quietly. “Not with me.”
She would have tonight, then one more ride on that motorcycle, and then, whatever happened next, this would be over.
Sadness threatened to overwhelm her, and she realized she did not want to ruin one moment of this time she had left contemplating what was coming. She suspected there was going to be plenty of time for sadness.
Now was the time for joy. For connection. He knew they were saying goodbye, it had relaxed his guard.
Shoshauna looked at the broadness of Ronan’s shoulders as he lay in the sand beside her, how his back narrowed to the slenderness of his waist, she looked at how the wet shorts clung to the hard-muscled lines of his legs and his buttocks.
She became aware he was watching her watching him, out of the corner of his eye, letting it happen, maybe even enjoying it.
She reached out and rested her hand on the dip of his spine between his shoulders. For a minute his muscles stiffened under her touch, and she wondered if he would deprive her of this moment, get up, head to the cottage, put distance between them. She wondered if she had overplayed.
But then he relaxed, closed his eyes, let her touch him, and she thought, See? I knew I would be a good chess player. Still, she dared not do more than that, for fear he would move away, but she knew he was as aware as she was that their time together was very nearly over. That was the only reason he was allowing this. And so she tried to memorize the beauty of his salt- and sand-encrusted skin beneath her fingertips, the wondrous composition of his muscle and skin. She felt as if she could feel the life force flowing, vibrating, throbbing through him with its own energy, strong, pure, good.
Night began to fall, and with it the trade winds picked up and the wind chilled. She could feel the goose bumps rising on his flesh and on her own. The waves crashed on the shore, throwing fine spray droplets of water up toward them.
Still, neither of them made a move to leave this moment behind.
“Do you think we could have a bonfire tonight,” she asked, “right here on the beach?”
Silence. Struggle. It seemed as if he would never answer. She was aware she was holding her breath.
“Yeah,” he said, finally, gruffly. “I think we could.”
She breathed again.
Ronan slid a glance at Shoshauna. She had changed into a striped shirt and some crazy pair of canvas slacks she had found in the cottage, lace-up front with frayed bottoms that made her look like an adorable stowaway on a pirate’s ship.
Despite the outfit, she was changed since the surfing episode, carrying herself differently. A new confidence, a new certainty in herself. He was glad he’d let down his guard enough to be part of giving her that gift, the gift of realizing who she would be once she went back to her old world.
Surely, he thought looking at her, at the tilt of her chin, the strength in her eyes, the fluid way she moved, a woman certain of herself, she would carry that within her, she would never marry a man for convenience, or because it would please others. He remembered her hand resting on his back. Surely, in that small gesture, he had felt who she was, and who she would be.
Tonight, their last night together, he would keep his guard down, just a bit, just enough.
Enough to what? he asked himself.
To have parts of her to hold on to when he let her go, when he did not have her anymore, when he faced the fact he would probably never look at her face again.
Then he would have this night: the two of them, a bonfire, her laughter, the light flickering on her skin, the sparkle in her eyes putting the stars to shame.
In the gathering darkness they hauled firewood to the beach. As the stars came out, they roasted fish on sticks, remembered her antics in the water, laughed.
Tomorrow it would be over. For tonight he was not going to be a soldier. He was going to be a man.
And so they talked deep into the night. When it got colder, he went and got a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, and then when it got colder still and she held up a corner, he went and sat beneath the blanket with her, shoulder to shoulder, watching the stars, listening to the waves and her voice, stealing glimpses of her face, made even more gorgeous by the reflection of the flame that flickered across it.
At first the talk was light. He modified a few jokes and made her laugh. She told him about tormenting her nannies and schoolteachers.
But somehow as the night deepened, so did the talk. And he was hearing abut a childhood that had been privileged and pampered, but also very lonely.
She told him about the kitten she had found on a rare trip to the public market, and how she had stuck it under her dress and taken it home. She smiled as she told the story about a little kitten taking away the loneliness, how she had talked to it, slept with it, made it her best friend.
The cat had died.
“Silly, maybe to be so devastated over a cat,” she said sadly, “but I can’t tell you how I missed him, and how the rooms of my apartment seemed so empty once he was gone. I missed all his adorable poses, and his incredible self-centeredness.”
“What was his name?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Okay.”
“It was Retnuh. In our language it means Beloved.”
He didn’t laugh. In fact, he didn’t find it funny at all. He found it sad and lonely and it confirmed things about her life that she had wanted to tell him all along but that he had already guessed anyway.
“Prince Mahail’s proposal came very shortly after my Beloved died. Ronan, it felt so much easier to get swept along in all the excitement than to feel what I was feeling. Bereft. Lonely. Pathetic. A woman whose deepest love had been for a cat.”
But he didn’t see it as pathetic. He saw it as something else: a woman with a fierce capacity to love, giving her whole heart when she decided to love, giving it her everything. Would the man who finally received that understand what a gift it was, what a treasure?
“Will you tell me something about you now?”
It was one of those trick questions women were so good at. She had shared something deep, meaningful. She wasn’t going to be satisfied if he talked about his favorite soccer team.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said, hedging.
“What kind of little boy were you?” she asked him.
Ah, a logical place to begin. “A very bad one,” he said.
“Bad or mischievous?”
“Bad. I was the kid putting the potatoes in the tailpipes of cars, breaking the neighbors’ windows, getting expelled from school for fighting.”
“But why?”
But why? The question no one had asked. “My Dad died when I was six. Not using that as an excuse, just some boys need a father’s hand in their lives.
