At first, I had to do a double take. Surely, I wasn’t seeing my ex-girlfriend Brooklyn on my dock. What the hell would she be doing all the way out here, laying stomach down all while pointing a camera at the lake?

It wasn’t adding up, but sure enough, it was her. There was no mistaking it. That was Brooklyn Bridges.

I was speechless as I just stood there looking at her. I felt like I had been rocket launched directly into a time capsule. I had to really dig deep to remember the last time I saw her. At the time when I had last seen her years ago, she was getting ready to be married to some elitist millionaire from our home town with an ego bigger than this lake. Eventually, I knew it would happen though. I knew she was always meant for someone else.

My memory was ramping up. Everything came crashing back to me in a split second. I remembered how crushed I had felt after I had been socially dating Brooklyn in high school, and then I received the disappointing blow that she had gotten engaged to the governor’s son. Brooklyn and I hadn’t been involved in a serious relationship, or so I thought. It was more like friends with benefits, but I hadn’t realized how much I had cared about her until she slipped out of my fingers. By the time I was ready to tell her how I felt, it was too late.

At the time, I figured that she was just like all the other girls I had dated in high school. Shallow, materialistic and only interested in money. I had come to the conclusion that when it came to Brooklyn, beauty was only surface deep, but as long as the preppy-assed boyfriend had deep pockets, nothing else mattered. I had been so blindsided by her decision to ditch me for the pretty rich boy that I turned down a full ride football scholarship to join the Navy. I had just wanted to disappear off the map. I wanted to stay under the radar where I could never get hurt again. Good things happened for me while I served in the military, but I never forgot about Brooklyn.

Now here she was, more like a figment of my runaway imagination than a real person, standing on my dock. But that didn’t last long. To my astonishment, she called out my name, lost her balance, and tumbled backwards. She landed back first onto the water’s surface with a splashing plunk.

Everything happened so fast. I couldn’t react in time to prevent her from plunging in, fully clothed into the freezing water that had, by now, plenty of time to cool down in the brisk October weather.

“Hold on!” I exclaimed.

I didn’t even have to think twice. I jumped into the water after her, diving in with a plunge. The water was like a thousand tiny, prickly knives penetrating my skin at once. My clothes immediately became water logged.

I pushed myself through the denseness of both the force of the water and my saturated clothes. Everything felt heavy and soaked. I jolted my eyes open. The lake wasn’t clear. It was murky and hard to see anything in front of me.

There was a plume of bothered dust and dirt in front of me that had loosened with Brooklyn’s impact. That’s how I found her. The water wasn’t as deep here by the dock as it was closer to the middle. That worked to my advantage because I knew that I could catch Brooklyn before she sank too deep.

I remembered that she had known how to swim when we were in high school, but this was a different scenario. She hadn’t intentionally jumped into the water. She had fallen in, and I was sure the shock of what had happened was still racing through her mind, preventing her from being able to react quickly.

I fought against the bitterness of the cold. Brooklyn was trying to push herself to the surface of the water once again. Her arms and legs were flailing by her sides as she used up all her energy to try to swim to air.

I grabbed her under her arm pits and hooked her around my body as I maneuvered us both to the top. As soon as we surfaced, Brooklyn began panting hard, gulping in large batches of air. Her hair was matted to her cheeks and forehead. She was drenched from head to toe. Her body shook and shivered against me.

I pulled her on top of the dock once again and with a grunt, swung my legs over too. We sat there for several seconds collecting our breath. I glanced over at Brooklyn. Her eyes were widened in disbelief.

My eyes naturally trailed south. I couldn’t help but look. I was too curious to hold back. I saw a black lacy bra through her white t-shirt. Her nipples were fully erect from the cold. I was tantalized by her. All the same attraction and yearning I had for her all those years ago was now pulsing in the rod between my legs.

“Are you okay?” I finally managed in a raspy voice, pushing my inappropriate thoughts aside.

Brooklyn shook her head. “It’s gone.” Her voice shook as she spoke.

“Gone?” I was confused.

Brooklyn pointed her finger towards the lake. “My camera.” Her eyes and expression were a blend of empty numbness and somberness. She stood up and walked back to the edge of the lake and braced herself as if she were getting ready to dive back in.

“Wait!” I shouted and leaped back up to two feet. “What are you doing?”

We were both freezing our assess off, and she was worried about a camera? Well, that sounded about right? From what I could remember of Brooklyn back in school, she’d been completely dedicated to her work. She needed everything to be perfect.

Brooklyn’s eyes were shimmering with hysteria now. “That was a four-thousand-dollar camera. I can’t just leave it at the bottom of the lake. It has important pictures on it for work.” She pressed her hands to the side of her head. “Oh my God. Everything on there is going to be ruined.”

“I’ll get it. Don’t worry,” I blurted out.

“What?” She eyed me suspiciously as if I had lost my mind.

“I’ll go into the water and get your camera.” It was the truth, and I was going to be insistent on this one. I wouldn’t let Brooklyn get back in the water.

“I’m just upset that I lost it, but you don’t have to do that.” She gave me an inspecting side-eyed glance.

“I kind of scared you, so yes, I do.”

“Blake…” she said, quietly. “It’s really you.”

I chuckled. “Yes, it’s me.”

“I…” She shook her head.

I was just as surprised as she was to run into her like this.

“Hey, if I’m going to get that camera out, I need to go in now. Stay here on the dock.”

I dove back in before she had another chance to protest.

The water was just as excruciatingly cold on the second plunge as it was on the first. It knocked the wind out of me. I had positioned myself to dive in the exact spot where I had found Brooklyn.

The lake water burned my eyes. It was freezing, but I forced myself to keep them wide open. I fumbled on the bottom of the lake, skirting my hand across the mud and muck. Finally, my hands hit something hard.

I scooped the camera around my red and raw fingers. The cold had already made my fingertips feel prickly like pins and needles. I pushed myself to the surface and back onto the dock.

At first, Brooklyn’s eyes flickered with relief to see that I had found her camera, but when she picked it up and began toying with the buttons, her expression turned to distress. She looked crestfallen.

“Just as I thought. It won’t turn on.” I heard the pain in her voice.

I wished there was something I could do to take it back. If I hadn’t startled her when she was in full out concentration mode before, none of this would have ever happened.

She leaned over the camera, taking bits and pieces off of it, seemingly taking it apart. “Ruined,” she huffed under her breath. “I can’t believe this…the magazine…deadlines…” she was only speaking in fragments.

I studied her. Now was my chance to get a really good look at her. She was still slender yet curvy in all the right places. Her t-shirt and her jeans clung to her skin. She looked like she could enter and win a wet t-shirt contest right now. I wondered how she would react if I mentioned that. I would only be trying to make her feel better, but somehow, I thought she might take it the wrong way.

I let her fuss over the camera for a few more minutes. I didn’t want to get in the way. Clearly, she was having a moment to unravel, and I owed her the time to vent through her frustrations.

“I’m sorry…” I said after a couple of minutes. I didn’t know what else to say. I just needed to be able to fill the void with something, anything.

Brooklyn looked at me as she continued to pick apart pieces to her camera. It was more like a glare than anything else. She didn’t respond. She focused her attention back on the camera. I wanted to reach out and touch her. I craved to wrap my hands around her waist and pull her close to me, just like old times.

I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut. What the hell was I doing? It was no use trying to rediscover the past. That’s why they called it the past. It was long gone and forgotten. I couldn’t unearth those same demons that used to haunt me. I had already healed from my love for Brooklyn, yet here she was again, staring me down. I didn’t know what to say. It was like receiving a punch in the face from the universe.

Brooklyn glanced up at me again. This time she turned around and faced me. My heart pounded, practically out of my chest. My pulse whooshed through my ear drums like a marching band drum line. I swallowed hard and met the intensity of her gaze. Those eyes of hers, they had a magnetic effect on me. In the end, I had to look away. Her stare was bringing back memories.

As soon as I glanced back at the lake, Brooklyn picked up her camera bag, threw the contents of her destroyed camera back into it and stormed past me.

“Where are you going?” I called out. I didn’t expect an answer. Nor did I receive one.

It was then that I glanced up and saw that her SUV was parked in a little parking lot next to the embankment. She must have taken the dirt road leading from the access road off the highway to get here. That explained that part, but I was still puzzled as to why she wouldn’t say anything to me before entering my life again out of nowhere and exiting as quickly as she’d arrived.

I followed behind her, jogging to keep up because she had already plowed ahead a good distance away. I had to narrow the gap between us before she disappeared into her car and peeled out of the parking lot.

She was still soaking wet. I had blankets to give her or at least a warm cup of tea. Something about the angry way she was charging back in the direction of her car told me that she would decline either offer if I gave them to her.

“Brooklyn?” I yelled again.

She didn’t even give me the liberty of turning around to glance my way, but I was in hot pursuit. She wasn’t going to slip through my fingers again.