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I told them I needed to think, and Lou kissed my cheek, perilously close to my mouth, and said the offer stood until Sunday.
So I took my second margarita down to the water’s edge and walked. Golden hour on the Mexican coast is a ridiculous thing. The sea went the colour of melted brass. The sand was warm underfoot. Pelicans dived and missed and dived again.
I thought about Rob. Not the way I had been, with a stomach full of broken glass, but almost fondly, like an old injury that only aches when it rains. I thought about the last time I’d been properly touched. Eleven months. Possibly twelve. I’d stopped counting at about the time I’d stopped caring, which was a lie, because I was still counting.
I was thirty-one. I was healthy. I was brown as a conker and tipsy and free, and three people at this resort had looked at me in the last day like I was dinner.
The beach curved round to a spur of black rocks, and out at the end of them, silhouetted against a blazing red sun, someone was moving through a slow series of poses. Long braid. Slim, strong arms raised over her head.
Further back, up on the sand, a cocktail waiter’s white shirt was heading toward a shaded palapa bar, a tray in his hand. Just a shape, but I knew those shoulders.
I stopped where the wet sand turned to rock. The sun dropped a notch.