The Cancun Trilogy, An Erotic Beach Romance (6 page)

“No.”

“You lie,” he said, putting the
necklace over her head and settling the medallion over her
chest.

“No. No, I don’t lie. I wouldn’t lie
to you.”

“You
do
lie,” he said, a hiccup
in his voice. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. She
could feel his heartbeat. “Thief,” he admonished her with a
whisper.

She broke down, embracing him. “You
have to go now,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Keep me in your
heart.”

“I will,” she said between sobs,
finally letting him go. He turned toward the shore, and stepped off
the deck. He walked stiffly toward the water, the only time she’d
seem him move without grace. She watched, her hand on the
medallion, as he walked into the water. The cab honked its horn as
she watched him dive under the waves, returning to the watery Eden
that he came from.

Return
to Cancún

Chapter 1

Terra stretched, trying to look over the throng of people,
wishing she were taller. Cancún airport was a swarm of humanity
speaking different languages, everyone going in different
directions.

She had hoped he would be there
waiting for her when she got through immigration.

She got jostled by a boisterous group
of boys wearing soccer jerseys and bouncing a ball between them as
she wrestled with her shoulder bag, trying to find her phone. She
wasn’t even sure which direction he would be coming from. She stood
on a seat and tried to look over the mass of people as they moved
about like choppy water.

Where was he?

She had flown from Detroit to Los
Angeles, then to Cancún. The flights had gone smoothly enough, but
Terra was a wreck. Doubt had nibbled at her until it had fully
taken root and spread. Was her time with Nik last summer a fluke?
The whole way over she obsessed about it. They’d only spent one day
together—not even twenty-four hours—and that was a whole year ago.
What was she doing coming back here? Terra’s friend Vicky thought
she was crazy. But there was a lot Vicky didn’t know.

Last summer, when Vicky and Terra
returned from their summer vacation, Terra was feeling sick. She
thought at first it was something she ate, or maybe the sudden
change in climate, going from Mexico back to Michigan. A few days
later, she called Vicky, telling her she couldn’t eat. Vicky
listened, then was silent—rare for her. “Well?” Terra asked. “Oh,
honey,” Vicky said softly, “you’re in love.”

It seemed impossible, but Terra had
nothing to compare it to. She’d never been in love, but she never
imagined it like this. It was supposed to be a wonderful feeling,
something blissful and romantic—not a non-stop stomachache. Not a
feeling like she was constantly falling through the air.

Weeks passed. She forced herself to
focus on her schoolwork. Her sophomore year of college was much
harder than her freshman year, plus she had taken on extra classes,
hoping to graduate early. Her advanced biology class alone felt
like a full time job. Every night, no matter how late she finished
studying, she would take out the medallion Nik had given her. As
she traced her fingers over the face of it, she’d allow herself to
drift back to the time they spent together. She could feel his body
under her fingertips and see his beautiful green eyes. His smell.
The deep sound of his voice. She’d take slices of the time they
spent together and relive every second of them, trying to save the
best parts for last, playing it like a movie. A movie she’d lived,
felt, and breathed—but for such a brief period of time. She always
fell asleep before getting to the end, waking up with an imprint of
the medallion on her chest from pressing it against her
heart.

After a month, she realized she was
getting worse, not better. If this was love, she wasn’t sure she
wanted anything to do with it. There was a constant aching in her
chest. She had to force herself to eat. She found herself crying at
odd hours. The worst was at night, when her need for him was so
great it would sometimes cause her to shake. She desperately wanted
to feel his body, to feel the weight of him on her. To feel him
penetrate her. She’d wrap herself around her pillow, imagining it
was him, and sob into it. Sometimes she’d move her hand down and
rub herself to a quick orgasm, crying right through it.

She couldn’t share her feelings with
anyone. Vicky might have understood, but Terra was embarrassed and
pretended to be fine. In a desperate attempt to find relief, she
mailed the medallion back to the dive school in Cancún where she
first met Nik, with his name on the envelope.

Three weeks later, it came back. With
a letter.

Terra raced back to her dorm room and
poured over the letter. There was no explanation for why he’d sent
the medallion back to her. There was no talk of the time they spent
together. It was mostly about his plans for the diving sanctuary he
was building, written in his careful hand. She could hear his voice
in her head, making the same grammatical errors he did in his
speech. He wrote about how he’d found a partner to help him... that
his sister might be visiting from Greece again... But nothing about
them
. Nothing about the extraordinary experience they had.
Nothing about the intimacy they shared, or the incredible sex they
had. Nothing about…
love
. Terra began to cry as she got to
the end of the letter. He just signed it
Nik.
Not
love
Nik
, or
thinking of you, Nik
. No anything. And why did
he send the medallion back? The one his mother gave him, that he
said was so important to him.
Why?

She didn’t write back. She started to
a couple times, but couldn’t express what she felt. Or didn’t want
to. What was she going to write?
I’m so madly in love with you
that I’m walking into walls and living on saltines and soda water.
At night, I yearn for your touch so much I can only fall asleep
when I’ve cried myself to exhaustion. Oh, and by the way, how’s the
dive thing coming?

It seemed pointless. She really felt,
brief as their encounter was, that it was special. She had
convinced herself that what they’d experienced together really was
unique and powerful. At least it was to her. But who was she
kidding? Maybe it was her age. She was only twenty. He was— what?
She didn’t even know. Twenty-five? He’d likely known lots of girls,
she thought sadly. With his looks, and his obvious sexual skills,
he probably had been with all sorts of beautiful women. Probably is
right now, she thought bitterly, imagining him making love to
someone else. To him, she was probably just another distraction on
the way to building his dreams. Dreams that didn’t include
her.

She gave up trying to write back, and
gave up hope that they shared any of the same feelings, resolving
to suffer her fate quietly.

Another letter arrived. Terra figured
that if she wanted to get over him, the best thing to do was to
throw it away. But she couldn’t. Instead, she let it sit on her
dresser for a day before opening it. When she read it, she found
more talk of his plans. How he missed Greece, and his fear that by
opening and running the dive sanctuary, he’d never get to go back.
But that a sacrifice I make for my dreams, yes? But you would
love it there. When it rain in Athens, it’s like...

Wait—what?

She went back and re-read that part.
You’d love it there.
What did that mean? With him? Together?
She nearly slapped herself.
Stop it, Terra. His English is bad.
He could have meant anything.

She wrote back. She talked about
school. About Vicky. About Michigan in the winter. About her plans
for medical school. About anything except her feelings for him. It
was a cheerful letter, but inside, Terra felt torn up, like her
heart was being slowly pulled apart. It wasn’t at all what she
wanted to tell him. She thought of including a picture. Maybe that
would awaken something in him. He’d never really seen her at her
best.
Stop it, there’s nothing to awaken in him. He doesn’t see
you like that anymore.
She signed the letter
Terra
. Not
love, Terra
. No
thinking of you, Terra
. No
nothing.

He wrote back again. More about his
plans. Others were joining him. He now had seven people committed
to helping him build and run the dive sanctuary. And now it was
going to be a research center as well. And he’d received a
government grant to help pay for it all. He included drawings and
renderings of what they were building. He also talked about his
mother in Athens, saying
you’d really like her.
Terra didn’t
let herself dwell on that part, knowing right away it was something
she could easily obsess over.

And that’s how it went. Every few
weeks, another letter would arrive, and every few weeks, Terra
would write back. He said it was good practice for his English, as
it forced him to look up words. She noticed his writing did get
better, with fewer grammatical errors. He included more drawings
and sketches, often quite elaborate, like works of art. Sometimes
there was sand in the creases of the paper. She imagined him
writing on the deck of his beach house, looking out over the ocean.
But still no mention of the intimacy they shared, or the bond she
felt they had established.

Terra found herself opening up more in
her own letters, talking about things she couldn’t even tell Vicky.
Not about her feelings for him, but about how she felt about life,
and the things that were important to her. She felt free to express
herself, uncensored. She wrote about her mother, and how her dying
had affected her. Putting all these thoughts on paper, sealing them
up and putting them in the mail, was therapeutic for her. She began
eating normally. She started running again and going to yoga class
with Vicky.

She still loved him. She knew she did,
but she found it was getting easier not to acknowledge it to
herself. She still craved him at night, sometimes pressing his
letters to her face, trying to get the smell of him. But she was
coping, and that was enough. Each day got a little
easier.

In the spring, Vicky asked where they
were going for summer vacation. Nik's next letter arrived that day.
It was similar to his other ones, but there was something else
included. A plane ticket, with Terra’s name on it.

Terra clutched her heart. It was an
open-ended ticket, good until the end of summer, from Detroit to
Cancún. Stuck to the ticket was a post-it note, which simply said,
come see me
. Terra could swear her heart stopped
beating.

Chapter 2

Terra tried his cell phone again. Right to voice mail. Again.
The airport was less crowded now. She realized the frenzy of people
came and went with each flight that arrived or departed. In between
it nearly cleared out. Her eyes were aching from searching faces,
looking for his green eyes. It had been nearly an hour since her
flight arrived.

Just then, she saw him.

He was running through the terminal,
toward her. For a moment, time actually stood still, like it does
just a couple of times in a person’s life. In that instant, all the
love she’d felt for him, all the love she’d been holding back, came
flooding forward in a rush. She knew in that instant that she loved
him more than anything in the world. It was beyond her. Bigger than
her. More than she could contain. Trying to suppress it now was
like trying to hold back the tide. The thought was both terrifying
and exhilarating.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he panted,
taking her hands. She had thought of his brilliant green eyes a
thousand times over the last year, imagining them looking at her,
but she was still astonished at how clear and vibrant they were.
His hair was longer, dark, but with streaks of sun bleached blond.
“The motorcycle… broke down.” He was trying to catch his breath. “I
called cab, had to keep calling, and my phone died. I’m so sorry.
You’ve been waiting. I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay,
Nik.” She looked up at him. He seemed to hesitate a second, then
lunged forward and took her in his arms. She wrapped her arms
around him as he held her tightly. Neither said anything as they
gripped each other.

A moment seemed to transpire between
them, like a silent understanding. She felt his heart beating
against her. His body was warm and damp.

He breathed into her. She gripped him
tighter, not caring if she seemed needy or desperate or was not
able to play it cool as she’d planned. It just felt too good to be
in his strong arms to pretend.

He finally broke their embrace. With
his hands on her shoulders, they looked at each other, as if for
the first time. They both broke into goofy smiles. “Did you check
in a bag?” he asked. “Yeah. I have my backpack, but they wouldn’t
let me take it on board, so I had to check it.” They started toward
the escalator that led to the baggage claim area. He naturally took
her hand as they walked, like they were a couple. He squeezed her
hand. She squeezed back.

They floated down the escalator in
silence, just looking at each other, not wanting to break the
spell. When they made their way to the baggage claim, they were
surprised to find all the passengers from her flight still standing
around, waiting for their luggage. “I find out what’s going on,” he
said, breaking away from her and going to the information desk. She
stood by herself, watching the other people. She was so happy and
relieved she thought she might cry.