Hemel Hempstead Heat
"Swimming instructor Chiamaka's adult learner—a thick Senegalese woman terrified of water—overcomes her fear in ways that involve very private lessons and no swimsuits."
Aminata was forty years old and couldn't swim.
"I almost drowned as a child," she explained. "The fear never left."
Chiamaka saw the terror in those eyes—and also something else. Interest. Attraction.
"We'll take it slow," she promised. "Just you and me. Private lessons."
"I'd like that."
The lessons were intimate by necessity.
Chiamaka's hands supporting Aminata's thick body, keeping her afloat. Contact constant, reassuring, increasingly charged.
"I trust you," Aminata said during week three.
"Trust is important."
"I want to trust you with more."
"More what?"
"Everything."
The pool closed at nine.
They stayed until ten.
"The water isn't scary with you," Aminata said, standing chest-deep.
"You're doing well."
"I could do better." She moved closer. "If you held me differently."
"How?"
"Like you want me. Because I want you."
In the warm pool, boundaries dissolved like chlorine.
Chiamaka pressed Aminata against the pool wall, water lapping around them.
"Still scared?" she asked.
"Terrified." But Aminata was smiling. "Don't stop."
Swimming lessons became something else entirely.
In the water, where Aminata's thick body floated weightless. In the changing rooms afterwards. In Chiamaka's car when they couldn't wait.
"I'm not afraid anymore," Aminata said one night.
"Of water?"
"Of anything." She pulled Chiamaka close. "You taught me that."
Aminata learned to swim eventually.
But she kept booking lessons.
"Extra practice," she told the front desk.
Chiamaka just smiled and prepared the pool.
Some students, she'd learned, needed ongoing attention.
And some teachers never wanted to stop teaching.