Page 71 of That Birthday in Barbados
Catherine
IT’S LIKE A day out of a movie I might have written for myself featuring all of my most hoped-for fantasies. I’m on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen with a gorgeous man who also happens to be kind and smart and looks at me as if he can only barely restrain himself from making love to me right here under a sky as blue as any I’ve ever seen.
Not that I would mind. Except for modesty and the fact that there would be no hiding the fact that I am older than he is in this light. Except for that.
We eat the amazing lunch he has prepared, sitting on towels beneath a bright yellow umbrella with our toes in the sand.
I’m so full I have to stop. “I need a one-piece after that,” I say, holding my stomach. “No hiding this belly now.”
He laughs. “What belly?”
“I’ll just keep it sucked in,” I say. “Don’t mind me if I can’t talk.”
He shakes his head, still smiling. “You look incredible.”
“If I did your spin class every day, I would look incredible.”
He slides onto his side, props himself up on one elbow. “So stay here, and you can do it every day.”
I sober beneath the suggestion. “I wish,” I say, failing to conceal the longing in my voice.
“You don’t have to wish. It’s your life. And we only get one.”
I consider what he has said, curbing what would have normally been an automatic response outlining my responsibilities at ActivGirl. But I stop myself because I realize for the first time in my life, they aren’t automatic at all.
*
WE SPEND THE afternoon swimming in the beach’s u-shaped cove, alternately floating in the water and lazing in the sun.
It’s almost four o’clock when I turn my face to his where he is lying on his stomach, his head on his crossed forearms. “This might be the most perfect day of my life.”
“Mine too,” he says in a low voice, as if he’s a little afraid to admit it.
I put my hand on his shoulder. It’s hot from the sun, the muscles beneath my palm defined and taut. “Can we stay here forever?”
“I will if you will.”
I smile, shrug, as if I was kidding all along. “Why is it that I came here with vacation as the temporary thing, and all of a sudden, I’m wondering how I can go back to cold and twelve hour workdays?”
“Then don’t.”
“If only it were that easy.”
“It is easy when you let yourself admit that life is actually very short. We don’t have forever to do the things that make us happy.”
“I have two more years on my contract.”
He considers this for a bit and then says, “You could buy your way out.”
The words drop between us, my immediate instinct to deny their plausibility. But I can’t make myself say it because all of a sudden, I’m wondering what if? Could I? Would I?
The questions propel me off the towel and across the sand, where I run into the water, not stopping until I am waist deep and diving straight in. I swim out as far as I can go, trying not to think about the fact that my strokes are anything but graceful. When I finally come to a stop, I am breathing hard and treading water.
“Hey.”
I jump at the touch on my shoulder, whirling to find Anders treading beside me.
“You don’t have to run away,” he says. “I didn’t really think you would say yes.”
