Author: Akiko

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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

← Back

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

← Back

The rocks were still warm from the day, sharp under my bare feet. I picked my way out along them with my margarita held high like a torch.

Ana was on the last flat boulder, hands in prayer position above her head, the sun burning down behind her. She wore leggings and a sports bra, and a sheen of sweat across her stomach. She didn’t turn round.

“You’re two minutes late for sun salutation,” she said.

“I’ve been told that before. By the Canadians.”

She laughed, low and warm, and turned. The lotus tattoo showed above her waistband. A single drop of sweat ran from her collarbone down between her breasts. I watched it go.

“I teach on the beach most evenings,” she said. “Nobody comes out this far. It’s the one place I can think.”

“Sorry. I’ll go.”

“Don’t.” She said it quickly, and touched my wrist, and left her hand there. Her palm was dry and very warm. “I was hoping it’d be you. Sophie, I’ve been trying to work out for three days how to ask you for a drink without it being a conversation about stretching.”

I held up my glass. “I have a drink.”

“So you do.” She took it out of my hand and sipped, eyes on mine over the rim, and the last of the sun slid under the sea. The rock felt very small and very private. My heart was a trapped bird.

“This is the bit where you tell me what you’d like,” Ana said.

→ I kiss her, now, with the sun going down

→ I ask her to teach me a pose, on these rocks

← Back

I put one finger on Lou’s lips. “Not yet,” I whispered. “I want to see you two first.”

Lou’s eyes went huge, then dark and delighted. She looked over her shoulder at Gary. “Did you hear that?”

“I heard it,” he said, a bit strangled.

I took my glass and a lounger and sat down in the shadows beside the pool like a woman at the theatre. Lou climbed out of the water, slow, dripping, golden, took Gary by the hand and led him to the wide stone edge, ten feet from me.

She kissed him. It was nothing like a stranger’s kiss. It was ten years of knowing exactly what the other one liked. He peeled her bikini bottoms off, and she knelt on the warm stone with her back arched and her eyes fixed on mine, and he knelt behind her, and put his hands on her hips.

“Look at her, Gary,” Lou said. “Look at her watching us.”

He pushed into her with one long groan. I heard the wet sound of it. I watched her face go slack and her breasts swing and his thick cock disappearing into her over and over, and my hand had found its way inside my wrap dress and under my bikini before I even decided to do it. I was soaked. My thighs were trembling.

“Sophie,” Lou gasped, between thrusts. “Love. There’s room.”

The whole villa smelled of chlorine and sex and prosecco. My fingers were slick. The moon had come out over the palms.

→ I stay in my seat and enjoy the show

→ I stand up, flustered, and tell them I need to go

← Back

I put my glass down, slid into the water and pulled her against me.

It was warm as a bath. Lou’s body was strong and soft and slippery, and she made a low pleased noise into my mouth as I pushed my fingers into her wet hair. Her hands found the tie on my wrap dress and then I was just in a bikini, and then I wasn’t. My breasts were against hers. Her nipples were hard as pebbles against mine.

“Oh, you’re gorgeous,” Lou breathed. “Gary, isn’t she gorgeous?”

“Christ,” said Gary, from the lounger. “Yes. Sophie, you’re unbelievable.”

I glanced across. He’d stripped off his shorts, and he was sitting with one hand round a very large, very red, very interested cock, stroking lazily, watching us with his mouth open. The sight made me gasp. Lou smiled against my throat.

“He’s allowed to look,” she murmured. “Looking’s his favourite thing. Joining in is his second favourite.”

I turned Lou around and sat her up on the edge of the pool and kissed down her breasts and her stomach, and she spread her thighs for me like she’d been planning it. She was smooth and swollen and so wet it was running into the pool. I put my mouth on her. She moaned and gripped my hair and I felt the water shiver around us.

Across the courtyard Gary made a sound I can only describe as a prayer.

Lou lifted her head and held my eyes. “Sophie,” she said, hoarse. “Tell me what you want him to do.”

→ I tell Gary to get in the pool and join us

→ I tell Gary to stay put and watch, because Lou is mine tonight

← Back

Ana’s day off began on the back of a battered green scooter with me clinging to her waist and my sunhat in my teeth.

We rode forty minutes down a road cut through jungle so thick it felt like driving through green wool. She parked by a hand-painted sign, led me along a path of crumbling limestone, and stopped at a hole in the ground the size of a swimming pool, a hundred feet of turquoise water, roots hanging down through the daylight like curtains. Nobody else. Birdsong. Dripping.

“A cenote,” she said. “Where I go when I need to remember I’m small.”

She pulled off her T-shirt and shorts and dived in wearing a black bikini. I stood on the edge in my sundress with my heart thudding, watching her surface and flick her braid back, laughing up at me.

“Come in, Sophie. Nobody here but fish.”

I took my dress off. Cold water closed round me and I yelped, and she swam over, grinning, and caught my hands to steady me. Her legs brushed mine as we trod water. I could smell her sunscreen and the green mineral scent of the cave.

We talked for an hour with our arms resting on a ledge. She’d grown up in Oaxaca, taught in Barcelona and Goa, loved the sea. I told her about the ten years, and about the last eleven months of nothing. She went quiet.

“You haven’t let yourself be touched in a long time,” she said softly.

I looked at her wet mouth and my stomach turned over.

→ I swim to her and kiss her

→ I tell her the whole sad story, and cry

← Back

I stayed on my mat. I told myself it was to rest. The honest answer was my legs, my pulse and the lotus tattoo.

“Hips,” said Ana, when the last Canadian had gone. “You carry everything in your hips. Roll onto your back.”

I did. She knelt at my feet, took my right ankle, and folded my knee slowly toward my chest, then out to the side, one hand firm on my thigh. The deck was warm. The sea sounded miles away. Her fingers pressed into the crease where my leg met my body, a hair’s breadth from where I was suddenly, painfully wet.

“Does this hurt?”

“No,” I said. It came out a whisper. “God, no.”

She stopped moving. The thumb on my thigh stayed exactly where it was. She was looking at my face, my mouth, the damp shine on my chest, and slowly the corner of her mouth went up.

“Sophie,” she said. “I’m going to ask you something directly. I’d like to kiss you. And then, if you like it, a good deal more. But you can say no, and we go and eat pancakes and I’ll never make it strange.”

My throat had gone dry. I had not been wanted like this in years, and certainly not by a woman who knew exactly where my hip flexors were. The studio was empty. The door was shut. The sun was high through the slatted roof, striping her shoulders gold.

I looked at her, and I knew what I wanted, and the only question was where.

→ I pull her down and kiss her right here on the mat

→ I tell her to come to my cabana tonight