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I meant to say something clever. Instead I opened my mouth and a sob came out.
Not a delicate one. A great ugly gulp, in the middle of a sacred Mayan pool, with water up to my chin. I told her all of it. The gym woman. The silence in the flat. The way I still slept on one side of the bed. The way I’d stopped believing anyone would want me again.
Ana didn’t say a word. She swam close and pulled me against her chest, and I cried into her wet shoulder with the jungle going on all around us. She stroked my hair. She hummed something in Spanish.
When I’d finally run out, she tilted my face up and kissed me, softly, on each wet cheek and then on the mouth. It was salt and tenderness and nothing demanding.
“Whenever you want to stop, we stop,” she said.
“I don’t want to stop.”
We climbed out onto the warm rocks and lay on our towels in the dappled light. She undressed me with great care, as if I might break, and kissed every inch of me. When her mouth reached the place between my legs I came in about a minute, with fresh tears running into my hair, and she held me while I laughed and sobbed and shook.
We rode home in the golden evening, my arms wrapped round her waist.
I wasn’t fixed. But for the first time in a year I felt like a person who might get there.
Ending 8 of 16: Cenote Tears. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.