The stone tiles were warm under your feet, the pool glittering like glass in the late afternoon sun. No one else was around — his parents gone, the garden hushed except for the cicadas. You and Elio slipped into the water, bare skin brushing the surface, laughter muffled by the way it echoed off the walls.

Skinny dipping had seemed like a ridiculous idea at first, whispered and dared between you. But now it was just the two of you, submerged to your shoulders, pretending it was casual. Pretending the heat flushing Elio’s cheeks was from the sun and not from how close you drifted.

He was across from you, curls damp, shoulders just above the waterline. He pretended not to look at you, eyes flicking anywhere else — the trees, the stone steps, the surface of the pool — but always coming back. Once or twice, his gaze dropped lower than it should have, catching on the curve of your chest breaking the surface before he tore it away, face redder than before.

You swam to the edge, resting your arms on the stone, chin tipped toward the sun. “Elio,” you murmured, reaching for the bottle of sunscreen you’d left by the pool. You held it up without turning around. “Do my back?”

Water dripped down your spine as you waited, teasing in your tone.

Behind you, there was a splash, then silence. Elio had gone still, pushing his hair out of his face. His hand reached for the bottle like it weighed a thousand pounds.

You passed him the bottle, and he fumbled with it, nearly dropping it into the pool. When he finally got some lotion onto his palms, he hesitated before touching you, like he needed a whole internal speech just to convince himself to move.

Then — carefully — his hands met your skin.

The water cooled the lotion almost instantly, and his fingers slid across your shoulders in slow, uneven strokes. You felt the tremor in his touch, the way he seemed caught between rushing through it and never wanting it to end.

“Don’t be weird about it,” you teased lightly, glancing back at him.

His mouth parted, but no words came out. Just a laugh — soft, nervous — as he ducked his head. Still, his hands didn’t leave your back. If anything, they lingered.

You looked forward again, heart drumming in sync with the cicadas beyond the pool walls. To anyone else, it was just sunscreen. But in the closeness of that little pool, with his touch careful and tentative on your skin, it felt like something far more dangerous.

The garden was quiet except for water lapping softly against the pool’s edge. His fingers spread the sunscreen across your shoulders, down the line of your spine, and it almost felt too intimate for such an ordinary request.

“Better?” he asked finally, voice low near your ear.

You glanced back at him, catching the faint curve of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Much.”

He didn’t look away. Neither did you.

And for a moment, under the fading sun, it felt like there was something else in the water with you — something that had been there all along, waiting for either of you to name it.