I wait for his questions about the divorce, about what went wrong, about my ex-husband and about why our marriage failed.
Instead, he asks, “Did it help?”
This almost leaves me as speechless as his flirty cocktail names earlier, and I brave a quick look at him. The dramatic reds of the sunset give his cheeks a new rosy glow, and his irises now have even more colour in them, definite flecks of gold in pools of dark brown. My eyes are drawn again to the bump in his nose and the oddest questions fill my mind.Was that a rugby injury? How did it happen? Is he self-conscious about it? Can I bite it?
“Yeah, it did,” I answer him. “Or rather, it does. It's a journey, I guess.”
“Yes, it is,” he says like he really does agree.
“Oh, you're divorced too?” I say in a light way to show I'm joking. He's too young, surely. Isn't he?
“I’m not. Now, do you want to talk about your divorce while the sun puts on this show?” He nods at the horizon with what could have been a sad smile.
“God, no,” I say, turning my head back to look at the stretches of colour that have again rearranged themselves. “My divorce has nothing on this view.”
“So, will we just go back to flirting outrageously with each other?”
“I'll give it my best shot,” I say, noticing how the colours are also reflected in the sea, making it shimmer effervescently. “But I am starting to think this view is now considerably more attractive than you, I have to say.”
I hear him laugh. “What about my sister? Is it more attractive than her?”
“Oh, God, no. She's still much hotter.” I turn to him, ready to wink, but I don't because he's looking at me like maybe he's proud of me, which makes no sense at all.
“It’s good to know where I stand.” His smile reappears, dimples too.
I take in a deep breath. “I think you could be in a lot of worse places than this right now.” I nod at the sunset and raise my glass towards him. He nudges his against it and together we turn back to look at the horizon.
The silence returns but this time it's transformed into something welcome and comfortable. Now it’s something I can, and want to, hold on to. Even as it unfolds in front of us, the sun sinking lower, bleeding more gold into the sea, I long to stretch out this moment because of what it already is and because of its deep, delicious possibility. I can practically smell and feel and taste the undeniable potential for sex with a man I’m fiercely attracted to, something I've craved for the longest time. I smile into the silence and watch the sun fall slowly towards the Earth, thinking about how I too could be in much, much worse places.
Possibly a minute or two later, maybe longer, he finally responds in a much quieter voice, almost as if he's talking to himself. “Maybe I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.”
Chapter Six
Marty
The silence is nice. I know I should reach for a better word than that, but I can't, and honestly, I don't want to. Nice is underrated. Not everything in life can be amazing or wonderful or incredible. Life gets uncomfortably full when it's lived like that, not to mention the struggle that comes with always wanting it to be all those things when it just can’t be. I should know. Awesome was my default mode for most of my life and although I didn’t think it at the time, it was exhausting and not at all sustainable.
Nowadays,niceandfine,and sometimes even justokayare more comfortable to me, cherished even, because a few years ago my perpetual optimism was flipped on its head and I was forced to experience the superlatives on the other end of the scale; body-crushing pain, devastating loss, bottomless grief.
So, even though I just promised her some outrageous flirting and even though I itch to look at her again and to ask a million questions so I can find out more about her, I also want to enjoy thenicenessof this silence too. I want to sit with this new feeling that’s bubbling up at the end of a day that has felt so hard and so sad. A hard and sad day that concludes three hundred and sixty-five hard and sad days.
That being said, there is nothing just nice, fine or okay about the sunset. The sunset really is spectacular, even though I have to squint to look at the edges of it because I stupidly didn't include sunglasses in the bag I rushed to pack.
“Are they always this beautiful?” I ask because I suddenly want to know. I want to know if I have to prepare myself for this kind of beauty every night for the next six days, the kind that Arnie would have given his right testicle to enjoy.
Jenna turns to me and looks a little confused.
“The sunsets here,” I explain. “Are they always like this?”
She turns back and nods. “Yeah, they're pretty special. My brother says sometimes it can be cloudy or stormy and that makes the view a bit different, but we’ve had clear skies the last two evenings.”
“When do you go home again?” I ask. Did she tell me already?Come on brain, retain information, please.
“Friday,” she says. The sunset is reflected in her sunglasses and I notice we don’t have much longer until the bottom edge of the sun dips into the water.
“So, five more days.”
“Five more sunsets.” She rolls her head to the side, her chin staying low, her gaze on me. She reaches for her glasses. “Do you want to borrow them? You'll hurt your eyes if you keep looking at it without.”
