39
I thank heaven and all the stars above when the next night I land back at the cove in the same moment I left. I didn’t want any more misunderstandings. I didn’t want any more hurt on Aaron’s face.
He’s smiling at me—his soft, happy smile. We’re sitting in the brindled shade of the ironwood in the cool, soft sand. I stripped out of my cover-up and now lie in my red bikini with sand sticking to my damp skin and the lacy sun dappling over me.
Aaron has a mango in his hand. He’s cutting off chunks, the juice running over his fingers. The scent of ripe mango floats over the sweet perfume of the sea grapes. Far off there’s the murmur of the waves crashing against the reef. Nearby, a small, iridescent white butterfly flutters near the cluster of sea grapes hidden in the glossy green leaves.
“When I kiss you,” Aaron says, smiling at me over the mango, “I always think you smell like a butterfly.”
“What?” I smile at him and dig my heels into the cool sand. “Butterflies don’t have a smell.”
“Yes, they do,” he says, handing me a slice of mango.
I take the cool fruit and place it in my mouth. It’s soft and sweet and so ripe it melts as soon as it hits my lips.
Aaron’s eyes darken at the noise of appreciation I make. “They do. Every day butterflies visit hundreds of flowers. Over their lifetime they land on millions of blooms, dancing in the pollen, drinking the nectar. I think butterflies smell like the perfume of a million flowers dusted on their wings. Like you.”
I stare at him, shocked. “Amy is definitely your daughter. You’re both poets.”
He grins at that, his black hair still wet from when he dunked under the water.
Waterdrops drip down his shoulders and sluice down his chest. He’s stripped, leaving only his swim shorts on, slung low over his hips. His bronze skin is golden under the shade, broken by the tattoos rippling over his muscled abdomen and shoulders. Looking closer at the tattoos, they’re locations—all his swims, all the seas and oceans and crossings, waves and whirls and water.
His body is marked by the sea, just like his heart.
He hands me another slice of mango, smiling at me gently. I take it, brushing my fingers against his, and then bite into the soft fruit. Aaron watches as I lick the juice from my fingers.
“Do I always smell like butterflies?” I ask him, growing warm at the heat in his eyes.
“No,” he says, “just when I kiss you. When I say ‘Fi.’”
My heart tumbles, knocks around my chest, and then kicks back to its normal rhythm.
I pick up the jug of water and take a long, cool drink. It tastes of minerals and rain and sun. Cistern water. Island water. I drop it back to the sand and wipe the back of my hand across my lips.
My shoulders are pink and tingling from the sun. Aaron spent an hour with me in the sea teaching me to swim. Even though I told him I already knew how, he had me tread water, float on my back, swim underwater to collect sea shells. And then, as I swam out to sea to a spot so deep I couldn’t touch the sand, he stayed with me, and when I stopped, he kept his hands spread around my naked middle, at the bare line of my stomach where my bikini ended. For a moment I was so scalded by his hands on me I forgot to tread water. I dunked under and Aaron pulled me back up.
“Tread,” he said, and he sounded so much like Amy’s imitation of him that I laughed.
And then he kissed me, which made me dunk under again. And so he pulled me up, swam with me back to shore, and kissed me more.
Above us a blackbird perches in the ironwood, eyeing the plate of banana bread. I smile at the bird, at the bleached blue of the sky, and at the still, sea-blue cove. The tide is rising, rolling over the sand, the ebb and flow reaching the dappled shade of the trees.
I scoot across the sand, the grains scraping over my skin, and lean against Aaron. He widens his legs and pulls me against the warmth of his chest. He wraps his arms around me, and as I settle into him he drops his chin to my head.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say.
“About what?”
“I want to build Junie a crib. For her baby.”
“Yeah?” There’s a soft, pleased note in his voice.
“Yes. I made plans. I think we have everything we need. All the wood. The paint.” I tilt my head up, looking at his soft lips. “Will you help me?”
“Of course.”
I grin. “Good. I also thought, next time you order supplies from the mail plane, we should order books for Amy. I’d like her bedroom to be filled with books. Bookshelves teeming with them. Yesterday I made a list?—”
“Yesterday?”
I blink. Yesterday in Geneva I made a list. I went to the bookshop in Carouge and asked the owner for a long list of recommendations. But there was no yesterday on the island. There was today when we were kissing, and then there was today again, with us under this tree.
I shake my head. “I made a list. Do you think we could get them for her?”
“When she asked you to pick up books in New York you said she already had enough to read. Did you change your mind?”
“She deserves to be happy.”
Aaron rubs his thumb over my cheek and gives a happy rumble. “What else? I can see there’s more.”
“I want to get Odie a comfy chair for when he’s on crossing guard duty. And I think Maranda and Essie and Dee could sell their baskets. We could send them to the big island. There’s an entire market for baskets like that. People would pay hundreds for just one.”
Well, that is if there are people outside this island. But it wouldn’t hurt to try.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, shifting in his arms to look at him.
His mouth is firm and his long eyelashes drift low. There’s surprise hidden in his eyes. “You care.”
“Of course I care.”
He thinks about this for a moment.
“And what,” he finally asks, tracing his finger in a slow circle over my arm, “are your plans for me?”
I think about how he said he felt like he could swim again. How with me here, he could swim knowing I’d be there in the water with him.
“You said you might swim again.”
He nods, his eyes suddenly solemn. The shadow of the ironwood leaves, rustling in the sun, drifts over us.
I scoot closer, the sand scraping my thighs, and Aaron’s arms tighten around me.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. “If I swim again, each location, I’d swim for a local charity. Each swim, I’d raise money for a cause. That way it wouldn’t be about the thrill or setting records. I’m past that. This time it’d be about helping others.” He peers down at me, his eyes clouded. “What do you think?”
I press into his sun-warmed chest, feeling his solid heartbeat and his strength. The sea lies only a few meters away, lapping over the shore. Above a gull soars along the coastline, his shadow flicking over the sand, before he veers away.
The breeze shifts the sand, pulling my wet hair across my cheek. Aaron takes the loose strands and tucks them behind my ear, his fingers brushing over my skin. A trace of heat follows the path of his hand.
“I think,” I tell him, “you’re a good man. I think I’d love to see you do it.”
I wish he could do it with me. I’d bring him to Geneva, ask him to swim the lake, the city perched on its edges, the mountains rising in the distance. Daniel would love it. He’d ask Aaron to model our watches, construct an entire PR campaign around him. He’d gift the entire crew Abry watches and make us the official sponsor.
I’m grinning, swept away by the thought. Aaron looks down at me, his gaze curious.
“What?” he asks, his voice a soft rumble.
“I want to be there to see it. That’s all. And someday, maybe you could swim Lake Geneva. You could go to Geneva and tour Abry. I’d like that. If you went to Abry and got your watch.”
He makes a soft noise of assent, and then pulls me against his chest.
I rest against him, breathing in the scent of mango warming in the sun and the salt drying on our skin. In the soft, gentle quiet, Aaron brushes a kiss over my head.
“All right,” he says, “we’ll plan on it. Someday we’ll go to Switzerland. We’ll swim in Lake Geneva and get ourselves an Abry.”
“Good,” I tell him, my throat thick.
Then he leans back in the sand, a powder-soft bed. And I lie on top of him, my cheek pressed to his heart. He strokes my back, a gentle, soothing rhythm as I stare out at the turquoise sea.