Alex
“Ohmigod, look at that view,” Chloe said, tugging on my arm.
I laughed as she dragged me out onto the deck overlooking the private section of beach. Pearly white sand stretched across the horizon and met the clear water of the Atlantic. Palm trees dotted the shore and waved in the light breeze. I stepped behind her, looped my arms around her waist and rested my chin on her shoulder while she gazed out longingly at the water.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked as I ran my hand across her stomach.
Chloe glanced back at me with a sly smile and pressed a kiss to my cheek before turning back around.
I had called Zamir immediately after Chloe had fallen asleep several weeks ago and told him our plans were still on to take the girls and get away for a while. He took over the planning and moved our vacation from my beach house in the Bahamas to a mansion he rented in Barbados. At first, I’d been worried that Chloe wouldn’t be able to get away for that long, but after our fight she seemed hellbent on being together as often as we could. We spent the rest of May and all of June attached at the hip, and this getaway was no exception.
I was able to convince her to spend more time with me away from Sacramento and had even gone out of my way to take a leave from the office so that we didn’t have to worry about actual work. Instead, I just brought her to social events that I thought she might like. I wanted to make her happy, and in my eyes the more time we spent together, the happier she would be. I was happier too, I felt lighter when she was leading me around like a small child.
My fear at this point was that she would leave again if I did something wrong, and part of me was angry that she would do that, but more than anything I was anxious. I knew that next spring I would send her away, but I wasn’t ready for that yet and her leaving was a painful reminder of that.
Marie had more or less stopped speaking to me since our conversation nearly three months ago, and Peter had moved into the guest house to have more privacy. On the few occasions when I came home, I was usually ignored entirely. Zamir had a business to run, Amelia’s gallery commanded all of her attention. Chloe was all I had to keep me from spiralling into depression, and she had no idea.
I gave her shoulder a soft kiss and closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of her citrusy perfume mixing with the salty air.
“We should go for a walk on the beach,” she whispered to me. “I want to dip my feet in the water.”
My arms tightened around her waist and my mouth found her neck. “We should enjoy the fact that we have the house to ourselves for a little while first,” I reminded her huskily. “And I want to get you out of these shorts.”
I gave the waistband a light tug and she giggled, pushing my hand away.
I could admit that I went a little overboard for this trip, I’d essentially gone to every store that I could find that carried swimwear and loaded up on various bikinis. She had six, along with two one-piece swimsuits, and a plethora of coverups. My favorite was the one she was currently wearing; a skimpy lilac bikini with glittery gold chains to hold it all together. It made her tits look amazing and the color popped against her skin, but by far the best part were how the bottoms showed off most of her ass. Not that I got to see that right now with her hiding it under a pair of distressed denim shorts.
Chloe turned around in my arms and smiled up at me as she ran her hands up my chest. I pressed myself against her so that her body was flush with mine and took hold of her hand over my heart.
“It’s kinda hard to take my shorts off with you standing this close,” she said without looking away.
“Is it? I didn’t realize that.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically and I laughed as I bent down and picked her up, hoisting her onto the railing. Her legs wrapped around my hips, pulling me closer as my mouth found hers. Her lips opened for me, I tightened my hold on her waist and let my tongue find hers. The feel of her fingers digging into my arms, the sun warming us, and gust of warm, damp air off the water made me long to bring her home with me. I wanted to show her the cliffside, to have a bonfire at night when the field was full of fireflies, to have her in my bed for once.
I could remember Zamir telling me that I might find someone I wanted to keep around even if I was just looking for a short-term sugar baby, that for a lot of us, it was easy to forget where the line was between a financial exchange and a romantic relationship. I laughed at the time because six years ago the wound was still too fresh for me to consider dating, let alone anything close to romance. Even now, I had to admit that it made me nervous. But for better or for worse, he was right, and I was now in a position where I didn’t know what the right thing to do was.
Chloe loved me. I knew this even if she didn’t say it out loud. I’d never had any of my previous girls act the way she did with me with the happy-go-lucky good morning texts, the random pictures she would send me throughout the day, and her attention to small details. I made one offhand comment about her perfume choice and she stopped wearing the lilac one completely, I told her I liked the John Keats poem I saw on her social media and now she posted a different one every few days and made sure to send it to me as well. It was tiny things that she did that showed me she listened. I loved her too. I even enjoyed her needling about my family, though I had to say she wasn’t nearly as smooth as she thought she was when fishing for information.
Her head rested on my shoulder as we stood there together and I gazed out onto the water. Reluctantly, I detached myself so she could hop down from the railing. She dropped her shorts on the sun lounger and I tossed my shirt alongside it before we made our way down to the beach, her hand in mine while we walked.
The warmth of the sun, the breeze off the water, the hot sand under my feet, and the way she held my hand so lightly that it almost felt like a dream – it all made me feel like I was home for the first time in a long time. I pulled my hand out of her grip and looped my arm around her waist before she had time to protest, pulling her close to my side just as we passed under a palm tree.
“I’m thinking about going to Greece,” Chloe said suddenly. “Not right away or anything, but next summer probably.”
“Oh?” My heart didn’t know if it should sink or start to race, so it just seemed to skip a beat entirely.
“Yeah. My aunts own a tailoring business in Athens and want me to come work in the shop for the summer.”
My heart did sink then at the realization that she wanted to leave the business, and by extension, myself. She wouldn’t have time for me, a proper job, and her family. And why would she want to anyway? The thought brought my mood down further, I forced myself to sound as neutral as possible when I finally swallowed the lump in my throat to respond.
“I think that sounds like a good option for you. It would be good to be closer to your roots for some time.”
She gave me a light shove that I pretended actually made me move so that she would giggle and pull me back upright. “You sound like my mom,” she said.
“Oh, I wonder why that is.”
“It’s truly a mystery,” she replied, hugging my side. “Not like the two of you aren’t old and wise and all that.”
I rolled my eyes and cast her a look that said I said I wasn’t amused. “One day you’ll be my age, you won’t be so quick to call yourself old then, not when you have so much longer left.”
“What did you do when you were my age?” Chloe asked. “Did you party at all?”
“Not really, my son would have been around a year old when I was nineteen – I didn’t have time for that.” I paused as I thought back. “I drank quite a bit, fished while I did that, but usually I was working or helping with the baby. I didn’t have the sort of free time I do now.”
“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment and I steered us closer to the water so that when the waves came in, they were lapping at our bare feet.
I wasn’t opposed to sharing some things with Chloe, and I knew she appreciated hearing more about my life when I was her age.
“Was your son an accident then?” she asked suddenly. “Or did you just get married young?”
I let out a surprised laugh that made her smile. Brushing my hair back I tried to hide my growing embarrassment at the topic. “No and yes—well, he came first—but we got married before he arrived—”
“I’m not a priest, I’m not condemning you for having a child out of wedlock,” she interrupted dryly.
I huffed. “Excuse me for having the fear of God put into me at a young age.”
Chloe laughed and pushed me to a stop before rushing to standing in front of me, her hands placed on my chest and her eyes searching my face with a wide smile. “I’m just teasing.”
With that, she stood up on her toes and I bent down to meet her halfway as my arms constricted around her waist. Every minute with her was a gift, and I wished I knew how to tell her that I had this constant fear that I would say the wrong thing and she would leave again. It never went away; it was a nagging thought in the back of my mind throughout the day. I tried to hide it with affection, and when the voice was too loud, usually when we had spent some time apart, I would unintentionally become more assertive. Both these reactions pleased her, it was clear to me that she like to be the center of attention and my focus, but she played into my controlling tendencies too. I think she just liked that I was paying any sort of attention to her, it didn’t matter if it was jealous and controlling because we’d been apart for too long or doting on her endlessly.
I let my hands slide down to her lower back and pulled her tight to my chest. She tasted like lime from the mojitos earlier. I was going to have to watch that, she over did herself at the vineyard back in California and I didn’t want to be holding her hair back again.
“I don’t want you getting too drunk with Jazmin tonight,” I warned her as I pulled back. “I know you’re excited to see her, but I want you to be safe.”
She sighed and pouted up at me. “You don’t trust me?”
I smirked. “Not very much.”
She huffed and spun on her heel, hair flying over her shoulder as she stalked dramatically away. I grinned to myself and waited a moment to give her a bit of a head start. She glanced back at me, stumbled, and instantly broke into a run when I took a step toward her. Her laughter trailed behind her as I chased her down to where the brush swallowed up the sand and closed off the beach. I caught her by the arm and flung us both into the sand, landing flat on my back with a wince while she landed on top of me with a squeak of pain.
“Are you alright?” I asked, blinking away stars. “Glykia mou?” I pushed myself up and looked over her frantically, brushing the stray hair out of her face.
“I’m fine,” she slight with a slight whine. “I got sand in my everything…”
“That tends to happen at the beach.”
She glanced up at me, distinctly unamused, and worked her bikini top back into place. I didn’t even pretend not to watch her do it, any pain from falling was forgotten in favor for ogling her. Once she was more comfortable, she shifted to sit next to me under the tree in the shade.
Comfortable silence swelled between us while the waves crashed loudly on the shore. Zamir couldn’t have chosen a better place for the four of us; the water was so clear and I hadn’t felt this close to home while being so far away ever before. I ran my fingers through the sand, feeling it fall away as I picked it up.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Chloe remarked. “Are you alright?”
“Just enjoying the view,” I replied. “We’ll have to come back here some time – just you and me.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I like the sound of that.”
I smiled to myself and leaned back, letting my legs stretch out while we sat there quietly. At this rate I wouldn’t have even noticed if Zamir and Jazmin had decided not to come after all, I was more than content for it to be just us.
“What are you thinking about?” Chloe asked.
“Us, naked on the beach.”
She giggled and shook her head. “It never gets old for you, does it?”
I smirked and glanced over at her. “Should it?”
She shrugged. “I guess not, but it seems like it’s always on your mind.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” I teased. “And you don’t seem to mind it.”
“No, I like feeling wanted.”
There was a sort of longing in her voice that made me look at her again. She was staring out at the horizon with flushed cheeks and wistful smile. I didn’t understand why she was in this business, it was clear that she wanted something more and she just craved some sort of attention, but she could get that from any man. I’d seen her house, I was told that her mother didn’t work, obviously the family was comfortable, so this wasn’t a financial issue. She could have chosen anyone, but instead she came back to me and I didn’t know how to even begin thanking her.
She turned to me while I gazed at her and offered me a sheepish smile.
“Can I ask you something weird?”
“It depends on how weird it is.”
“When did you lose your virginity?”
I blinked several times, trying to process the question. “Oh, god…” I tipped my head back and thought on it for a moment. “I was probably fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” she cried. “No!”
“What’s wrong with fifteen?”
“That’s so young! Mama would have killed me.”
I chuckled and nudged her arm. “This was almost thirty years ago, things have changed. I know it isn’t the norm anymore, but it was for me back then.”
“What was her name?”
“Sofia,” I replied. “She was a bit older than me, seventeen, I think. Our parents shared a fishing boat for long time and she and I were able to spend quite a bit of time together while they were gone.” Kanavas had given me hell when he caught us together one day and I was forced to come with them after that, but it was fun while it lasted.
“I couldn’t even imagine being allowed to be alone with a guy at that age,” she said with a shake of her head. “Mom and dad got security cameras installed around the same time I started to date and without fail they would remind me that they could check in at any time. I hated it.”
“Was it just for you? Did they really go through all that trouble just because you were dating?”
“I think so, there was no other reason for it.” She grinned and pulled her feet up to her chest. “The joke’s on them though, I found a blind spot one day and used to sneak my ex-boyfriend up sometimes.”
“What a lucky boy,” I said while watching her. Her hair was frizzy and tangled, her eyes bright, and I couldn’t help but think of what it would have been like if I had been born later, or maybe if she was born earlier. Maybe I would have ran into her instead of Marie. Maybe Kanavas wouldn’t have been so angry with me if he had met Chloe instead.
My throat constricted and I slid my hand through the sand to hers so that our pinky fingers could lace together. She moved closer and laid her head on my shoulder, I rested mine against hers and closed my eyes. There were a million different possibilities for things that could have been – my brother could still be alive, Kanavas could have been a better father, I could have made better choices, and I could have met Chloe at a different time in my life, but I didn’t have the luxury to pick and choose, and I was happy that she was here with me now.
“Do you think it’s weird that you’re my first?”
“Not even a little.”
“Will you miss me when I go to Greece?” she asked quietly.
“Of course.” Every single day.
She turned my hand over and laced our fingers together completely. Her grip was tight, I could feel her heartbeat. “Promise?”
I squeezed back and kissed the top of her head. “I promise I’ll miss you.” Because I miss you already.
“I’ll miss you too,” she whispered.
We sat there as the sun began to set, silently watching it together as the water turned to liquid gold and then began to darken. I would plan us a hundred more trips if it meant that we could stay like this forever, and I hoped that she knew that.