Chapter 134.

Chapter 134. Rosa’s Birthday (7/10)

As I was used to it, I was first to sink down.

Shortly after, her body sank down along with me. Her long light orange to blond hair drifted out like an underwater fan. Peeking out from behind her head was the moon. My eyes widened a bit as I was hit with a stroke of inspiration for the beginning of a story.

This exact image was perfect for it.

A boy laying at the bottom of a pool enjoying the night scenery sees a girl get into the pool and sink to the bottom the same way he had. Suddenly, seeing her ethereal figure from behind, love blooms in his heart under the distorted moon peeking out from behind her head.

As he becomes enraptured with this girl, he completely forgets to resurface. He lays there motionless admiring her figure until he instinctively breathes in and water fills his lungs.

Eventually, the girl drifts to the bottom of the pool, lands on top of him, and only then notices his presence.

She turns around in a panic and sees the boy clutching at his neck, eyes shut tightly, drowning. She quickly seals his lips, exhales out, pushing air into his lungs while simultaneously kicking off the ground to bring the two of them back to the surface. When they reach the surface, he coughs out the water he swallowed and that becomes their first encounter. The prologue to their love story.

That was the extremely rough outline of it at least. It’d definitely need to be more fleshed out, but I thought it was a pretty interesting start as long as it really pulled the reader into that one singular moment in time.

The prologue title would be, ‘Drowning in Love.’

Haha, I thought it fit it quite well.

While I’d fallen into deep thought, Alicia had already sunk to the bottom of the pool beside me. Her hair was floating in front of me while her head was directly beside my own. My check was touching the side of her head. Her long hair floating in the water was the only thing that separated us.

Without any warning that hair of hers moved out of the way. The next thing I knew, Alicia’s face was in front of me. Her hair floated up behind her as her face drew closer to my own. Under the water, our lips touched briskly before she suddenly kicked off the ground and resurfaced.

I was momentarily stunned but I soon followed after her figure.

When I broke through the water I caught my breath and asked, “What was that about just now?”

“Just a small thank you for showing me something nice. I never expected it would look so pretty from down there.” She didn’t face me when she said that.

“Hmmm, is that so?”

“Yeah… it is… I sort of felt like I got a glimpse into the world you see when you’re all alone. It was… very different from what I’m used to. I thought it would be a lonely scary place, but maybe I was a bit wrong. There might be a sort of beauty to the world you see when you’re alone the way you are. You might even see things that people who are never alone will never see. I can’t imagine people who come to the pool in a large group would go and do this sort of thing.”

“Exactly. There are things those sorts of people will see while there are things people always alone like me will see. There’s nothing particularly wrong with being alone like me or having a bunch of friends like you. You just get to experience the world differently is all.”

“Then… at least invite me to see some of those things you get to see when you’re alone sometime. I’ll do the same for you.”

“What? But I’m not particularly interested in the things large groups see you know.”

“I’ll forcefully drag you along if I have to. There are definitely things even someone like you wouldn’t mind seeing.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll believe it when I see it.” There was truly nothing I was interested in seeing with large groups of friends. The most I could put up with was having one or two people around. Two was already stretching it.

“I’ll definitely think of something that will blow your mind. Something you can only see and enjoy with a lot of people.”

“Well, you do that.” I started swimming over to the edge of the pool.

“Are you getting out?”

“Yeah, I was going to get in the hot tub for a bit. Want to come?”

“I’ll… get out in a bit. I kind of want to enjoy the view a bit more on my own.”

“Okay. Just don’t forget to surface and end up drowning.”

“I won’t. Also, don’t trigger a death flag like that for me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do CPR for you so you won’t die.”

“Nobody needs your CPR here.”

I headed over to the hot tub that was on and found Rosa soaking inside it. She had her chin resting on her crossed arms on the edge of the tub while she took in the view of the city outside the window.

“Enjoying the view?”

“Yeah, quite a bit actually.”

I stepped inside the hot tub and my cold body immediately relaxed from the heat.

“It’s so warm.”

“Right? I wish we had one.”

“In a few years with how much you save, even if you bought out a car you could probably afford it easily you know.”

“True, but where would I put it? It’s not like you could fit one anywhere inside Irene’s place. We definitely can’t put it outside.”

“I wonder if there is a basement in her place.”

“Even if there was, good luck getting a hot tub down there.”

“True, it would require renovations and would need to be built inside the place. That would cost a lot more. If you did that, you might as well just renovate the larger bathroom in the house instead and turn it into a hot tub room.”

“Oh! That’s genius, Ran! We should totally do that!”

“That would be years down the line though. Irene has a mortgage to pay off on the place still. I thought they were all rental properties there at first, but apparently, some of them are personally owned. She’s working toward owning that one. She said the monthly payment is $1500. It’s steeper than I expected based on its appearance.”

“Oh? And how long does she have left to pay on it?”

“She’s got about 8 years of mortgage payments remaining from what she told me. The interest rate she got stuck with was a bit nasty at 5%. The principal amount was in the range of $250,000, they put in a minimum 5% down payment and ended up with a thirty-year mortgage with that monthly payment. She’ll basically be paying a bit over double the principal amount by the time she pays it off in full, about $540,000.”

“For the twelve years she was paying on it while her husband was still alive, they were able to cut it down faster by paying extra every month. He landed a pretty good job after they got their mortgage from what I heard. But two years ago, when he died, she dropped down to paying the base amount expected of her.”

“She was put into a position where refinancing for a lower interest rate and monthly payment was difficult. She was the only one working in the household and she even had two children to look after. The risk was quite high from the perspective of banks and getting a lower rate wasn’t possible.”

“She inquired a few times with private lenders, but they wouldn’t give a lower rate. Some even spit in her face and upped it to 9-10%, double her current interest rate if she refinanced with them. Though it would lower her monthly payment, she’d end up paying even more in the long run. Thus, she grit her teeth, told them to go fuck themselves, and bore with it.”

This was all stuff I heard from her during some random small talk we had in her car. She had it quite tough.

“Wow. She really told them to go fuck themselves?”

“Yeah, that’s what she told me herself. She even said she spit on the way out of their office. ‘10% he says? 10%! Does this asshole think just because I’m a woman that I’m brain dead?’ Those were the last words she spat out as she slammed the door on the way out of his office.”

“Hahahaha! That’s great. Isn’t Irene kind of a badass?” Rosa praised.

“Yeah, that’s what I said too when I heard her story.”

“You sure get along well with Irene despite the age gap.”

“Yeah, somehow.” We both experienced some of the same struggles in life after all. It was easy for me to relate to her.

Rosa suddenly raised her head off the edge of the hot tub with a provocative smile, drew close to my ear, and whispered, “Hey, that day when Irene gave you a ride. Did you two do it in the car?”