Author: Akiko

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I took my glass and my towel and flopped onto the empty lounger between them.

“Gary,” said the sunburnt one, offering a hand the size of a dinner plate. “Thirty-eight. Leeds. Allergic to factor thirty.”

“Lou,” said the woman, not shaking my hand but running one finger down the back of it. “Thirty-seven. Also Leeds. Not allergic to anything.”

“Sophie. Thirty-one. Manchester, recently divorced, extremely thirsty.”

Gary laughed so hard he spilled his lager. Lou just looked at me over her sunglasses, slow and appraising, from my wet hair to my toes and back up again.

“Ten years married, us,” she said. “Ten years and we still can’t keep our hands off each other. Or, occasionally, other people. We have an arrangement.”

“Rules,” said Gary. “Everybody says yes, or nobody does anything. Anyone says stop and it stops. No hard feelings, no awkward breakfasts.”

“Though breakfast is generally lovely,” said Lou.

My face was hot, and not from the sun. Lou’s hand had settled on the small of my back, light and warm and in no hurry, and Gary was very obviously not looking at my breasts with great concentration.

“We’ve got Villa Nine,” Lou said. “Private plunge pool, a fridge full of prosecco, and nine o’clock tonight with nothing in it. No pressure, love. Just a very sincere invitation.”

I looked at the sea. I looked at the pool bar, where Mateo was watching us and pretending not to.

→ I tell them I’ll be at Villa Nine at nine

→ I say I need to think, and take my drink down to the water

← Back

I stayed where I was. The stool was warm, the margarita was cold, and Mateo had just given me a look that went straight to my knickers.

He leaned his elbows on the bar. “Can I ask you something? What’s the pale stripe on your finger?”

“Ten years of marriage,” I said. “It’s fading. Faster than the marriage did.”

“His loss.” He said it simply, no punchline, and went back to cutting limes with a precision that was frankly obscene. “I finish at midnight. I walk the beach after, to switch my head off. Usually alone.”

“Usually.”

“Usually.” His mouth twitched. His eyes dropped to my bikini top, and my nipples hardened under it like they’d been asked a direct question.

Something brushed my shoulder. A woman had stopped behind my stool with a rolled yoga mat under one arm and a long black braid down her back. Thirty-two, wiry, brown-skinned, a dimple in one cheek. Ana, the resort’s yoga instructor. I’d said good morning to her three days running and had never once got out of bed for her class.

“Sunrise session, six-thirty,” she said, smiling at me, not at Mateo. “You keep promising.”

“She promised me first,” Mateo said, mock offended.

Ana’s eyes slid to him, then back to me, amused and unhurried. “Tonight or tomorrow, Sophie. I hear you have options.”

I did have options. I’d forgotten what that felt like.

→ I tell Mateo I’ll find him on the beach after midnight

→ I tell Ana I’ll be at sunrise yoga, and mean it