She noticed — the laughing softened into something warm and aware, and she looked at me with the water still on her face and said nothing. Gently, she kissed me. I tasted the salt on her lips.
I let go. "Again," I said.
The fifth wave was the one. She paddled, pushed up, stood — properly this time, weight forward, feet right, chin up — and rode it all the way in. When it ended she stepped off instead of falling, which I had not taught her, which she had simply decided to do.
She turned to look at me from the shallows. The sun was full on her, her swimsuit wet, the black sand warm around her feet, and she was grinning — wide and entirely for herself, the pure private joy of someone who had done the thing — and I looked at her and thought: warm current finding unexpected channels. Soft the way the ocean is before a swell. I have watched thousands of humans and not one of them has looked like this to me.
"Most beginners do not get a wave."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It is a fact."
She smiled and waded back toward me through the shallows, unhurried and entirely at home in her own body, and I watched her and forgot for a moment what I had been trying to be careful about.
We were walking back up the beach when the tour boat appeared, coming around the headland too fast and too close. I sucked in a breath, connecting to the water. The water around the boat changed and the boat turned back without its captain appearing to understand why.
"Was that you?" she said.
"Yes."
"Can you do that whenever you want?"
"More or less."
She nodded, unbothered. "Good. I'm glad someone's paying attention." Like it was obvious. Like of course it should be this way. She kept walking and her arm was warm against mine on the path and neither of us moved away from it.
"You are the first person in a long time I have wanted to come back to the water for."
She slowed, her eyes meeting mine as I spoke.
"I swim the channel every morning. I have done this since before the channel had its current shape." I kept my eyes on the path. "I went past the reef this morning and turned back. This is not something I have done before. I want you to know that."
She hummed to herself. "I'm glad the ferry went to the wrong dock," she said.
"Go in," I said. "You'll burn."
"I've been out here all morning and I haven't burned once." She went up the steps and at the top she turned. "Tomorrow. Same time?"
I looked at her. She looked back — salt water drying in her hair, ink still faintly on her wrist, the expression that meant she had already decided and was simply waiting for me to catch up.
"Fine," I said.
The slow smile arrived, the one that took its time, and she went inside.
I went to the dock and sat and looked at the water and thought about her on the wave and the warmth of her hips under my hands and the weight of her against my arm in the shallows and the way she had saidI'm gladlike she meant it all the way through.
The water was very calm. Quieter than it had been in a long time. I wondered what would happen when she left.
Marisol
Ifinally got a cell signal the next day, which I discovered by accident when I climbed up to look at the tide pools and my phone suddenly exploded with three days of accumulated notifications like a very stressed assistant who had been waiting for me to come back from lunch.
Seventeen texts from Destiny. Four voicemails. Two emails from my boss with subject lines that started with Quick question — which meant they were not quick questions. One Las Palmas reschedule offer sitting in my inbox like a golden retriever waiting patiently by the door.
I sat on a warm flat rock and called Destiny first because Destiny was my best friend and she had been texting escalating variations of hello??? are you dead??? Marisol I will contact the embassy for three days and she deserved to know I was alive.
She picked up on the first ring.
