My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off -

Chloe’s eyes went wide. Mark started to laugh—that horrible, silent, shoulder-shaking laugh that precedes an explosion. Elena put down her book. She looked at my face. She looked at my clasped hands. She looked at the empty patch of sea behind me.

Mark finally noticed me. He squinted. “Nick? Why are you the color of a tomato from the neck down? And where’s your… oh.”

I chose Option B.

I took a breath. “The Aegean Sea has claimed them as tribute.” My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off

“Nicholas,” she said, in the calm, terrible voice she uses when I’ve done something wrong but she’s deciding whether to be amused or furious. “Where are your swimming trunks?”

Now I was naked, ringless, and my wife was on the beach. This was no longer a comedy. This was a tragedy with a one-man cast.

Chloe swam in, shaking water from her ears. “Anyone want to go back out? The light is amazing.” Chloe’s eyes went wide

“And your wedding ring?”

Panic is a funny thing. It doesn't make you rational; it makes you inventive . My first thought wasn't "swim to shore." It was "how do I retrieve my trunks from the plumbing of the planet?" I took a deep breath and dove.

The current was stronger than I’d anticipated. One second I was floating peacefully in the Aegean, the next I was being dragged toward a submerged vent on the seafloor of this tiny, forgotten Greek cove. It wasn't a whirlpool, exactly—more like a giant, thirsty mouth of rock, sipping the entire bay down into some subterranean river. She looked at my face

I was indeed squatting, a perfect catcher’s stance, hands clasped in front of me like a fig leaf woven by a desperate man. “Stretching. Important to stretch. Post-swim.”

I decided I didn’t want them back. Some stories are better left where they happened—submerged, absurd, and told only to very close friends after three glasses of wine.

She looked up from her book. “You’re back early. Did you see any fish?”

I surfaced with a gasp, not from lack of air, but from the sheer, wet vulnerability of it all. The water was crystal clear. My wife, Elena, was still on the beach, her face buried in a book. Our friends, Mark and Chloe, were arguing about the best angle for a snorkeling selfie twenty yards away. No one had seen.