Dinner is on the patio. A fire in a raised metal pit crackles. We watch the sun go down as dinner arrives. I meet Gladys, the chef, and her husband, Nick. Ness introduces them like they’re family. When he tells Gladys that my mother was from Antigua, she shrieks and cups my face in both her hands, like an island hundreds of miles away is somehow next door. For the rest of the night, any time I catch her looking at me she bursts into a wide smile.
“I wish I had my laptop,” I say after dinner, while enjoying a glass of wine.
“Party foul,” Ness proclaims.
“To write,” I say. “I feel inspired to write some fiction. Make something up. Something less impossible than this, so people would buy it.”
Ness sips his wine. “Ever written a novel before?”
“Started a few. Meandered. I vacillated between feeling silly and feeling pretentious. Like some parts weren’t serious enough and other parts I was trying too hard to be profound.”
“Sounds like me learning to play the guitar. I would go back and forth between teaching myself chords and trying to learn complex tunes one contorted note at a time. I think that, with a lot of art, you just have to be bad at it a long time before the magic happens. And I suck at being bad at things.”
I laugh at the play on words. “Me too,” I say. “I mean, I’m really good at being bad at things, but I hate it. So I avoid it.”
“Dangerous habit,” Ness says. “Life is too short. And you’re lucky you don’t have your laptop.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if you pulled it out, I’d toss it into the sea.”
I laugh at him.
“I’m not kidding,” Ness says, even though he laughs with me. “Speaking of the sea,” he continues, “it’s warm enough to go for a dip. You wanna?”
“I would, but someone told me a whole bunch of things not to pack, and one was my bathing suit.”
Ness lifts his hands in defense. “I didn’t know you were going to jump me in the sub and that I’d be bringing you here!”
“I totally didn’t jump you. You took advantage of me in a weakened state.”
“Whatever. I’m going for a swim. If you wanna come, it’s dark enough that I won’t see anything. Not that I’d be looking anyway. And not that I haven’t already seen your breasts.”
“The lights were out. You didn’t see anything.”
But Ness is already up and out of his chair. I refuse to move, electing to enjoy my wine, the stars, the sound of the gently lapping water before me, the crack and pop of the fire, and the distant hiss of waves crashing on the other side of the island.
Ness sheds his shirt before he gets to the sand. I study his silhouette as he drops his shorts and then heads out into the water. Gladys appears beside me, gathering the dessert dishes.
“You a mad woman,” she says.
“Oh, we were just playing,” I tell her.
“No, you crazy not being out there with that man. He insane for you.”
“He barely knows me,” I tell her.
“All right then, tell me why he never bring no woman here. I say you mad.”
She laughs on her way back to the house, and I hear her talking with Nick, realize the two of them are probably gossiping about this last-minute arrival and this mysterious woman with half an island in her.
“Fuck it,” I say. I leave my wine and head down the tiered patio. At the sand’s edge, I pull off my shirt, take off my bra, drop my shorts and then my underwear. “No regrets,” I say. And by the time I get to the water, I’m running and laughing. I’m remembering what it feels like to be free again.
35
The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company. Weight disappears, and our bodies with it. Ness stands on his toes, me clinging to him, my arms wrapped around his neck and my legs around his waist, our lips tasting the salt on each other.
The water is warm enough that I barely feel it, heightening the sense of my loss of self. And when we move, microscopic sea life blooms green and gives off an ethereal glow. Above us, a path of dense light reminds me where the Milky Way got its name. The stars are intense. Like the sky is as alive and excited as every cell in my body.
We stay in the water until I can barely feel anything with my fingers, they’re so pruned. Our bodies hardly ever came apart the entire time, so that when the water flows between us, it chills my breasts and stomach, which have been against Ness for what feels like half an hour. I think I stayed pinned to him to avoid access to other parts of our bodies, and so he couldn’t see me in the bright starlight. As we exit the water, there’s no avoiding it. I can feel his eyes on me. Holding my hand, he leads me down the beach where a blanket has been laid out.
“Did you plan this?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Gladys did, I guess. I saw her out here arranging something.”
“So you were kissing with your eyes open,” I admonish him.
“Guilty.”
There are towels on the blanket. Ness and I dry off. He wraps his towel around me and rubs my arms. The breeze is soft, but it chills my skin where it’s still wet. We lie down on the blanket, huddle under one of the towels, and Ness runs his hand over my hair as we watch the sea slide toward us and then away, over and over.
“You shouldn’t be shy,” Ness says. “You’re gorgeous. Women half your age must loathe you.”
“Everyone in New York is gorgeous,” I say, deflecting his praise.
“I’m serious. Inside and out, you are intoxicating. And you were right, I was coming on to you that first night. It wasn’t just the wine, either. I was excited that you agreed to come out and talk to me. Made me think you weren’t out to get me, you know? That you were interested in my story, interested in hearing the truth. It makes it easy to open up to you.”
I think about why I really went up to interview Ness, and my heart aches for him. But I bite my lip and don’t say anything.
“A lot of shooting stars tonight.”
I scan the sky. I haven’t seen one yet. We rub our feet together to keep them warm. I see a flash of light overhead and squeeze Ness’s hand. He squeezes back. “Make a wish,” he says.
“That would be greedy,” I tell him. “I’ll let someone else have it.”
And then, maybe because I’m fighting so many dark secrets about why I wrote my articles and why I went to see Ness, and maybe because I’m terrified to share something that will drive him away from me, but I’m terrified that if I don’t say anything he’ll know I’m keeping something from him, I decide to give him a dark secret that I’ve never given anyone before.
“I’ve got to confess something,” I tell Ness. I wiggle away from him and prop myself up on my elbow. He studies me intensely, brushes the hair off my face.
“You used to be a man,” he guesses. “I’m totally cool with that.”
I laugh. “I’m serious,” I say. “I’m about to tell you something I’ve never told another living soul.”
His hand falls still for a moment, and then he seeks out my hand. He waits.
“There was a time when I didn’t care about shells. Not one bit.”
Ness doesn’t laugh at how insignificant this sounds. And it does sound insignificant to me, saying it, but only because I’m not sure how to tell the rest of the story.
“My sister and I had a rough time in school. I guess the things society tolerates come and go, and so we had friends with two moms or two dads, but there weren’t any other mixed-race girls in our elementary school. Parents came in color-coded couplets. Except ours.