“Antigua Black,” Joseph says. “Sweetest pineapple in the world. Want some more?”
“Yes!” she says. He cuts three more slices and she eats all of them, juice running down her fingers. I’m addicted to watching. All I want to do is take her to my kitchen and prepare her things that elicit such heady joy. I want her to react tomyfood that way. To be the reason she’s moaning.
I need to calm fucking down.
When we’re done with dessert, Joseph invites us to join him on the veranda for the rum tasting. Everyone stands. I feel awkward, as there is going to be little to do as a sober person amongst a group sampling high-proof liquor.
Hope grabs my hand and turns to Sarah. “Would you mind if the two of us skipped the tasting and went back to the kitchen?” she asks. “We’re dying to learn how to make that conch salad.”
It’s such a kind gesture.
I try not to show that I’m melting.
“Thanks,” I say to Hope, under my breath. “I was dreading that. But don’t feel like you need to miss out on the rum, if you want to leave me to it.”
She shrugs. “I’m good. I don’t drink much. Went a little too hard last year after a breakup and it made me… off.” She says this in a way that makes me think there is more to the story.
With drinking, there usually is.
Same with breakups.
“I went a little too hard for about two decades,” I tell her. “I’m in recovery. Two years.”
“That’s amazing!” she says. “Congratulations.”
I can tell by the warmth in her voice that she means it.
Hope
Usually when I have a crush, I feel pressure to make myself seem more cool and mysterious than I actually am. To be bold-print alluring.
With Felix, I forget to put on the femme fatale act. I’m just myself—and he seems to dig that.
Normally I might be nervous at how much I like him. I have the bad habit of getting infatuated too quickly. But the fact that there’s an automatic end date between us makes me feel safe to relax.
Besides, I feel more like myself since I met him. I used to pride myself on being captivating and sexy, but since Gabe, I’ve felt like a drab little mouse. A girl with no real career, no real prospects, and nothing to offer.
I came here to shake that feeling. Granted, my intention was to do it by soaking up books and sunshine, not canoodling with a boy.
But the canoodling is helping.
I feel desired. It makes my brain sharper.
When we get back to the port, the water in the bay is markedly darker than it was when we arrived, and there are waves lapping up along the edges of the pier. The captain of the tender warns us that the wind has picked up and tells us to hold on to the posts inside the boat.
The woman who got sick on the way here goes ashen.
She’s probably regretting ingesting three kinds of rum.
Felix and I sit down on a bench in the middle section of the tender to avoid getting splashed. As soon as the boat leaves the dock, I go lurching forward and almost fall over.
Felix puts his arm around me to steady me.
When I’m steadied, he doesn’t remove it.
All thoughts of seasickness vanish.
We stay that way for the entire ten-minute ride back to the ship.
