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

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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.

→ I climb the rocks toward the woman doing yoga

→ I sit down on the sand and watch the sunset alone

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Villa Nine had its own gate, its own gardener and a plunge pool lit from underneath like a swimming pool in a film about rich people doing something wrong. At nine o’clock exactly I stood outside it in a green wrap dress with my heart going like a drum.

Gary opened the door in swim shorts and a smile of pure relief. “She came! Lou, she came!”

“I heard,” Lou called. “Don’t pounce.”

She was already in the pool, gold bikini, dark bob slicked back, a bottle of prosecco balanced on the edge. I slipped off my sandals and sat down with my feet in the warm water. Gary poured. Lou raised her glass.

“Rules, one more time,” she said. “You can say stop at any point. Not just now. Any point. Nobody is cross, nobody is hurt. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said, and meant it.

“And if you say yes?”

“Then I mean it.”

“Good girl.” She swam over and settled between my knees, wet hands resting on my thighs. Her eyes were green and wicked. Behind her, Gary sat on a lounger, drink in hand, his gaze fixed on us with the stillness of a man at a very good film.

“You’ve been looking at my mouth since Tuesday,” Lou said softly.

“I have.”

“May I?”

I nodded. She came up out of the water and kissed me, soft at first, then deep, her tongue sliding against mine. I heard Gary breathe out, slow and shaky, behind her.

→ I kiss Lou back properly and pull her closer

→ I whisper that I’d like to watch them first

← Back

Six-thirty in the morning is a crime. I want that on the record.

I rolled my borrowed mat out on the deck above the beach, the sun a pink smear over the water, and tried to look like a woman who did this regularly. There were seven of us: a honeymooning couple, four retired Canadians, and me.

Ana taught barefoot, in a black sports bra and shorts, her braid swinging. Her voice was low and dry and funny. “Breathe like you mean it, Sophie. You are not trying to hide.”

I was absolutely trying to hide. By the third sun salutation my thighs were shaking. In downward dog she came up behind me, put both hands on my hips and drew them back, firm and exact. “Here. Lift. Let your spine be long.”

My whole body lit up like a switchboard. Her thumbs pressed the dimples above my arse. When she finally moved on to correct the Canadians, I stayed in the pose a few seconds longer than I needed to, face burning against the mat.

By the end the Canadians had drifted off to the buffet. I lay in corpse pose, boneless, staring at the sky.

Ana sat down cross-legged beside my head. A tiny lotus tattoo showed above the waistband of her shorts.

“You did well,” she said. “I don’t have another class until four. And tomorrow is my day off, if you’d like to see a Mexico the brochures don’t have.”

I looked up at her upside down and thought about both.

→ I stay behind for a private stretch

→ I ask her to show me the real Mexico

← Back

The beach at half past midnight belonged to the crabs and us.

Mateo had changed out of his uniform into a loose white shirt, open at the neck, and he carried a bottle of mezcal and two glasses with the care of a man transporting organs. We walked until the music from the resort was a thump in the distance. Then we sat in the sand, shoulders touching, and I told him everything. The gym woman. The text message. The way I’d found out the dentist’s receipt didn’t match the story.

He listened. He actually listened. Then he took the glass out of my hand and put it carefully in the sand.

“Sophie,” he said. “Can I kiss you? Yes or no. No is fine.”

“Yes,” I said. “God, yes.”

He kissed me slowly, with a hand cupped under my jaw and a mouth that tasted of smoke and lime. I pulled him down on top of me. His weight was gorgeous, and I could feel him already hard through his shorts, pressing against the inside of my thigh. I slid my hands under his shirt and dug my nails into his back and he groaned into my neck.

“Soph-eee!”

We froze. Down the beach, a lantern was swinging, and the unmistakable laugh of a man from Leeds was carrying across the sand. Three figures were wandering toward us.

“Is that you, love?” Lou called. “We’ve brought snacks!”

Mateo put his forehead against mine and swore softly in Spanish.

→ I tell Mateo to ignore them and take him back to Cabana 12

→ I wave and call them over

← Back

I sat. The sand gave under me like a warm hand. I pulled my knees to my chest and watched the sun go down like it was being paid to.

Pink, orange, a violent dark gold, then a purple so rich it looked fake. I’d spent ten years in a flat in Didsbury being told I had unrealistic expectations of beauty. Here it was, for free, with a margarita.

And I was fine. That was the surprising thing. I was sitting alone on a beach in the dusk with nobody to perform for, and I was properly fine. My skin hummed with sun. I could feel exactly where my own body started and ended. The wanting was still there, sleek and low in my stomach, but it wasn’t desperate any more. It was a choice.

Footsteps in the sand.

I didn’t need to turn round. Mateo set two small glasses of mezcal down beside me and sat on my left, a respectful foot away, still in his white shirt. He smelled of limes and salt.

“Fifteen minutes’ break,” he said. “I wanted to bring you a drink. And to say I’m sorry if I was too much at the bar.”

“You weren’t.”

“And I wanted to look at your face while you watched this.” He nodded at the horizon. “It’s the best seat on the whole coast.”

Our knees touched. Neither of us moved them. The wind lifted the hem of my sarong, and his eyes followed it up my thigh. The glass was cool in my hand. The sea was very loud.

“What do you want, Sophie?” he asked quietly. “Honestly.”

→ I tell him I only want the sunset tonight

→ I tell him his break is longer than fifteen minutes