Return to Cancún

Return to Cancún

By Lena Malick

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY: Lena Malick on Smashwords

Return to Cancún ©2013 by Lena Malick

Your support and respect for the property of
this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any
resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or
locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of
the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

*****

He fell on her, still clothed, wet and muddy,
smelling like rain and dirt. He greedily pushed into her. She
wrapped her legs around his upper back, opening herself completely
to him. He was soon thrusting into her, his wet hair spraying her
with water. She’d tapped that animal side of him she’d seen only a
few times. It was the only time when he became completely focused
on his own needs, fiercely driven to satisfy his hunger. The few
times it had happened in the past, he felt compelled to apologize
to her later, for being what he called a “selfish lover”, but she
secretly loved it. She loved that she could drive him to it. And
she loved being the recipient of it…

Lena Malick

Terra stretched, trying to look over the
throng of people, wishing she was taller. Cancun airport was a
swarm of humanity speaking different languages and all going in
different directions.

She had hoped he would be there waiting for
her when she got off the plane.

She got jostled by a boisterous group of boys
wearing soccer jerseys and bouncing a ball between them as she
wrestled with her shoulder bag, trying to find her phone. She
wasn’t even sure which direction he would be coming from. She stood
on a thermal seat and tried to look over the mass of people as they
moved about like choppy water.

Where was he?

She had flown from Detroit to Los Angeles,
then to Cancun. The flights had gone smoothly enough, but Terra was
a wreck. Doubt had nibbled at her until it had fully taken root and
spread. Was her time with Nik last summer a fluke? The whole way
over she obsessed about it. They’d only spent one day together—not
even twenty-four hours—and that was a whole year ago. What was she
doing coming back here? Terra’s friend Vicky thought she was crazy.
But there was a lot Vicky didn’t know.

Last summer, when Vicky and Terra returned
from their summer vacation, Terra was feeling sick. She thought at
first it was something she ate, or maybe the sudden change in
climate, going from Mexico back to Michigan. A few days later, she
called Vicky, telling her she couldn’t eat. Vicky listened, then
was silent. Rare for her. “Well?” Terra asked. “Oh, honey,” Vicky
said softly, “you’re in love.”

It seemed impossible, but Terra had nothing
to compare it to. She’d never been in love, but she never imagined
it like this. It was supposed to be a wonderful feeling, something
blissful and romantic—not a non-stop stomachache. Not a feeling
like she was constantly falling through the air.

Weeks passed. She forced herself to focus on
her schoolwork. Her sophomore year of college was much harder than
her freshman year, plus she had taken on an extra class load,
hoping to graduate early. Her advanced biology class alone felt
like a full time job. Every night, no matter how late she finished
studying, she would take out the medallion Nik had given her. As
she traced her fingers over the face of it, she’d allow herself to
drift back to the time they spent together. She could feel his body
under her fingertips and see his beautiful green eyes. His smell.
The deep sound of his voice. She’d take slices of the time they
spent together and relive every second of it, trying to save the
best parts to last, playing it like a movie. A movie she’d lived,
felt, and breathed—but for such a brief period of time. She always
fell asleep before getting to the end, waking up with an imprint of
the medallion on her chest from pressing it against her heart.

After a month, she realized she was getting
worse, not better. If this was love, she wasn’t sure she wanted
anything to do with it. There was a constant aching in her chest.
She had to force herself to eat. She found herself crying at odd
hours. The worst was at night, when her need for him was so great
it would sometimes cause her to shake. She desperately wanted to
feel his body, to feel the weight of him on her. To feel him
penetrate her. She’d wrap herself around her pillow, imagining it
was him, and sob into it. Sometimes she’d move her hand down and
rub herself to a quick orgasm, crying right through it.

She couldn’t share her feeling with anyone.
Vicky might have understood, but Terra was embarrassed and
pretended to be fine. In a desperate attempt to find relief, she
mailed the medallion back to the dive school in Cancun where she
first met Nik, with his name on the envelope.

Three weeks later, it came back. With a
letter.

Terra raced back to her dorm
room and poured over the letter. There was no explanation for why
he’d sent the medallion back to her. There was no talk of the time
they spent together. It was mostly about his plans for the diving
sanctuary he was building, written in his careful hand. She could
hear his voice in her head, making the same grammatical errors he
did in his speech. He wrote about how he’d found a partner to help
him... that his sister might be visiting from Greece again... But
nothing about
them
. Nothing about the extraordinary experience they had. Nothing
about the intimacy they shared, or the incredible sex they had.
Nothing about…
love
. Terra began to cry as she got to the end of the letter. He
just signed it
Nik.
Not
love Nik
,
or
thinking of you, Nik
. No anything. And why did he send the medallion back? The one
his mother gave him, that he said was so important to him.
Why?

She didn’t write back. She
started to a couple times, but couldn’t express what she felt. Or
didn’t want to. What was she going to write?
I’m so madly in love with you that I’m walking into walls and
living on saltines and soda water? At night, I yearn for your touch
so much I can only fall asleep when I’ve cried myself to
exhaustion? Oh, and by the way, how’s the dive thing
coming?

It seemed pointless. She really felt, brief
as their encounter was, that it was special. She had convinced
herself that what they’d experienced together really was unique and
powerful. At least it was to her. But who was she kidding? Maybe it
was her age. She was only twenty. He was… what? She didn’t even
know. Twenty-five? He’d likely known lots of girls, she thought
sadly. With his looks, and his obvious sexual skills, he probably
had been with all sorts of beautiful women. Probably is right now,
she thought sadly, imagining him making love to someone else. To
him, she was probably just another distraction on the way to
building his dreams. Dreams that didn’t include her.

She gave up trying to write back, and gave up
hope that they shared any of the same feelings, resolving to suffer
her fate quietly.

Another letter arrived. Terra
figured that if she wanted to get over him, the best thing to do
was to throw it away. But she couldn’t. Instead, she let it sit on
her dresser for a day before opening it. When she read it, she
found more talk of his plans. How he misses Greece, and his fear
that by opening and running the dive sanctuary, he’ll never get to
go back.
But that a sacrifice I make for
my dreams, yes? But you would love it there. When it rain in
Athens, it’s like...
Wait… what? She went
back and re-read that part.
You’d love it
there.
What did that mean? With him?
Together? She nearly slapped herself.
Stop
it, Terra. His English is bad. He could have meant
anything.

She wrote back. She talked
about school. About Vicky. About Michigan in the winter. About her
plans for medical school. About anything except her feelings for
him. It was a cheerful letter, but inside, Terra felt torn up, like
her heart was being slowly pulled apart. It wasn’t at all what she
wanted to tell him. She thought of including a picture. Maybe that
would awaken something in him. He’d never really seen her at her
best.
Stop it, there’s nothing to awaken
in him. He doesn’t see you like that anymore.
She signed the letter
Terra
. Not
love, Terra
. No
thinking of you, Terra
. No
nothing.

He wrote back again. More about
his plans. Others were joining him. He now had seven people
committed to helping him build and run the dive sanctuary. And now
it was going to be a research center as well. And he’d received a
government grant to help pay for it all. He included more drawings
and renderings of what they were building. He also talked about his
mother in Athens, saying
you’d really like
her.
Terra didn’t let herself dwell on that
part, knowing right away it was something she could easily obsess
over.

And that’s how it went. Every few weeks,
another letter would arrive, and every few weeks, Terra would write
back. He said it was good practice for his English, as it forced
him to look up words. She noticed his writing did get better, with
fewer grammatical errors. He included more drawings and sketches,
often quite elaborate, like works of art. Sometimes there was sand
in the creases of the paper. She imagined him writing on his deck,
looking out over the ocean. But still no mention of the intimacy
they shared, or the bond she felt they had established.

Terra found herself opening up more in her
own letters, talking about things she couldn’t even tell Vicky. Not
about her feelings for him, but about how she felt about life, and
the things that were important to her. She felt free to express
herself, uncensored. She wrote about her mother, and how her dying
had affected her. Putting all these thoughts on paper, sealing them
up and putting them in the mail, was therapeutic for her. She began
eating normally. She started running again and going to yoga class
with Vicky.

She still loved him. She knew
she did, but she found it was getting easier not to acknowledge it
to herself. She still craved him at night, sometimes pressing his
letters to her face, trying to get the smell of him. But she was
coping, and that was enough. Each day got a little easier. In the
spring, Vicky asked where they were going for summer vacation. His
next letter arrived that day. It was similar to his other ones, but
there was something else included. A plane ticket, with Terra’s
name on it. Terra clutched her heart. It was an open-ended ticket,
good until the end of summer, from Detroit to Cancun. Stuck to the
ticket was a post-it note, which simply said,
come see me
. Terra could swear her
heart stopped beating.

~ ~ ~

Terra tried his cell phone again. Right to
voice mail. Again. The airport was less crowded now. She realized
the frenzy of people came and went with each flight that arrived or
departed. In between it nearly cleared out. Her eyes were aching
from searching faces, looking for his green eyes. It had been half
an hour since her flight arrived. He said he would meet her there
in the terminal. She began to think maybe she misunderstood and he
was down in the baggage claim area.

Just then, she saw him.

He was running through the terminal, toward
her. For a moment, time actually stood still. Like it does just a
couple of times in a person’s life. In that instant, all the love
she’d felt for him, all the love she’d been holding back, came
flooding forward in a rush. She knew in that instant that she loved
him more than anything in the world. It was beyond her. Bigger than
her. More than she could contain. Trying to suppress it now was
like trying to hold back the tide. The thought was both terrifying
and exhilarating.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he panted, taking
her hands. She had thought of his brilliant green eyes a thousand
times over the last year, imagining them looking at her, but she
was still astonished at how clear and vibrant they were. His hair
was longer, dark, but with streaks of sun bleached blond. “The
motorcycle… broke down.” He was trying to catch his breath. “I
called cab, had to keep calling, and my phone died. I’m so sorry.
You’ve been waiting. I’m sorry, I…”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay, Nik.” She
looked up at him. He seemed to hesitate a second, then lunged
forward and took her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around him.
He held her tightly. Neither said anything as they gripped each
other. A moment seemed to transpire between them, like a silent
understanding. She felt his heart being against her. His body was
warm and damp. He breathed into her. She gripped him tighter, not
caring if she seemed needy or desperate or was not able to play it
casual as she’d planned. It just felt too good to be in his strong
arms to pretend.