My parents like usually were nowhere to be found. Mom was probably at the country club with her girlfriends and dad was off on a business trip still. ...y brother had gone out and I was left home alone.By lunch time, it had warmed up and was turning into the hottest day of the year so far. Our pool looked so inviting that I felt like I had to go in. I loved the water and went swimming whenever I could. My mom had signed me up for swim lessons when I was little, because it was the thing to do, and. Being called cute by another man gave Rhyler butterflies in his stomach, and a warm inner-feeling that he had never felt before. Rhyler sent Danny his address, and in about thirty minutes he was knocking at the door. As he heard the knock, Rhyler could not believe what he was doing, he could feel his heart pounding through his chest. He answered the door, and greeted Danny. Danny was an attractive, heavyset yet athletic, man, who like Rhyler, did not appear to be gay. Rhyler swooned as he. . brainwashed by American romantic comedies and Hallmark pop culture. There are some idiot ladies, even in France, who’ve bought into that worldview. I call them ‘Americanized’ or maybe ‘Anglicized,’ because the prudishness is a legacy of Queen Victoria and her influence over the Anglophone world. Prior to that influence, we in France were much more enlightened, especially before American cinema spread their lies,” Fleur scoffed at the not-so-subtle messages from Hollywood.“Yeah, for all of the. " "Ah, you didn't understand. We mine diamondsfrom the sea. It's rather like panning for gold. Theriver carries diamonds downstream, into the ocean.We vacuum up the sediment and sort through it fordiamonds. There is a small crew of divers, vacuumingup the silt, and a larger crew, over there, sifting andwashing the sand, looking for diamonds." They saw alarge open area where perhaps a hundred workers,naked but for shorts or loin cloths, were sifting andexamining what the divers had.