I gulped down air. Hard. “I—I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Don’t allow the fear of something new stop you.”
“That’s not it, not exactly,” I said, going for the sponge.
He watched me carefully as I swam back, waiting for me to expand on my answer. I dipped the loofa in the water for a moment, feeling it swell in my hand, and then dragged it across his back in slow, even, mesmerizing strokes. It wasn’t the loofa that caused his skin to pucker though. It was me. I ran a finger around the outline of the tattoo on his back, and goosebumps rose. He shivered.
“It’s just that—” My voice came out small, almost too low to hear over the constant falls. But I knew he heard me, because he didn’t tell me to speak up. “No one has ever asked me if I wanted to quit dancing before. Or asked me if I wanted to go to school. Or do anything else. Now that you have, the world seems…big. Daunting. Iama dancer. I’m not sure if I can change now.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, letting me continue on with my administrations, and then he cleared his throat. “I should have—”
“Don’t,” I said, kissing his neck. “This is too beautiful to start dredging up things that are best left where they belong.”
“What about both?” he said. “You can teach and dance.”
I smiled, thinking back. “I can.”
“There’s a but.”
“How do you know there’s a but?”
He laughed a little. “You’re frowning at my back right now, your eyebrows pulled down, trying to figure out how I know that you’re holding back.”
“Hey!” I said, laughing a little too. I was. I evened out my expression, though he couldn’t see. He called me out on that too.
“Tell me, Scarlett. There’s hesitation in your voice.”
“All right.” I sighed. “I have the offer in New York. I want to take it and finish my career at home. But there’s so much to consider. Our family is in Italy—”
“There are planes for that purpose. And we’d be closer to our home.”
“Even so. I was offered the part of Belle, fromBeauty and The Beast. I’d be dancing with Riccardo again. They asked me right before—well, right before what happened. It’s something close to my heart.”
He snorted. He knew why. He was my beast, and that performance would be in honor of him. “But,” he prompted again.
“But—Ijustwanttobeyourwife.” It wasn’t silly, but for some reason it made me feel shy. I had never just been his wife. And I wanted to be, desperately. Even if meant taking some time off.
It took him a while to answer. So long, in fact, that I asked him if he had heard or understood me.
“Yeah,” he said, voice choked. “I’d like that very much, my baby.”
“Yes?” I croaked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You—you are always so—” He was one of my biggest supporters. Whenever I wanted to quit, he reminded me of why I shouldn’t. My career had a short window before it closed, and for whatever reason, he was determined that I should see it through. Instinct told me that he pushed so hard because he didn’t want to feel as though he was the reason for me wanting to quit. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. I was born with the talent to dance, but I was made for him. I had nurtured dancing all of my life. I only wanted to nurture us now.
“I know,” he said, pulling me around to his front. “But life is short, and there are more than windows in a house.”
He left it at that, ending the conversation by bringing us both under the water.
* * *
Behind the waterfalls, we took our lunch. Brando spread out two towels for us to sit on. I spread out what had been delivered. Boiled crabs and red potatoes filled the interior of our hideaway with the scent of spices that brought back memories of Louisiana. A chilled couscous dish filled with beans, spinach, sweet peppers, mango, and ginger vinaigrette topped it off. Andlato—Fijian seaweed that resembled green fish eggs (the locals call them sea grapes) in some kind of salad with fermented coconut and cherry tomatoes. We had an entire key lime pie for dessert, and a refreshing pineapple strawberry agua drink to wash it all down.
An island feast, compliments of Agwe. Though he seemed to hold being a nymph against me, I was thankful—more than thankful, I thought, as I took another drink—that he didn’t refuse to feed me. I said as much, and Brando threw back his head and laughed. Our hideaway wasn’t only filled with the scents of lunch, but with our laughter. Brando seemed to be filled with it, light as though he was filled with helium.
His lightheartedness seemed catching. The suspicion that Agwe had spiked our drinks came across my mind, and not for the first time.
