under the water and everything?”

Had I ever! “Yeah. Are you okay now?”

“Yeah.” Andrea wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “My nose doesn’t tickle anymore. I think I should come out now.”

“Okay. Maybe you’re allergic to the pool or something,” I suggested, turning my back to her, worried that she’d see what had happened to me.

“I hope not,” Andrea said. “Hey, you want me to ask my mother if you can stay for dinner?”

I remember quickly taking another dip in the pool before Andrea had a chance to get a good look at me. I have no idea if I stayed for dinner. I suppose I felt a sort of puppy love for her for a while, but it never amounted to anything. Her parents moved away at some point. We wrote to each other for months, and sometimes called, but in the end we lost touch. Sometimes I still think of her, and wonder what happened to her.

And occasionally, when I’m alone, I sill think about Andrea, about that day at the pool, and about how it made me feel. Even after thirteen years, the memory can still power up feelings so strong that they nearly take my breath away.

***

“Oh. Ohhh…”

Beth is coming. I hear her breathing change and it’s lovely, deep and warm against my cheek as she takes long, slow breaths and her entire body tightens around mine. Then her inhalations speed up as it hits her in full and she makes a very small noise from deep in her throat. Her eyes are shut and she swallows hard, throwing her head back, savouring the moment. She’s beautiful like that. What I wouldn’t give to have a picture of this moment, to freeze time and enjoy these precious seconds forever.

“God honey,” Beth says when she opens her eyes, “I have no idea what’s gotten into you, but I like it.”

“Mm.” I suddenly feel guilty. “You just feel divine.”

And then, as if she’d been listening in to my private Andrea fantasy, Beth gets from feeling good to feeling absolutely fucking amazing.

“Wait, wait – I think I’m going to sneeze again.”

“Oh God.”

“I know, rotten timing. Just hold that thought.”

She tries to pull away, but of course, there’s no way in hell that I’m going to allow her to do that. On the contrary, I hold her tightly to me and stay perfectly immobile so I won’t miss even the slightest detail.

In my head, I hear Andrea again, that girlish voice undecided between childhood and adolescence: “It’s gonna come out, I- ehh… I feel eehh-… feel it… Heeeh…”

Beth’s tensing up, getting ready. It’s nothing as dramatic at that long ago sneeze in Andrea’s pool, not even remotely earth-shaking. I don’t have to wait for very long, and it’s just the one sneeze. Beth stiffens a bit, lets go of me to place her hands in front of her face so she won’t spray me. And then I feel her clenching into me, clenching around me, as she unleashes it over my shoulder: “Hep-shew!”

Only that’s not what I hear, not what I feel. My mind’s floundering, recreating Andrea’s face. It’s like I can feel bubbles in the water, drifting up from the past, a souvenir of summer getting me drunk on lust and love so strong I can hardly stand it. The boundaries between fantasy and reality, the past and the present, swirl together in a maelstrom until I’m completely lost. I see Andrea swimming in the pool, sleek as a seal, I see her convulsing under the shimmering surface, I see her face knotting up expectantly, and then I’m there, I can hear her as if it were happening all over again while I’m standing in a pool thirteen years in the future with a wife, my wife, a woman I love who’s name is Beth. And yet no woman in the history of world has ever sneezes as beautifully as Andrea does right at that second in my head: “Eh… Eh-eh-eh… EttCHEEEW!”

I hear Beth gasp as if she were miles away, clinging to me as I thrust into her again and again, pushing into her as deep as I can until at last I feel like I’m coming back into myself. I feel slightly dizzy, no longer sure whom I’ve been making love to: my wife or a ghost.

Beth kisses me full on the lips. “If that’s hygiene, love, I think you should start giving me regular lessons.”

I’m filled with a sense of loss as Andrea fades away into the past and I hug Beth tightly to me, feeling the water splash around us as a cool breeze starts up and runs playful fingers in my hair. And then I look into Beth’s eyes and I’m all right again, feet firmly on the ground, reality closing in on me again like a warm blanket.

“I love you,” I tell her.

And I do.