Being stepped on wasn’t close to how Catalina wanted to die…not that she had spent much time ranking preferred ways to perish. Still, finding oneself on the bottom of someone’s foot seemed especially degrading.
Despite this, the feet came along in the nick of time. She was mere moments away from doing something foolish, like giving in completely to her husband and letting him do whatever he desired, perhaps even wanting it. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for reconciliation or merely swept up in the heated emotions of it all.
Finally catching her breath while taking the weight of Trey on top of her, she managed to ask, “Are we alive?”
He panted hard, searching her eyes. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Can you get off of me then?”
Pressing kisses just below her ear, he murmured into her skin, “Are you sure you want me to get off?”
Oh God, she was going to get sucked in againif she wasn’t careful. Every molecule in her body continued to be in a state of hot tingles. “Yeah, I think…” Her lips pulled into a smile of their own accord as he continued to titillate and tease her skin, one of his hands sliding to her thigh.Stop it!she demanded of herself. “I think almost being crushed to death has a way of ruining the mood. This probably isn't a good idea. It’s too dangerous.”
He didn’t seem the least bit discouraged. “Reason number fourteen on why you should love me again. I come up with a lot of good ideas, even some good bad ideas.”
As much as she wanted to push him off her, she couldn’t help reveling in the pressure of his body against hers. The heavy weight of him had a way of calming her heart. This was the first moment this weekend she wasn’t in a panic. Quite the opposite. She missed feeling this way. “Oh, like your brilliant plan of getting onto someone’s feet and riding them? Good ideas like that? Well, you just had your chance, and we’re still here on the ground.”
“Smart ideas like that require planning.”
“I’m listening.” Catalina attempted to appear serious but was failing, gasping when his touch tickled her.
“Okay.” Trey looked thoughtful for a moment as he shifted his weight to his side and propped his head on a hand. “You have dental floss in your bag, right? I know you do. You have everything in there. We can use the floss to create a lasso to latch onto a toe and then swing up onto someone’s feet. You take the leftfoot, and I’ll take the right. We can pull on the feet hairs to orchestrate the direction for them to walk, sort of like a Ratatouille situation, and voila! We’re back at the resort in five minutes.”
She gave him a look of disgust. “Pull…on giant feet hairs? Ew. No. I’d rather be eaten by a sand flea than ever ride on anyone’s feet.” But she burst out laughing when the picture he painted flitted across her imagination. “That has to be the worst idea you’ve ever come up with. And why are all your plans involve us riding feet? That’s never going to work.”
A lazy smile spread across his face, not fazed in the least by her rejection of his plan. “It’s only the worst idea if my plan was to actually Tarzan swing my way onto feet using dental floss. But if my original plan was to make you laugh, then I feel like I succeeded. I miss making you laugh.”
This stopped her because she was remembering what she liked about Trey in the first place. She liked when he made her laugh too. When had she forgotten how to laugh with him? It was moments such as these when it was the hardest to resist him, and she wanted him to make a move on her, to kiss her. Or maybe she was ready to finally bend and kiss him instead. The yearning was building in the depths of her heart like a slow-building volcano. Being self-reliant on an island of her own making became less appealing.
“What’s that smell?” he asked.
Oh God. Did she stink? The scent of the sargassum had reeked enough to trigger her gag reflex, and the smell may have soaked into her skin and clothesearlier, along with the day’s sweat, resulting in her husband suddenly finding her repulsive. She wondered if she had enough wet wipes in her bag for a quick cleaning.
His nose tipped in the air as he took a deeper sniff. “What is that delightful smell?” And then she smelled it too. It was warm, full of delicious spices like chili and cumin, and made her stomach release embarrassing grumbles.
At the same time, their heads swiveled to the left, and they saw the most amazing sight. It was about the size of a house, the outside shell a more golden color than the ground underneath. Part of it appeared broken off, the edges jagged, revealing the interior. Enclosed within was a wet mass of reddish-brown lumps. There were also random blocks of orange and orbs of green mixed within.
Trey scrambled to his feet, taking her hand and pulling her to standing. “What is that?” he asked.
They approached carefully, as though there was a possibility this was some weird, unrecognizable wild animal, or Buddy would pop out like a horror movie jump scare. Except it clearly wasn’t an animal, at least not one that had any type of life to it. As she surveyed the outside, it began to make some kind of sense in her head what she was looking at. While the end had been jagged, as though the front portion of the object had been broken off, the outside of the shell was smooth. It looked manufactured with strange, straight divots running along the edge. “I think… I think it’s a partial empanada,” she shouted to her husband, who had remained on the opposite end.
“Oh my God. They have empanadas here?”
“Maybe it’s from a nearby restaurant or something.”
“I just need to try it,” her husband responded, his words barely intelligible.
She raced to him, only to find her husband taking a selfie while gnawing on what appeared to be a massive meatball the size of a baby’s head.
“What are you doing? You can’t just eat random things you find on the beach! Just because you’re one inch tall doesn’t mean you can’t get food poisoning and die from shitting your brains out.” Even while yelling at him, the temptation to bury her face in the delicious-smelling empanada, like her husband was doing right now, was tempting. Her stomach begged for her to reconsider her strict no mystery beach food rule. Perhaps she could risk getting alittlefood poisoning.
Completely ignoring her warnings, her husband climbed into a gap between the outside shell and the filling of the pastry, pointing to one of the large green beach ball-type items above him. “I think that’s a pea! This is so weird. And also one of the best days of my life. You have no idea how much I’m starving. I can probably eat half of this thing.” He ran a finger across the enormous mounds of ground beef before putting the finger covered in sauce into his mouth, dropping his head back, eyes closed, and groaning in absolute satisfaction. Making it appear as if this was the most delectable, five-star food he’d ever come across wasn’thelping her determination to abstain.
Reluctantly, she climbed in after him, mostly because it was a break from the unrelenting afternoon sun. It definitely wasn’t because she wanted to absorb the amazing smells and somehow this would be enough to satisfy her stomach complaints. “Really? This is the best day of your life. Not when we got married or anything like—Stop eating that! This is a really bad idea. Who knows how long this has even been sitting on the beach!”
Her husband continued ignoring her, filling his mouth with the lumps of meat before offering her a handful. “Here. It’s still warm. Try some.”
“Maybe it’s warm because it’s been sitting in the hot sun, which could be a bad sign that the food has entered the temperature danger zone, resulting in it going bad at a quicker rate.” She was reduced to reciting food safety tips she knew from work to stop herself from plunging face-first into the warm filling like a meat bath.
