Page 58 of Slanting Towards the Sea
FIFTY-THREE
THE ATMOSPHERE IS SCINTILLATING as we sail back. Vlaho is at the helm, tight-lipped, wrought. Marina is winding up the winches. It’s impossible to say how much she heard apart from that last sentence, but she is as tense as the ropes she is tightening.
Asier is the only one appearing to be unknowing of, and unaffected by, the sour mood.
He’s taking in the view from his perch on the prow as the ship hurtles toward the Zadar Channel, port-bound.
Only, I can’t look at him, having had sex with Vlaho for the second time behind his back.
I can’t even explain to myself how I became a person who does such things.
My bikini bottoms are still moist between my legs, proof of what Vlaho and I did.
After Marina caught us fighting, things sort of happened through a haze.
Marina stored the snorkeling equipment, and announced we should be heading back.
Vlaho tossed beer bottles into the case, swiping what was left of snacks into a trash can, clearing the deck.
I wrapped myself in my shirt, but I was too frozen to do anything else but sit there.
Halfway back, I muster up enough coherence between my mind and body to go to the cabin and change into a dry bathing suit.
I lock myself inside the small toilet. Tears catch in my throat as I’m wiping myself clean, washing what’s left of Vlaho off me.
The day was so beautiful, and now it’s ruined, and not just the day, but the triangle we have worked so hard to maintain all these years.
All those moments come to me. Marina tossing her head back in laughter when she tells me and Vlaho about tourists’ shenanigans.
Tena’s sudden hug from behind as she braids my hair.
Maro’s incessant running. Vlaho’s peck on the cheek at the end of the evening, when they’re seeing me out, how it infuses me with warmth that sustains me for days. Gone, all gone.
I splash some water on my face, then rinse my bikini bottoms in the miniature sink. When I exit, I hear Asier on the outside, saying something to Vlaho. I wonder what he’s saying, and if Vlaho is responsive at all.
“I don’t mind, you know.”
Marina’s voice comes at me from behind, her tone not nearly matching her words.
She minds, she minds a lot.
I turn to her. She is the most serious I’ve ever seen her. “If you guys sleep together. Vlaho and I, we’re not…” Her voice falters.
“I know,” I say, my mouth arid. “He told me.”
“I’ve always known he still has feelings for you. He never kept that a secret. And I suspected you do too. In a way, it didn’t feel right for me to stand between you two. But—”
With this, she exits from the shadow of the doorway, and nears me.
“Leave him where he is, Ivona. I told you a long time ago how I felt about divorce. What it does to children. Our kids are at a sensitive age, they need both of us, together.” Her blue eyes darken, her voice is waterlogged.
“We have a good home. We make a great team. Besides, you live with your dad anyway. It’s not like you could—” She crosses her arms at her chest. She is imposing, frightening, tall as she is.
A mama bear protecting her cubs. “You two can fuck all you want for all I care, just leave him where he is.”
The crass word detonates between us. It’s not fucking.
It was never fucking. If there was fucking, it was done when she and Vlaho made those babies she now wants me to back off for.
I did have feelings for him, and she just said she always suspected it, and still she fucked him and made a family with him.
“You know what, Marina?” I say. “Screw you.”
When we dock, I can’t get off the boat fast enough. I mutter quick, perfunctory thank-yous and goodbyes, squeezing my beach bag to my chest and jumping off before the boat is even properly moored. Vlaho’s and Marina’s faces are both hard, their goodbyes equally caustic.
“What was that all about?” Asier asks me as I stride toward Branimir’s Coast, where I’ll catch a cab and he’ll go over the bridge to his rented apartment.
“Nothing,” I say, my whole body rigid. I can’t get it to coordinate itself.
Asier catches my hand, stopping me mid-stride.
For the first time this afternoon, I’m forced to look at him.
Back when I first saw him, I thought his face austere.
I’ve learned its curves and arches since, like one would understand an abstract painting better if they knew the artist’s intention behind it.
It’s softer-looking now, affable where it seemed stern, and it pains me to look at it after what I did today.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
The way he says it, with deliberation, gives me pause.
He may not understand Croatian, he may not have overheard the strained conversation between Vlaho and me, or Marina and me, but Asier is great at reading people.
That’s his job, after all, to read people.
Of course he knows much more than he lets on, than I’m ready to reveal.
I want to cry for how I’ve mistreated him.
I squeeze his hand that’s holding mine. “I’m sorry.
I wasn’t—I’m not… I’m so sorry.” I touch his face, those craters on his cheeks that always make me feel closer to him.
What do I say, how do I explain? If I tell him what I did, it will be as good as letting go, but I don’t want to let go yet, and that’s one more thing confusing me, because I should be doing just that.
He smiles, pulling me closer. “It’s okay, Gorgeous. Take your time.”