Chapter 2: A Sight for sore eyes
The discovery had carved a hollow, buzzing space in Chris’s chest. He stood motionless in his suite’s living room, the keycard from the conjoining door still cool in his palm. Julie’s soft, rhythmic breathing from the dim bedroom was the only sound. Outside, the ocean was a relentless blue promise.
He told himself it was an accident. He’d just been checking the door’s lock, ensuring privacy. The slight misalignment of the mirror on Ava’s wall, a decorative flaw in the luxury resort, had done the rest. A narrow, shivering slice of her bathroom, and then her room, laid bare. He hadn’t meant to look. Not the second time. Or the third.
He stayed still, a statue in the humid air, the conditioner’s faint coconut scent from her earlier shower still threading through the connection between the rooms.His own breath felt too loud. Julie muttered something in her sleep, a distant anchor to a reality that was rapidly shrinking to the width of a mirror’s flaw. He took a single step toward it.
She walked into the frame, a towel wrapped around her hair and another hanging loosely at her hips. Her back was to him, the line of her spine a faint curve in the soft light.He watched her fingers go to the knot at her chest.
The towel fell away.She was just a shape, a study in pale skin and shadow. He didn’t blink. A primal part of his brain, the part that valued survival above all else, screamed at him to look away.His neck muscles refused to obey. She bent, a graceful flex, to pick up a bottle of sunscreen, and the view shifted, tightened, became impossibly specific. He swallowed, his throat dry as the imported tile beneath her feet.
She stepped into the shower stall and pulled the glass door closed with a soft click.A moment later, the water turned on. Steam began to fog the clear pane, blurring her into a watercolor smudge of motion—the tilt of her head under the spray, the sweep of her hands through her hair. The glass beaded and ran, offering a clearer glimpse of her shoulder, the nape of her neck, before clouding over again. The normalcy of the act, the everyday ritual, made the violation feel both monumental and crushingly trivial.The water shut off. Silence, save for the drip from the showerhead and the distant pulse of a bassline from the pool deck below. She emerged, a fresh towel snug around her body, her skin glistening. She was humming, something low and tuneless, utterly unaware.He should have left then.He didn't.She dropped the towel. Facing the mirror now, she began to rub lotion into her arms, her shoulders, her throat. Her movements were practical, hurried. He saw the concentration on her face, the slight bite of her lip as she smoothed sunscreen over her collarbone. It was this ordinary, self-absorbed intimacy that held him rapt.She was real in a way he had never allowed himself to consider.
She turned, reaching for something on the counter, and for a heart-stopping second he thought she’d seen him.But her gaze was unfocused, internal. She opened a small pink box and shook out a two-piece swimsuit.The bikini was tiny, a scrap of electric blue fabric. She stepped into the bottom, tugged it up over her hips. She hooked the top around her back, fastened it, and adjusted herself with a few quick, efficient tugs. The finality of it was like a door slamming. She was no longer just Ava; she was Ava dressed for the world, for the beach, for a day where he would have to look her in the eye.
He finally jerked back from the wall, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The pleasant vacation air in his suite now felt suffocating, complicit. He could still smell her coconut soap mixed with the salt from his own sweat. From the bedroom, Julie’s voice, thick with sleep, called out, “Chris? You okay?”
“Yeah,” he called back, his voice strangled.He cleared his throat. “Just getting some water.” He stared at his trembling hands, then balled them into fists. The keycard to the conjoining door was still on the table, a slim, innocent rectangle of plastic.He picked it up.It felt heavy, hot. He slipped it into his pocket.
He slipped it into his pocket. It lay there against his thigh, a hard, accusing rectangle. “Ready for the pool?” Julie asked, emerging from the bedroom rubbing her eyes. She’d changed into a striped kaftan.
“Sure,” Chris said, forcing a smile. The word tasted like static.
They found Ava waiting in the hall, tapping her phone. A sheer white cover-up danced around her knees in the air-conditioned breeze. “Hey,” she said, glancing up with a quick, nervous smile. She fell into step beside Julie, chattering about the lunch buffet.
Chris walked a step behind, his eyes on the geometric pattern of the rug. The coconut scent was gone, replaced by the resort’s generic floral hallway perfume. It didn’t help.
The blast of heat and noise from the pool deck was a physical wall. Steel drums, the shriek of a child, the clatter of ice in glasses. They wove through loungers, a jungle of oiled skin and bright towels. Chris scanned for three empty chairs, a practical task to occupy his mind.
“Over there,” Julie pointed, claiming a spot near the infinity edge. The water melded perfectly with the distant sea, a seamless, dizzying blue.
They arranged their things. Julie shrugged off her kaftan to reveal a sensible one-piece. She immediately lay back, face tilted to the sun. “This is the life,” she sighed.
Ava stood beside her lounger, hands fiddling with the knot of her cover-up at her chest. She glanced around, taking in the crowd. A group of guys their age laughed loudly a few pods over. One of them looked her way, then whispered to his friend.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Ava muttered, more to herself than to them.
THEY HEAD DOWN TO THE POOL AND AVA TURNS HEADS AS SHE REMOVES HER COVER UP AND REVEALS HER
She untied the knot. The thin fabric slid from her shoulders, catching for a moment on the crest of her hip before she gathered it and laid it neatly on the chair. The electric blue bikini was shockingly small against her pale skin. The top held her modestly, the tie-side bottoms cutting sharply across the gentle curve of her hips.
A brief, palpable quiet seemed to ripple through their immediate vicinity. The laughing guy stopped mid-sentence. A woman assessing a menu glanced up, her eyes lingering for a half-second too long. It wasn’t a dramatic freeze-frame, just a subtle collection of stolen looks, a minor shift in the atmosphere. Ava felt it. She kept her eyes down, pretending to adjust her strap, but a faint, triumphant flush rose on her chest.
Chris saw it all from behind his sunglasses. The looks, her reaction. A hot needle of possession, ugly and sudden, pricked behind his ribs. He watched the way the sunlight clung to the damp sheen of sunscreen on her shoulder, a detail he now knew intimately. She looked so painfully young standing there, absorbing that charged, silent appraisal.
“You look great, Ave,” Julie said absently, eyes closed behind her shades.
“Thanks,” Ava breathed, the word tight with held-in validation. She took a deliberate step toward the shimmering water, every movement now conscious of being watched.
Chris picked up his bottle of water. He took a long, slow drink, trying to wash the metallic taste of his own guilt from his tongue. It didn’t work. He just watched her walk away, the keycard a burning brand in his pocket, and the pristine afternoon yawned before him, spoiled and heavy.