Window Seat

I noticed him before the plane even left the gate.

He was three rows ahead, across the aisle, with a paperback he wasn't reading and the kind of tan that said he spent a lot more time outside than I did. Twice I caught him looking back. Twice I pretended I hadn't.

By the time the drinks cart came around, I'd decided he was probably married, probably boring, and definitely not my problem. I had six days of sun, a hotel with a rooftop pool and a strict plan to think about absolutely nothing.

Then I walked into the rooftop bar on the second night, and there he was.

He was sitting at the far end with his back to the sunset, which I remember thinking was a waste. White linen shirt, sleeves pushed up to the elbow. The paperback was gone. When he saw me he didn't look surprised. He looked like a man whose bus had finally shown up.

"Fourteen A," he said, when I sat down two stools away.

"Excuse me?"

"You were in fourteen A. Window seat. I was in eleven D. You spent three hours pretending not to look at me."

"I did not."

"You did, and so did I, so I think we're even." He held out his hand. "Theo."

I told him my name. His hand was warm and rough at the palm, and he held mine a second longer than he needed to.

He wasn't married. He wasn't boring, either, which turned out to be a much bigger problem. He built furniture for a living, which explained the forearms, and he was here for his sister's wedding, which didn't explain why he was alone at a hotel bar on a Tuesday night.

"Rehearsal dinner's tomorrow," he said. "Tonight I'm hiding."

"From what?"

"Seven cousins who all want to know why I'm still single."

"Why are you still single?"

He looked at me over the rim of his glass for long enough that I felt it in my stomach.

"Bad timing, mostly," he said. "Until recently."

We talked until the bartender started stacking chairs. About nothing, about everything. The worst jobs we'd ever had. The best thing either of us had ever eaten. The fact that I'd lived my entire life two hours from an ocean and had never once gone swimming at night.

"Never?" he said.

"Never."

He stood up and left cash on the bar. "Come on, then."

The beach was a five minute walk down a path lined with little solar lights. The sand was still warm from the day. The water was not. I shrieked when it hit my knees, and he laughed at me, a big unguarded laugh that rolled across the empty beach, so I splashed him square in the face.

That was the end of being careful.

He caught my wrist when I went to splash him again, and suddenly he was close, close enough that I could see the water beaded on his eyelashes in the moonlight. Neither of us moved. The waves pushed at the backs of my legs.

"I've wanted to do this since the airport," he said.

"The airport? We weren't even on the plane yet."

"I know."

I kissed him first. I want that on the record. I took two handfuls of his wet shirt and pulled him down and kissed him, and he made a sound low in his chest that I felt more than heard. His hands found my waist, then the small of my back, drawing me in against him until the cold water didn't matter at all. He tasted like salt and the lime from his drink, and he kissed the way he talked, unhurried, completely sure of where he was going.

We didn't make it far. His hotel was closer than mine. We dripped across the lobby, laughing, past a night clerk who very professionally did not look up. In the elevator he backed me against the mirrored wall and kissed the side of my neck, just below my ear, slow, like he was trying to memorize it, and by the time the doors opened on the fourth floor my knees had stopped cooperating.

His room smelled like sunscreen and cedar. He didn't turn on the lights. He didn't need to. The balcony doors were open and the moon was doing all the work, silver across the floor, across the bed, across his shoulders when he pulled the wet shirt over his head.

I'd been imagining this for two days, and I had imagined it wrong. I'd pictured something fast and a little frantic. Instead he stopped, his hands resting at the hem of my dress, and looked at me.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Very okay."

He took his time with the dress. The zipper came down one slow inch at a time, his knuckles brushing my spine the whole way, and when it finally slid off my shoulders and pooled at my feet, he stepped back just to look at me in the moonlight. Nobody had ever looked at me like that. Like I was the view he'd paid for.

"Come here," I said.

He didn't. He knelt instead. He kissed my hip bone, and the soft skin below my navel, and the inside of my knee, working his way up so slowly that I had to grab the edge of the dresser to stay standing. His stubble scraped the inside of my thigh and I gasped out loud, and I felt him smile against my skin.

"We have four more days," he said.

"I'm aware."

"So there's no rush."

"Theo."

He laughed, low, and I felt it everywhere. Then he stopped teasing, and for a long, dizzy stretch the only things in the world were his mouth, his hands holding my hips steady, and the waves outside keeping time.

I'd like to say I stayed graceful. I didn't. By the time he stood up and walked me backward to the bed, my hands were shaking on his belt and I'd forgotten every word I knew except his name. He laid me down on the cool sheets and covered me with his whole body, warm and heavy and still smelling of the sea, and I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him in.

When we finally came together, it was to the sound of the ocean through the open doors, his eyes on mine the whole time. He moved the way the water did, slow and unstoppable, my hands laced through his and pressed into the pillow on either side of my head, and every time I tried to rush him he slowed down even more, until I was the one begging. He said my name like a word he'd been practicing since the plane. I pulled my hands free and held on to the strong, warm line of his back, felt every muscle shift under my palms, and when I finally came apart he was right there with me, his face buried in my neck, his breath hot and ragged against my skin. For once in my life I didn't think about anything at all, and I didn't miss it.

I woke up to the scrape of the balcony door and the smell of coffee. He was standing outside in nothing but a towel, two cups in his hands, the sun just coming up pink over the water.

"I have a rehearsal dinner tonight," he said, handing me one. "And I need a date. Seven cousins, remember."

I took a slow sip and looked at him over the rim of the cup, the way he'd looked at me at the bar.

"I'll think about it," I said.

I'd already decided. I'm pretty sure he knew.