of dust has a role to play. The universe looks like beautiful chaos, but it is in fact, perfectly precise and predictable.
“Is the water nice?” Regan appears in the doorway, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel.
“Yeah, come join me,” I hold up the two bottles of beer resting in the cup holders.
She wrinkles her nose. “I just showered…”
“Thank goodness there’s more water so you can do it again. Come on. It’s our last night.”
She sighs, but nods. “Okay, let me put on a suit, I’ll be right out,” she smiles, slides the door close, and disappears back into the suite.
The tension from our conversation on the banks of the mangroves is gone, but the question that sparked it, is still unanswered.
And for now, it’ll stay that way. We’ve got this one night left in this perfect dimension we’ve carved out of nostalgia and attraction and I want to spend it happy. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the real world. And no matter how much I wish it, no matter how bright and shimmering this thing between us, we’ll go our separate ways.
But there’s no way I can go back to a life that she's not part of.
Cosmos taught me that the universe is an impeccable timekeeper, every single thing happens as it should. Us meeting here like this wasn’t an accident.
In my line of work, brilliant women aren’t rare. And almost all of them can claim something that makes them physically attractive. But, as cerebral as I am, I’m even more adventurous and thrill seeking. I know it’s a rare combination, and I’ve yet to meet a woman who can hang with me on a hike and then talk to me about all of the things that interest me - movies, books, food, travel, family, politics.
Until I met Regan Wilde. She’s adventurous, beautiful, bright, and kind. But she’s not the kind of woman you win with a few nights of sex and flattery. Nah, if I want it all, I’ve got to earn it all.
I need to be in the same city, and I need a plan. But until she wants me more than whatever she’s getting out of staying married to a man she doesn’t like or live with.
I might fail. She might trample my heart again, but to be able to finally claim her as mine, is a hell of an upside.
The door slides open, Regan steps out onto the balcony, and my eyes nearly fall out of my head.
I’ve seen her naked and it shouldn’t make me nearly swallow my tongue. But as she walks toward the hot tub, bathed in silver moonlight, I see Venus, - my ultimate woman – come to life.
She’s got on this tiny silver bikini. Her dark hair is swept back and off her face and sits piled on top of her head. It gives me an unobstructed view of her exquisitely symmetrical face, and her long, graceful neck. Her wide, thickly lashed eyes look bigger. Her kiss swollen lips are slick with the coconut lip balm she bought from the small gift store in our hotel lobby.
“Where’d you go?” she asks as she climbs in and sits next to me.
I reach over the side and lift up the tightly rolled joint. “To get this, our tour guide told me where I could.”
“I didn’t know doctor’s smoked weed,” she looks scandalized when I lift it to my lips.
“And, now you do. And it’s not something I’d do if I had to work in the morning,” I say, light it again, and hand it to her.
She gives the joint a dubious side eye, her pert, sunburned nose wrinkling. “I’ve never tried it. I don’t want to be hungover.”
“You won’t be hungover. But, no pressure.” I pull it back to my lips.
“Wait.” She lays one of her small, neatly manicured hands on my forearm.
“Change your mind?” I ask with a knowing smile.
She nods, but instead of taking it from me, she leans forward. “Show me how?”
There’s meaning layered in those three words that gives them a gravity that I’m helpless to resist. It pulls me to her the way the moon and the sun pull the tide.
She puckers her lips to make a tiny ‘O” for the joint, I put it to her lips, my heart hammering wildly when her lips touch the backs of my fingers as she draws in the heady smoke. I slip my other hand behind her neck and pull her forward, so that our lips are almost touching.