I can handle it. Come on, I heard that there’s a tapas bar that makes great shrimp tacos just down the street.”
As they stood to leave, a boat arrived to pluck the dozen swimmers from the ocean...only there seemed to be less than there was before. Thomas counted ten, then shook his head. Where had the other two gone? He must have missed them, or miscounted, or something.
***
Dinner was fabulous. But that was the end of it. She bade him goodbye before the dessert came and rushed from the restaurant. By the time he’d paid their check and hurried after her, she was nowhere to be found. He went to bed longing for her. The next morning he awoke gasping. Mixed with dreams of a diaphanous mermaid and an undersea behemoth, he'd imagined her weighty gaze holding him down beneath the waves as he struggled to breathe. He showered for an hour, way past the end of the hot water, determined to wash off traces of the dream. By lunch he’d almost forgotten the drowning. By happy hour, he looked forward to seeing her again. June Enright from Spartanburg, South Carolina. He’d decided that the dream was just that, a dream. It meant nothing and was little more than his synapses dealing with alcohol, shrimp and the idea of love.
***
She came in at the same time as the day before. She began to head for her usual seat, but hesitated when she saw him. She stared a moment, then lowering her head in embarrassment, smiled and joined him.
“Where’d you go last night?” he asked.
“I had to be somewhere.”
“Immediately? By the time I paid, you were nowhere to be seen?”
“I was in a hurry.”
He began to say something else, but her sigh stopped him cold. He waited a moment, but could tell by the arch of her back that she didn’t want to get into it. Instead of pressing her, he ordered a margarita for her. She drank, her eyes on the sea. Only occasionally did she look at him. Increasingly her looks at him became fonder. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his silence, or if there was a more real connection between them. Strangely he found himself both accepting and wanting. A far cry from the predator he knew himself to be. He’d given himself to this woman and found himself emotionally dependant on her glances and decisions and it oddly pleased him. And it was his private wistful smile that he hadn't even realized he’d revealed that gave him away.
“What is it?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s you. Maybe it’s me.” His truth inspired him. “I barely know you and all I can think is that I want to know you better.”
She blushed, hiding any further reaction in her drink.
This encouraged him. They’d talked about the mundane the previous evening, relating disconnected stories of friends and things they’d seen on their travels. Nothing revealing. Nothing personal. Now he wanted to get to know her as a person. He wanted to discover why she’d chosen this backwash Mexican resort as a hang out. He wanted to know about her Army shirt and what it meant to her. He wanted to know why she’d come to him and blushed. Forgotten were some of her first words— You don’t want to be with me. He was so wrapped up in the process of falling in love, his only thought was how she thought of him and what he wanted to be so she could love him too.
By the end of the evening, she’d cast off broad chunks of her armor, revealing a young woman she'd admitted not having seen for a long time. She'd told him her story, and in the catharsis of the telling, wept over the murder of her friends. Ann, Susan and Gretchen had evaporated in an explosion of light and flame when their HUMMER had struck an IED. June had been in the second vehicle and, although she'd left without a scratch, her soul had been shredded by the event.
Eventually they left the restaurant and walked the beach ending up at Fisherman's Square where the locals gathered to pray for divine intervention. The statue rising from the middle of the expanse was so impressive it was out of place in the dusty Mexican port town. One hundred feet tall, it seemed more permanent than the stone upon which it had been built, as if it’d risen