Chapter 28

twenty-eight

By the timeone of the Azores comes into view on the horizon, green and mountain-peaked, Isolde and I have created a little ocean routine.

In the mornings, I go to the dojo with her and do whatever she needs—hold her bag, wave a rubber knife or rubber gun while she practices disarming me, do push-ups and squats with her and cheerfully win whatever unspoken calisthenics competition we’re in (although not by much). Then we split off, and sometimes I treat myself to a massage and sometimes I go to the basketball court and sometimes I go to the library, which has the now-predictable shelves of poetry and murder mysteries about crime-solving cats and Edwardian Egyptologists and Lady Sherlocks with accompanying Mrs. Watsons. It also has all of my favorite fantasy novels—ones I read as a kid and forgot about and ones I’ve reread a million times, and it even has new books that are simply perfect for me.

I read about quests and dragons near the library’s glassed-in fireplace, and sometimes I read up on the deck with the wind ruffling my hair, and sometimes I read at the prow, braced against the railing with sea spray flecking the pages.

And sometimes I just watch the waves, the swirl and the froth, and my mind drifts to Isolde, gleaming with sweat, a blade flashing in her hand.

My mind drifts to the man waiting for her in America and what it felt like to have his hands in my hair, on my throat, bruising my hips.

How he looked when he burned me with wax.

It’s usually around this time that I have to go to my room and masturbate, the black and silver ring Mark gave me rubbing against my flesh as I do.

Isolde and I meet again for dinner, and we eat food that reflects the “terroir of our destinations” or something pretentious like that. I’m almost used to it, after months with Mark, but sometimes I’ll be looking down at a plate of foie gras with mint gel or roasted pigeon with sweet red fruits scattered everywhere, and I’ll remember that it was less than a year ago that I was eating DFAC food scooped out of a hot metal pan.

It was less than a year ago that Sims was stealing my Pop-Tarts.

And then usually whatever conversation Isolde and I are having goes quiet, me lost in memories and her lost to something too. After dinner, Isolde takes a drink and goes out to the prow alone, her back straight and her eyes on the sea. I don’t join her because by that point in the day, I’ve started not to trust myself.

War memories, and missing Mark, and Isolde’s mouth with its barely there dent on her upper lip, and the gorgeous, twisting thresh of the sea—it’s all added up by then into something dangerous.

I lock myself in my room and stare out the balcony window until the ship is asleep, hardly knowing myself. And then I wait for the tortured whimpers, the soft noises of the sleeping damned, and I go into her room and wake her up. I press a hand to her chest and then to her belly until she can breathe, and we both ignore the points of her nipples poking through her top, and we both decline to talk about what we see in our dreams, and eventually I tear myself away and go back to my room.

We don’t say much in these moonlit moments, but sometimes our eyes meet and they stay met for too long and it feels like we’re speaking anyway. Together in whatever perdition that turns sleep into a haunted circus of memory.

And so it’s like this that we reach the Azores, gliding into the unreal turquoise and teal arms of S?o Miguel.

We’re only here for a day, to provision and refuel ourselves for the rest of the way across the Atlantic, but time seems indifferent here. Mist hangs in the air, rainbows shimmer over volcanoes, and the occasional spit of rain haphazardly dances along the decks while the sun beams from the other direction.

We refuel closer to shore and then move back out into the harbor, the interior crew and captain taking the tender to the marina to handle provisioning and paperwork. I grab a beer—a ?ywiec, the yacht will provide indeed—and stroll out to the main deck, intending to enjoy the view.

And stop short, because I’m greeted by an entirely different view than green island slopes and clear blue water.

There had been a swimsuit in her room after all, because Isolde is swimming in the pool.

It’s shockingly modest: a white one-piece with long sleeves, more rash guard than swimsuit. But then again, Mark knows her, and anyone who’s spent any time with Isolde can tell that she’s not the type for micro-bikinis or mesh.

No, she’d want something that deflects attention, that draws no notice?.?.?.?so it’s a shame for her then that this suit does the absolute opposite.

The contrast of the fabric and her now lightly suntanned skin is the contrast between white and pale gold: white-clad arms and slender, gold hands, white-clad hips and taut gold legs. And the cut of the swimsuit over the contours of her rump—deceptively indecent. Because it’s not cut high, not tailored like a thong, nothing so obvious as that. But on her, on that toned, luscious part of her, it’s more obscene than wearing nothing.

Her body carves through the water with ease—strength and timing both—and even though she’s not tall, her legs look long and powerful as she kicks through the water. Her hair streams behind her, and then when she kicks off from the wall, turning underwater, it billows into a silky cloud, like some kind of mermaid’s.

All this I see before good manners and loyalty to Mark—and basic fucking decency—slam into me like a wave breaking on a steep shore.

I’m staring. I’m staring and that’s wrong and I’m going to go drink my beer somewhere else.

Except that’s the moment she sees me. The moment I’m turning away is the moment she stands up and gives a wave, gesturing for me to wait as she climbs out of the pool.

And oh my God, what the fuck, Mark is going to hell, the hell reserved for evil fiancés, because that swimsuit is the furthest thing from modest, the furthest thing from demure.

When she is out of the water, it is absolutely fucking see-through. A thin glaze of white over a toned stomach with an oval navel, over high breasts with roseate nipples. Over a darker delta between her legs.

And she has absolutely no idea. Her bearing is the same as always, upright and deliberate, and she’s not making any move to cover herself, and she’s walking toward me with a larger almost-smile than usual. The swimming has put her in a good mood—or maybe it’s the Azores, the shimmering mist and lush mountains—or maybe it’s that we only have two weeks left until she’s home and with Mark.

“The yacht did provide, you were right,” she says, and reaches up to twist her hair into a platinum rope, squeezing out the water. It drips onto her breast, wetting the fabric even more. I don’t look, I don’t look, I can’t look, but I don’t need to. Even in my peripheral vision, her nipples through the swimsuit are conspicuous, unmistakable. I could precisely recreate the diameter of her areolae, the amount of time it takes for the tips of her breasts to grow stiff in the air outside the heated pool. I could draw the exact geometry of her navel, the triangle between her legs. Just from that one instant.

Her, in this swimsuit, is now forever etched into my mind.

Fuck. Me.

And I can’t move from where I’m standing, which is behind a half wall that separates the pool deck from the shaded bar and the glass doors leading to the dining room. I mentally curse Mark for only having linen pants and shorts in his room for me to wear—the kind of soft, loose clothing that makes no secret of my weakness.

“We should eat lunch together. I’ve thought of some more questions about Lyonesse,” Isolde says, and Mark would be so happy right now that she’s thawing, that she’s seeking out company—but I’m not happy, not happy at all, because she’s coming closer, and it’s only the giant bottle of ?ywiec in my hand that blocks my groin from view as she passes to go to the stairs. She turns back after she’s on the first tread. “Would that be okay? I’ll go change real fast and then I’ll be ready to eat.”

“Yes,” I say. Rasp. “That would be okay.”

Thank God she’s going to change. I hope she doesn’t get to her room and realize what the suit reveals and then feel embarrassed; I also hope she sees immediately what’s happened and never ever wears this suit again.

I wait for her to get most of the way up the stairs before I move to follow—the stairs lead up to the shaded deck where lunch is set out, and it’s a mistake, it’s a fucking mistake, because just as I’m commending myself for having escaped the moment unscathed, I look up to see her run a finger along the inside of her swimsuit bottoms to adjust them. A natural gesture, an unconscious one, to straighten the bunched fabric between her cheeks. And in any other situation, it would have been a modest instinct, to make sure her bottoms were covering every possible part of her.

But this is not any other situation. And she’s at the top of the stairs and I’m at the bottom, and she has one foot on the topmost step and her thighs are parted, and when she tugs the swimsuit back into place, it pulls aways from her skin for the briefest moment. And I see pink.

Pink.

Wet and tight and disappearing into shadow and then covered once more.

I freeze, and she’s already gone, and my blood is rushing hot into my belly, and my mind is whispering profanity, utter fucking profanity. And my chest feels like someone’s kicked it in, because I just saw my boss’s fiancée’s cunt—off-limits rich girl who likes knives cunt—and I’m so fucking done for. Because I want it. I want it so badly that I might have to lash myself to the fucking mast of this boat, might have to pitch myself overboard.

I want to look at it; I want to feel the inside of all that pink. I want to taste it.

Fuck, I want to taste it.

I want to slide my way inside and pump myself empty.

And I have to go have lunch and answer questions about Lyonesse’s washing machines or whatever and pretend that everything is normal and that I’m not trying to strangle my own thoughts.

I have to pretend that even after months of seeing people screw onstage, of seeing sex and torment in every shape possible, a flash of pink isn’t enough to unravel all my fucking control.