Page 67 of Crosswind

"Jan." His voice has warmth in it. The warmth. "You don't have to…”

"I know I don't have to," I say. "I want to." I look at the shuttered light on the ceiling. "Also your shoulders are, objectively, very good."

He is quiet for a moment.

Then he pulls me closer, the full Patrick pull, both arms, entirely committed, and stays there.

I let him.

The Ubud days go the way of good things — quickly, and with something you know you will remember. The rice terraces in the morning. The temples across the second and third days. The pool at dusk. Patrick beside me in all of it, unhurried, entirely present.

On the fifth morning we pack and drive south.

The drive south — rice terraces giving way to coast, the light changing, the shift from Ubud's interior quiet to the open brightness of the ocean. Patrick has the window down and his arm out and is narrating things he finds interesting, which is most things, in the way he does when he is happy and has decided to share it. I watch the landscape and occasionally confirm that what he is finding interesting is indeed interesting, and he is usually right.

The Seminyak villa has a pool that faces the sunset.

Patrick stands at the edge of it and looks at the ocean and says: "Jan."

"Yes."

"This is already the best holiday I have ever had." A pause. "And we still have Seminyak."

I stand beside him. The Indian Ocean, the late afternoon light, a sky that is beginning to consider becoming something extraordinary.

"Yes," I say.

He takes my hand.

We watch the sky.

The first Seminyak evening we eat at a place on the beach that Patrick found, which is good in the particular way of places that don't need to try — fresh fish, warm air, the sound of the ocean close. We walk back along the water in the dark. Patrick's hand in mine, the sand under our feet, nobody knowing us here.

I find I like that. The not being known.

On the second morning Patrick makes an announcement.

Patrick decides, on the second Seminyak morning, that we are going dancing.

"Tonight," he says, at breakfast.

I look at him over my coffee. "Dancing."

"There's a beach club. They have a DJ. It looks good."

"I don't dance," I say.

"Everyone dances."

"I don't."

"Jan." He looks at me with the expression he uses when he has decided something and is waiting for me to arrive at the same conclusion. "We're in Bali. We're going dancing."

I look at my coffee.

"Fine," I say.

He smiles at his tea.