Page 64 of When We Believed in Mermaids

Oh, Josie,I think,where the hell are you?I feel anxious now that I surfed instead of looking for her, that I avoided the journey. I feel exactly torn in half—I want to find her, but that’s going to mean facing a lot that I’ve buried for a long time.

Do I even want to find her, really? Maybe it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Except that I have to admit my life is pretty sterile. Maybe finding Josie will help me make peace with everything, give me some space to—

What?

I don’t know. Change things.

My brownies are ready, and I take them out of the oven, bending my head to inhale the chocolaty, sweet scent as I settle them on the counter to cool. Outside, the storm is working itself up into a fine frenzy, and inside my head, the frenzy is in my thoughts.

When a knock sounds at my door, I practically fly across the room. It’s Javier, standing there with a bottle of wine and a box of food. “I was worried about you,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Yes please.” I take the bottle and the box, set them on the counter, and throw my arms around his waist. Leaning into his solid body. For a moment, I can tell he’s startled, and I wonder if I should pull away, but I’ve been feeling so lost and tortured and...young, that he feels like a life raft.

After the slightest hesitation, his arms circle me. “Are you frightened?”

“No,” I say. “Not of the storm.” I lift my head. “I didn’t want to be alone in it.”

“Nor did I,” he murmurs, and kisses me, and then walks me backward toward my bed near the window. We fall down together and make love while the storm rages, the air smelling of chocolate and ozone.

This time it’s different. I find myself slowing down, tasting him, breathing in the scent of his skin, looking at him more carefully. His stomach is slightly soft and very sensitive, and I spend time there, kissing and tasting. His thighs are sturdy, covered with the hair I tried not to look at when he wore slightly more.

And he takes his time too, hands touching what his eyes see—my breasts and the sides of my ribs, my neck, which he kisses and kisses and kisses and kisses until I’m squirming and giggling, and then he captures my mouth and slides his fingers between my legs, and I have an almost instantaneous orgasm.

Afterward, we lie sprawled and open to the night, covering nothing. It feels lush and intimate, and a ripple of warning moves through me.

But there’s a built-in limit to this connection—we live on different continents and met on a third. That’s enough of a safeguard that I feel comfortable simply being myself.

After a little while, we get up to make ourselves plates and pour wine into the goblets I find in a cupboard above the sink. It’s a little chilly, so we carry it all back to the bed and curl up with the covers over us, propped against the pillows. Outside, the storm rages. Inside, we eat.

“Where did you get the tapas?” I ask, popping a roasted, salted pepper in my mouth.

“La Olla, where I took you.”

“Were you there?”

“We rehearsed there, and when the cyclone blew in, they gave us all plates of food and sent us home.” He plucks an olive from his plate. “Miguel wanted me to come home with him.”

I laugh, touching his foot with mine under the covers. “What did you tell him?”

A shrug. “Only the truth. That I worried about you being alone here.” With his long fingers, he plucks out a roll of ham. “I told him that you were coming to hear me sing. And that you promised not to run away this time.”

“Your holiday romance.”

“Is that what you are?” He cocks his head, looking at me with those dark, dark eyes. In this light, I can see the scars of long-ago acne in the hollows of his cheeks and the network of lines time has woven at the corners of his eyes. For a moment I’m captured, falling into a cool and fragrant atmosphere that fills the air around us, binds us.

But only until I straighten to shake it off. “How long are you staying in New Zealand?”

“I don’t know.” He sets his plate aside and takes my free hand, opening the fingers that are slightly clenched. He smooths them flat, revealing the heart of my palm, and strokes the center lightly before he presses his against mine. It is somehow a thousand times more intimate than all the things we just did to each other. A hitch catches in my throat. “I think,mi sirenita, that there is more here than a fling.”

I keep my gaze on our hands until he touches the tender area beneath my chin. I allow it, allow myself to feel the yearning, the sense of possibility. For one minute, or maybe two, or maybe as long as the storm lasts. Seeing my acquiescence, he smiles gently.

“Tell me something you loved as a child.”

“My sister,” I reply without hesitation. “We had our own little world, just the two of us—it was full of magic and beautiful things.”

“Mm,” he says, moving his palm lightly over mine. “What magic?”