“What was the best part then?”
“Just being with you,” he says and then he places his fingers over my hand and I slowly roll my palm over. He takes long seconds sliding his digits along my skin and letting them find their place in between my fingers. The way warmth spreads through my body, it feels like a kiss, or much, much more. I stare at our hands locked together as I try to figure out how I feel about what he’s just told me.
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but he gives me space and silence to do this. Neither of us say anything, and our eyes turn back to the fading colours in the sky, our hands still intertwined. Just like last night, we watch the very last blurred lines of pink and purple recede into an ombre grey that reveals a sprinkling of tiny stars. Just like last night, we are completely oblivious of the rest of the resort and the world around us.
While what he’s told me is unexpected, and in many ways startling, I don’t doubt what he’s saying because it makes sense. I see the loss in his eyes. I heard his pain when his voice cracked. I feel how disappointed he is in himself, and I can tell that the grief inside him weighs him down no matter how much he tries to shake it off, no matter how much he tries to smile it away. I know all this, because I know exactly what that feels like.
With this realisation, this new kinship we share, something shifts in me and my attraction to Marty takes on a new form. It’s still physical, but it’s now morphing into something that could also be called a friendship, or maybe acompanionship. And selfishly, that works for me. It works better than if our connection was just lust. Lust and friendship are a good blend, possibly the ideal combination for a hot summer fling in paradise.
“You're not a dick. You didn't stand me up. You've been through some serious shit,” I say, as if to summarise. “And I really am so very sorry that Arnie died.”
There's something about hearing his name that lights him up, his eyes sparkling in the twilight as he looks at me and squeezes his fingers against mine. “Thank you,” he says.
I don’t know why I ask what I ask next, other than it’s a genuine request. It’s what I want in that moment more than anything else. For him, and for me.
“Will you tell me about him? If it doesn't hurt too much. I'd love to hear about your travels together. I would just like to know more about him. And you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Marty
Itell her about him. I tell how we met at rugby club, a year before we joined the same secondary school. I tell her how we were inseparable by the end of the first year. I tell her how I was the first person he told he was gay, the day after his fifteenth birthday. I tell her how he came on holidays with my family, and how I had my own key to his house. I tell her how much he read - anything and everything - and how he would banish me from his room when he watched certain TV shows because I asked too many questions. I tell her how he would get so annoyed when I talked about girls and I always thought it was because he hated hearing about boobs, but really, it was because he was fiercely jealous, something I didn’t know until years later.
I tell her about the night we first kissed. I tell her how he was the first person I told I was bisexual. I tell her how travelling with him was the best time of my life, how we made memories to last a lifetime, the bittersweet irony of that not lost on me. And I tell her about his favourite places, and about mine. I tell her how incredible the sunset was on Koh Lanta. I tell her how one night in Cambodia we watched the sun go down and then stayed in the very same spot, on a beach, and waited for it to come up again behind us. I tell her how we planned on returning to New Zealand to live for a few years. I tell her how we talked about that trip as if it would still happen, right up to the day he died.
And then I stop, and it’s not just because I’m sad or struggling to talk, rather because I have shared enough. I have shared what I’m willing to, because some of it I want to keep just for me. I also wonder if I have shared probably more than she wants to know. I also stop before I get lost in the other side of our story, the onethat involves hospital wards, long complicated names of drugs I eventually learned to say with ease, other cancer patients who became friends, and their ghost-like family members and loved ones rushing from the ward to the toilets to sob. I can sense that Jenna is a generous soul, but even she doesn’t want or need to talk about this, not here, not now.
“Thank you for sharing that,” she says when my words slow to a halt.
“Thank you for listening,” I reply, and I mean it.
“You probably need a drink now,” she says with a tentative smile. “A non-alcoholic one.”
“Jesus, yes,” I say, lifting my hand to my mouth, the hand that isn’t still holding hers. “My mouth’s as dry as a nun’s fanny.”
“My God, Marty,” she says, and I can’t tell if the way she covers her crumpled face with her hands means she’s disgusted or amused, but regardless, I’m proud to have shifted the mood a little.
Then I stare at our interlocked fingers. “I want to get it, but I also don’t want to move.”
She does it for me, pulling her hand away and grinning at me. “Go get me a drink, you filthy-mouthed menace.”
I head to the bar and find the same woman that was working yesterday and she asks me what I have in mind for her today, making my task much easier. Together we concoct two mocktails and I proudly carry them over to Jenna.
“Here we go. A Cuddle on the Beach,” I say, putting the glasses down on the table. “It’s fruity, fun, and won’t get as much sand in your arse crack.”
“Thank you,” she says with a tinkling laugh before taking a slow sip. I try not to look too intently at her lips, surprised at how desire is bubbling up inside me despite being so lost in thoughts of Arnie just a few minutes ago.
But it also makes sense. There’s something about telling her about Arnie that feels like I’ve undergone a cleansing ritual, a process that has very faintly lightened the burden of my grief. The sadness and dull ache is still there, but the heaviest load and the razor-sharp edges of my pain have gone. Maybe that’s why looking at her lips feels better, almost safer, than it did last night. Maybe that’s why I say what I say next.
“Now I have three questions for you,” I say, then correct myself. “No, four actually.”
“Go ahead,” she says, pulling a face that tells me she's bracing herself.
“Firstly, am I forgiven? For getting here late.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Secondly, can I have dinner with you tonight?”
