Chapter 10
Marisol
The fish fry had been going for two hours and I was on the wall outside the rum bar with my margarita. It’s Tina's recipe, my adjustments, her ongoing editorial opinions, a negotiation that would apparently never resolve.
I was watching Maro stand at the edge of it all the way he always did.
Theo was on his back. Bastien was hanging off his left arm with the full-body commitment of a child who had decided this was load-bearing and was not going to be argued out of it.
Petra was beside him giving what appeared to be a detailed report on something she'd found in the tide pools, and he was listening to her the way he listened to everything — completely, without reservation, with the specific patience of something that has all the time that has ever existed and has decided this particular moment is worth it.
Old Gustave was arguing with him about the current off the south point. Maro was correct. Gustave knew Maro was correct. The argument was going to continue for another decade at minimum and they both found this entirely satisfactory.
I sat with my drink and I watched all of it happening around me.
Here's what I understood, sitting on that wall: I hadn't chosen a sexy man on a beach.
I'd chosen into something. The fish market man who'd handed me a paper bag for the road before I knew I wasn't taking it.
Tina, setting out two cups of coffee on the dock for forty years without being asked.
The kids on the reef who'd been swimming out to find him since before their parents were born.
The old men who argued with him about currents they'd been arguing about for decades.
All of it had been here long before me, this centuries-deep thing, and at some point in the last month the island had apparently made a decision about me.
I found I agreed with it.
Tina sat down next to me on the wall. She had the look she got when she'd made a decision and the decision involved saying something to me whether I was ready or not.
"He hung that hammock the day after you arrived," she said.
"I know."
"He has never done anything like that. Not once, in forty years."
I looked at my drink. "I know."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "He didn't know if you'd stay. He hung it anyway."
I thought about that. The empty hook. The hammock sitting in the storage shed.
Him going to get it and hanging it and walking back to the water without saying anything to anyone — just leaving it there where I could find it or not find it, as I chose.
The hope made physical and then set down without a word.
"I know," I said, and that one was the truest.
Tina nodded, stood up, and went back inside, because her point was made and she had never once lingered after making a point in her life.
I sat with the feeling for a while — the specific weight of knowing you were wanted before you knew you were staying — and then I finished my margarita and went to find him.
He was at the dark edge of the gathering where the light from the rum bar didn't quite reach, which was where he always ended up — close enough to be part of it and far enough to be himself. Bastien had finally relinquished the arm. The argument with Gustave had been paused until next time.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," he said, which he'd learned from me and still deployed at slightly the wrong moments, with complete confidence.
I looked at him for a second. Then: "Tell me about the ink."
He went still in the particular way he went still when something had been said that he'd been waiting to be said and was now being careful about how he responded to it.
"It's been three weeks and it hasn't moved," I said. "I want to know what that means."
He looked at the water. Not me — the water, the way he looked at it when he was about to say something he'd been carrying and had decided to set down.
"The ink on your shoulder is permanent," he said.
"I know. I've been pressing my fingers to it every morning for three weeks. It doesn't move."
"It means the bond has been completed." A pause. "You will not age at the rate you did before. It has already begun slowing." He kept his eyes on the water. "The wave-reading will keep sharpening. The salt water. You've noticed the salt water?"
I had. I hadn't said anything about it. "It feels like coming home," I said. "Every time I go in."
"Yes." He was quiet for a moment. "There will be other changes. I cannot tell you all of them because I don't know all of them. This has not —" He paused. "I have not had a completed bond before. I know the direction of it. I do not know every place it goes."
"Okay," I said.
"You are tied to this island," he said. "And to me. In ways that will compound over time. You should know that."
"Okay," I said again.
He turned and looked at me then, directly, the full weight of it. "I knew," he said. "Three weeks ago I knew the ink was permanent and I did not tell you."
The music from the rum bar drifted through the trees. Somewhere inside, someone laughed.
"Why?" I asked.
He looked back at the water. "Because you might have left."
I let that sit for a moment.
"Maro." The way I always said it — deliberate, specific, the tolerated sound, completely and specifically mine. "I missed a ferry."
He said nothing.
"I missed Thursday too."
"I know," he said.
"I know you know." I looked at him. "I'm telling you anyway."
"I am," he said, "working on the words."
I stared at him. "What?"
"There are things I want to say." He looked at his hands. "I am finding that the words available are not the right size for what I mean by them. I would prefer not to say them wrong."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"Maro. You have been here since before this island was an island."
"Yes."
"You speak six languages."
"More than that."
"And the words aren't the right size."
"That is what I said."
“Then, let’s use English,” I said. “I love you.”
He smiled gently. “I love you too, Marisol.”