Page 115 of Fated

Aaron has a mango in his hand. He’s cutting off chunks, the juice running over his fingers. The scent of ripe mango floats over the sweet perfume of the sea grapes. Far off there’s the murmur of the waves crashing against the reef. Nearby, a small, iridescent white butterfly flutters near the cluster of sea grapes hidden in the glossy green leaves.

“When I kiss you,” Aaron says, smiling at me over the mango, “I always think you smell like a butterfly.”

“What?” I smile at him and dig my heels into the cool sand. “Butterflies don’t have a smell.”

“Yes, they do,” he says, handing me a slice of mango.

I take the cool fruit and place it in my mouth. It’s soft and sweet and so ripe it melts as soon as it hits my lips.

Aaron’s eyes darken at the noise of appreciation I make. “They do. Every day butterflies visit hundreds of flowers. Over their lifetime they land on millions of blooms, dancing in the pollen, drinking the nectar. I think butterflies smell like the perfume of a million flowers dusted on their wings. Like you.”

I stare at him, shocked. “Amy is definitely your daughter. You’re both poets.”

He grins at that, his black hair still wet from when he dunked under the water.

Waterdrops drip down his shoulders and sluice down his chest. He’s stripped, leaving only his swim shorts on, slung low over his hips. His bronze skin is golden under the shade, broken by the tattoos rippling over his muscled abdomen and shoulders. Looking closer at the tattoos, they’re locations—all his swims, all the seas and oceans and crossings, waves and whirls and water.

His body is marked by the sea, just like his heart.

He hands me another slice of mango, smiling at me gently. I take it, brushing my fingers against his, and then bite into the soft fruit. Aaron watches as I lick the juice from my fingers.

“Do I always smell like butterflies?” I ask him, growing warm at the heat in his eyes.

“No,” he says, “just when I kiss you. When I say ‘Fi.’”

My heart tumbles, knocks around my chest, and then kicks back to its normal rhythm.

I pick up the jug of water and take a long, cool drink. It tastes of minerals and rain and sun. Cistern water. Island water. I drop it back to the sand and wipe the back of my hand across my lips.

My shoulders are pink and tingling from the sun. Aaron spent an hour with me in the sea teaching me to swim. Even though I told him I already knew how, he had me tread water, float on my back, swim underwater to collect sea shells. And then, as I swam out to sea to a spot so deep I couldn’t touch the sand, he stayed with me, and when I stopped, he kept his hands spread around my naked middle, at the bare line of my stomach where my bikini ended. For a moment I was so scalded by his hands on me I forgot to tread water. I dunked under and Aaron pulled me back up.

“Tread,” he said, and he sounded so much like Amy’s imitation of him that I laughed.

And then he kissed me, which made me dunk under again. And so he pulled me up, swam with me back to shore, and kissed me more.

Above us a blackbird perches in the ironwood, eyeing the plate of banana bread. I smile at the bird, at the bleached blue of the sky, and at the still, sea-blue cove. The tide is rising, rolling over the sand, the ebb and flow reaching the dappled shade of the trees.

I scoot across the sand, the grains scraping over my skin, and lean against Aaron. He widens his legs and pulls me against the warmth of his chest. He wraps his arms around me, and as I settle into him he drops his chin to my head.

“I’ve been thinking,” I say.

“About what?”

“I want to build Junie a crib. For her baby.”

“Yeah?” There’s a soft, pleased note in his voice.

“Yes. I made plans. I think we have everything we need. All the wood. The paint.” I tilt my head up, looking at his soft lips. “Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

I grin. “Good. I also thought, next time you order supplies from the mail plane, we should order books for Amy. I’d like her bedroom to be filled with books. Bookshelves teeming with them. Yesterday I made a list?—”

“Yesterday?”

I blink. Yesterday in Geneva I made a list. I went to the bookshop in Carouge and asked the owner for a long list of recommendations. But there was no yesterday on the island. There was today when we were kissing, and then there was today again, with us under this tree.

I shake my head. “I made a list. Do you think we could get them for her?”

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