“There’s Marina,” I tell Alec. She’s leaning against a railing in shorts and a fitted tank top, a glass of something green and dangerous-looking in her hand. She walks over to us, smiling broadly.
“You made it!” She touches my arm in greeting, then holds her glass out to me. “Rum and soursop. Try it. You’ll never drink anything else.”
I take a sip. She’s not wrong. It’s sweet and tart and cold. “Mm, I like it.”
We start talking about the festival, Marina sharing her memories of the best year she remembers, and advising us on where to stand when the big costume bands come through.
Alec stands beside me, his hand resting on my hip, and I see Marina’s eyes take note of it before she looks back at my face. She doesn’t comment. She doesn’t need to. She just keeps talking to us until the crowd begins to pull us in different directions.
“You two have a good night,” she says. She gives my arm a final squeeze, and the way she looks at me makes me think she isn’t talking about the festival at all.
She disappears into the crowd. I stand there in the middle of the street festival with Alec’s hand on me and the warmth of everything I’m feeling right now sitting in my chest like a small, glowing coal.
I’m happy in a way that feels too wide for the container I’ve been keeping it in. The one labeled “vacation” and “enjoy it while it lasts.” I’m not examining it now. I can’t, or I’ll break right here.
We stop at a vendor stall draped in handmade jewelry and colorful fabrics. The owner is a woman about my mother’s age with silver rings on every finger and a laugh that carries overthe steel drums. I’m drawn in immediately, touching beaded bracelets and holding up sea glass earrings to catch the late-afternoon light.
“These are beautiful,” I tell her, running my fingers over a display of large, hand-painted shells. “Do you make all of these yourself?”
Within two minutes we’re deep in conversation about her process, her daughter who does the painting, the meaning behind the designs. At some point during our conversation she glances past me to where Alec is browsing a rack of scarves a few feet away, his fingers moving over the fabric with that focused attention he gives to everything.
“Your husband has good taste,” she says, nodding toward him with an approving smile.
“Oh, he’s not my...” The sentence stops as if my mouth refuses to speak the denial. He’s not my husband, of course. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my accidental suitemate. My friend, except that word stopped being adequate several extraordinary orgasms ago. He’s my vacation... person? The man I’m sleeping with? The man I’ll be saying goodbye to at the airport tomorrow?
Nothing fits. Every word I reach for is either too much or not nearly enough.
“He’s wonderful,” I say, which isn’t an answer to her question but is the truest thing I’ve said all day.
She smiles like she knows exactly what I’m feeling.
I’ve turned back to the jewelry display when I feel Alec behind me. Close. Then something cool and light and smooth settles across my neck. I glance down.
Silk. Turquoise silk, slipping over my collarbones and pooling against my chest. I feel Alec’s fingers at the nape of my neck, gathering my hair, lifting it free of the fabric. His fingertips brush the skin below my hairline and my pulse kicks hard enough that he must feel it under his hands.
Then I see the design that’s been hand-painted on the silk. A sea turtle, swimming through watercolor coral. Our turtle.
The noise of the festival falls away. Not all at once. It just stops mattering. The drums, the bass, the crowd pressing past us on every side. I can feel all of it at the edges, but the center of the world begins and ends where his hands are still resting at my neck and the weight of silk is settling against my skin.
I look up at him.
His eyes are soft. Unguarded in a way he’d likely never allow if he knew how much he was giving away. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me touch the silk where it rests against my chest.
“So you’ll always remember this week,” he says, his voice low and a little rough.
I nod, blinking back the emotion that’s suddenly stinging my eyes. I won’t need a memento to help me remember this week. Or Alec. There’s nothing about our time together that I’ll ever forget. I want to say all of these things to him, but I can’t do that without bringing up tomorrow, when all of this is due to end.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out barely above a whisper. It’s the wrong word. It’s too small for what is happening inside my chest right now. But the real words are too big and too dangerous for me to say while I’m standing in a street festival on the last day of vacation with a man who lives half a country away.
He lifts my chin on his fingertips, then lowers his head to kiss me. Brief. Tender. A question he’s not asking out loud.
I close my eyes. Emotion fills the space behind my ribs, pressing outward, taking up more room than I gave it, more room than I planned for, and I can feel the careful structure of this whole beautiful, borrowed week shifting under its weight. The deal I made with myself this morning. The brave face. The promise not to need more than this.
I don’t name what I’m feeling. Not here. Not yet.
But my hand stays on the scarf, and I already feel my heart breaking.
Because I’m not falling for Alec anymore.
