Page 44 of Slanting Towards the Sea
FORTY-ONE
ASIER HAS SOME VACATION days saved up, so he says he would like to come and stay for a couple of weeks.
He needs to sign off on some of the Lovorun renovation work and interview a few people for the hotel’s managerial positions, but he should be done with that in a matter of days.
“And then,” he tells me, “I’d love to spend some time with you. ”
When he arrives, it’s the middle of August, the days already shorter, beckoning for slower movements and reflection.
Unlike July with its never-ending merry-go-round of brightness, heightened colors, scorching sun, and hustle and bustle of tourists, August has a melancholy to it, like a party that’s dying down, and you’re torn between wanting it to last a bit longer and itching to go home and curl up under a blanket.
Asier and I spend our mornings sipping coffee in the shade of the town’s piazzas, and our afternoons at the beach.
I take him to the solitary beaches only the locals know about, and most days we’re alone.
We lie on our towels talking, and then chase each other into the surf like a couple of teenagers when the sun becomes too blistering.
Kissing Asier in the sea is my new favorite thing, the salt on his lips perfectly punctuating the sweetness of his mouth.
His skin is sleek under my hands that slip everywhere, and the restraint that is necessary is the best kind of agony.
The thing I love most about Asier is that he’s nothing like Vlaho.
They’re not opposite exactly either. They don’t even occupy the same spectrum.
There’s a pragmatism to Asier, a levity that brings out the most uncomplicated part of me. I feel simpler even to myself when I’m around him, my thoughts easy to follow, my emotions a traversable path.
Sometimes, we stay at the beach long after the night has fallen, and the stars spark up the black sky above us.
He’s reluctant to go into the water when he can’t see the bottom, but I talk him into it, because this isn’t the Pacific or Indian Ocean, there’s nothing dangerous lurking within.
The Adriatic is tame, a deep cove in an already closed Mediterranean, the Croatian coastline protected by its thousand islands.
Even the tides are docile here, I tell him, the difference between high and low barely more than the length of his foot.
He trusts me enough to follow me in, and when we’re waist-deep he eases himself in, starts floating on his back like a buoy.
“Look.” I wave my arm through the water. Plankton bursts in fluorescent light wherever my hand goes. I dive in next to him.
He moves his arms and legs, the pitch-black sea around us exploding with bright neon dots, until it’s hard to say if the sky is above us, or if we’re swimming in it.
“It’s like we’re in the belly of the universe,” he says, and I feel a surge of pride for my beautiful country. I think of my mom for some reason, how easy it is for love to live right next door to resentment.
When we get out and towel ourselves off, we lie next to each other, watching the sky for the meteor shower.
I open the container with what’s left of the cantaloupe cubes and grapes I brought with us today.
The cantaloupe smells even sweeter now that it’s been mellowed by the afternoon heat.
He pops a cube into his mouth then offers me one, and I lick the salt from his fingers as I take it into my mouth.
I love how hard it is for him to keep his composure when I do this.
I ask him about his childhood, where he had lived growing up, and the list is impressive. French Polynesia, Brazil, Kenya, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa. I ask if he liked moving around. He says that sometimes he did, depending on where it landed him. But there were also places he didn’t like.
“How did you endure those?” I ask.
He huffs, smiles. “As with the places I did like, I knew it had an expiration date. When it was good, I would think, wait for it . When it was bad, I would also think, wait for it .”
“That’s either totally cynical or superbly Zen,” I tell him.
He says nothing for a moment. Then, a shrug. “Heraclitus, you know? The only constant in life is change, and all that. Nothing is truly permanent.”
I nod but wonder if Heraclitus, or Asier for that matter, had a need for safety amid all that acceptance of constant change.
“Tell me one thing I don’t know about you,” I ask.
He tells me he’s never learned how to drive a car.
“What? You don’t drive?”
He grins. “That a problem?”
“No, but that’s the first thing any male in Croatia does when they turn eighteen. Driving school.” I take him by his forearms, trying to discern the muscles and tendons in the starlight. “You’ve got such handsome arms. You’d look amazing behind the wheel.”
“I guess I didn’t get around to it while I still lived with my dad back in French Polynesia, and later when I got into college, and even later when I started doing what I’m doing now, living in London, traveling around, I had no need for it.”
I tell him I can’t imagine how he does that, traveling around. The constant coming and going, living out of a suitcase. Figuring out airports. “I’ve never been on a plane in my life,” I say.
“What?” He raises himself on an elbow to look at me, his turn to be perplexed. “You’ve never flown?”
“Didn’t have anywhere to go,” I say, the simplified version, but I think about the flight Professor Toma?ek’s team took to New York and how I was supposed to be on it.
Why I wasn’t. “Besides, I can’t imagine.
Landing in places I don’t know, obsessing over where I’ll find a cab or if there’ll even be cabs to catch.
And what if the hotel messes up my reservation, and there’re no other rooms available—”
“That hardly ever happens,” he says. I widen my eyes, and he says, “Relax, it never happens. I’ve never not had somewhere to stay the night.”
We stay silent for a while, lie back down looking for the Perseids, the sky tears. My life seems to me suddenly the same as the Adriatic. Tame and shielded.
“Risk-averse, much?” Asier teases, pulling me closer. In the distance, an old wooden boat tack-tack-tacks across the channel.
“You think I’m kind of neurotic, don’t you?”
“Absolutely you are.” He grins and leans in to give me a kiss. “I also think I’m kind of in love with you.”