"Oh my god," she said.
"I'm alive."
"I know you're alive, I could see your read receipts, I meant oh my god as in: you are on a different island with a mysterious blue man and you have been on a communication blackout for THREE DAYS—"
"I didn't have a signal."
"I didn't have a signal," she repeated, in the tone she used when she was imitating me and wanted me to know she found it insufficient as an explanation. "Marisol. Start from the beginning."
So I did.
I told her about the ferry and the wrong dock and Tina and Casa Oscura. I told her about the black sand and the drink and the shape in the water that first night. I told her about the beach and the tentacles resting in the sand and asking him about coffee — she made a sound here — and about the ink on his arm when I grabbed it, and the tentacle that curled toward my fingers, and the cave.
Except I left out the tentacle sex bits.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
"Destiny."
"I'm processing," she said. Her voice was careful and deliberate in the way that meant she had a great deal of feelings and was deciding which ones to lead with. "I'm processing. Okay. Okay I have questions."
A pause. Then, softer: "You like him."
"I'm not—"
"You like himlikelike him. …Likelikehim."
"Maybe."
The Las Palmas email was still in my inbox when I hung up. I opened it. I looked at it — the sunset terrace, the complimentary breakfast, the swim-up bar I had originally booked all of this for. It looked nice. It looked exactly like what I had wanted when I planned this vacation, which was before I understood what Iactually wanted, which was apparently this: a black sand beach and a cave full of phosphorescent water and a kraken who called me by my full name like it meant something.
I closed the email without replying.
I looked at the tide pool instead, which was full of tiny translucent shrimp and one very committed sea urchin and a small crab who was clearly having a difficult morning.I know how you feel, I thought to the crab. Everything is a lot.
I was left with my own thoughts for a while, wondering how time passed on this tiny island paradise. It felt so different from the hustle of my HR life. Just those texts and emails were enough to make my stomach turn. Here felt like a true escape.
I heard him before I saw him. Maro sat down on the rocks a few feet from me and looked at the tide pool.
“You seem to be in thought,” he said instead of a greeting.
"How does it feel?" I asked. "All of it. Being here this long."
He was quiet for a moment. "It does not feel like anything consistently," he said. "There are decades I remember in full detail and decades that have the quality of deep water — present but not surface. The island changing. The people." He paused. "The last fifty years have been the loudest. More boats. More sound in the water."
"Do you mind it?"
"I mind some of it." He looked at the cove. "The resort. The boats that come too close. The way the water tastes different near the marina." A pause. "I do not mind this side."
"Have you ever—" I stopped. Started again. "Has there ever been anyone else? Someone like — someone who knew what you were and stayed anyway? Not romantically, but in general."
He was quiet for long enough that I looked at him.
"Once," he said. "Two hundred years ago, approximately. He was a sailor who lost his boat on the reef and I brought him ashore." A pause. "He was not afraid. He stayed through theseason." Maro looked at the water. "And then he left. He had a life elsewhere. He went back to it."
He said it simply.
I was quiet for a moment.
