Chapter 1: Borrowed Sunscreen
The air was thick with the smell of coconut oil and chlorine, the bass from the speakers a physical thing that vibrated through the lounge chair and into Leo’s ribs. He kept his eyes on his book, or tried to, the words blurring into a smear of black on white. It was a shield. A very pathetic, transparent shield against the neon-drenched chaos of the resort pool deck.
A shadow fell across the page, cool and long. He looked up, and the world narrowed.
She was unfolding herself onto the chair next to his, a slow, deliberate motion of endless limb and tanned skin. A towel was knotted loosely at her hips, another lay beneath her. She was easily the tallest woman he’d ever seen up close, and her body was a lesson in athletic grace—long, defined muscles in her legs and abdomen, small, high breasts barely contained by the triangle top of her bikini. Her hair, white-gold and wet at the ends, dripped onto her shoulders.
She caught him looking. Of course she did.
Her smile wasn’t just a smile. It was a manifesto. A bold, unapologetic curve of her lips that reached her eyes, which were the precise, shocking blue of the pool tile.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was lower than he expected, laced with an accent he couldn’t quite place.
“Hi,” he managed, his own voice cracking on the single syllable. He winced internally.
She arranged herself on her stomach, her back a long, smooth expanse of skin glistening with oil. The scent of her, something tropical and clean, cut through the sunscreen and desperation. She propped her chin on her hands, her head turned towards him. Those blue eyes scanned him—his lean frame, his light hair stuck to his forehead, the book he was now clutching like a life preserver.
“You are not from the party crowd,” she observed, nodding towards the shrieking group doing vodka shots at the swim-up bar.
“Graphic designer,” he said, as if that explained everything. “More of a… quiet observer.”
“I am Luna.” She said it like a challenge.
“Leo.”
“Leo the quiet observer.” She grinned. “I have a problem, Leo. I cannot reach my own back. And the sun here is a brute.” She gestured with a lazy hand to a bottle of SPF 50 on the concrete beside her chair. “Would you mind?”
His heart did something complicated and painful against his sternum. It’s just sunscreen, he told himself. A normal poolside thing. But nothing about Luna felt normal.
“Sure. Yeah, of course.”
He swung his legs off his chair, the concrete scorching his feet. He picked up the bottle, the plastic slick. He stood over her, momentarily dumbstruck by the architecture of her—the notch of her spine, the winged shoulder blades, the way her waist dipped in before flaring to her hips.
“You have to squeeze it,” she said, her voice muffled by her arms. He could hear the tease in it.
He fumbled with the cap, finally squeezing a too-cold, glutinous line onto the small of her back. She flinched, a tiny, delicious shiver.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Your hands are cold,” she said. “It is okay. Warm them up.”
He placed his palms on her, spreading the cream. Her skin was furnace-hot from the sun, impossibly smooth. The contrast was electric. He worked the lotion up, his thumbs tracing the groove of her spine. He tried to be clinical, efficient, but his hands were betraying him, trembling slightly.
“You are nervous,” she stated. It wasn’t a question.
“A little,” he admitted, because lying seemed impossible.
“Why?” She tilted her head, catching his eye. “I do not bite. Unless it is asked for.”
The bluntness of it stole his breath. A laugh burst out of him, nervous and sharp. “Good to know the terms and conditions.”
He finished, his hands lingering for a half-second too long on her shoulders before he snatched them back. They smelled like her. He wiped them clumsily on his thighs.
She rolled over with a powerful, fluid motion, sitting up in one go. Now she was at eye level with him, even though he was standing. The towel around her hips gaped, revealing the sharp cut of her hip bone. She didn’t adjust it. She just looked at him, that knowing smirk playing on her lips.
“You have nice hands. Gentle.”
“Thanks.” He felt like a giant, glowing neon sign that read ‘OVERWHELMED’.
“You are here alone, Leo?”
“Yeah. Needed a break from… everything. Toronto in February is a special kind of grey hell.”
“I am also alone,” she said. “I prefer it. You meet more people. I am from Amsterdam. People there are very direct. It is… efficient.” She uncapped a water bottle, took a long drink, her throat working. “So, I will be direct. I think you are handsome. And your nervousness is cute. It is better than the men who act like bulls, all puff and no thought.”
He just stared, his brain buffering. This wasn’t his script. His script involved stammering, misinterpreted signals, and polite, awkward exits. Not this… solar flare of a woman stating her intentions under a merciless Mexican sun.
“You’re… very direct.”
“I said this, yes.” She laughed, a rich, full sound that cut through the reggaeton. “So. Tonight. There is a beach party. Fire dancers, terrible rum cocktails, sand everywhere. You will come with me.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a deployment.
“As your… what? Guest?” he tried to joke, the words feeling brittle.
“As my date, Leo,” she said, leaning forward. Her knee brushed his leg. “Do not overcomplicate it. We will drink the terrible rum. We will laugh. We will see what happens.” Her eyes held his, utterly fearless. “Unless you are afraid of tall Dutch women.”
The challenge was crystal clear. It ignited a small, stubborn flame in his gut, cutting through the fog of his insecurity. He was terrified. But he was more terrified of watching her walk away and spending the rest of the week wondering.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, and for the first time, his voice didn’t crack.
“Good.” She swung her legs off the chair and stood up in a single, effortless motion. She towered over him, a glorious, golden statue. She picked up her towel and draped it over her shoulder. “I will meet you at the main lobby at nine. Wear shoes you do not mind filling with sand.”
She began to walk away, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. The setting sun framed her in a halo of violent orange and pink.
“And Leo?” she called.
“Yeah?”
“Do not spend all afternoon thinking of clever things to say. Just be you. The one with the gentle hands.”
She turned and walked toward the water, her stride long and confident. She didn’t look back again. She simply waded into the pool, the water swallowing her calves, her thighs, her hips, until she dove under, a sleek ripple that broke the surface and then was gone.
Leo stood there, the imprint of her skin still warm on his palms, the scent of her sunscreen on his fingers. The noise of the pool deck rushed back in—the shrieks, the thumping music, the clinking glass. But it all felt distant, muffled. He sat down heavily on his chair, his book forgotten.
He was going on a date. With a woman who looked like that. Who talked like that. A bolt of pure, undiluted panic shot through him, immediately followed by a surge of something else—anticiptaion, a nervous thrill he hadn’t felt in years.
He looked at his hands. Gentle hands. Then, unbidden, the old, familiar anxiety slithered from its hiding place. It whispered a single, corrosive question in the back of his mind.
It whispered a single, corrosive question in the back of his mind. Would she be disappointed?
He spent the next few hours in a state of low-grade electric shock. Shower. Shave. A futile attempt to tame his hair. He changed his shirt three times, settling on asimple grey linen button-down, sleeves rolled up. He stared at his reflection, a familiar critic. He was fine. Perfectly average. Which, in the shadow of a woman like Luna, felt terrifyingly insufficient.
The lobby at nine was a whirl of noise and sequins. He saw her before she saw him. She was leaning against a pillar, a statuesque silhouette in a loose, black jumpsuit that plunged deep in the back, tying behind her neck. Her hair was piled in a messy knot, a few blonde strands kissing her long neck. She was staring at her phone, disinterested in the swirl around her, an island of calm intensity.
Then she looked up. Her eyes found him instantly, as if she’d sensed him. The smirk returned.
“You came,” she said, pushing off the pillar. She didn’t say you’re late or you look nice. Just you came, as if his presence was both a certainty and a minor marvel.
“I did,” he said.
“Good. Let’s go. The rum is calling. It sounds sad and cheap.”
She didn’t take his arm, just fell into step beside him, her stride forcing him to lengthen his own. The night air was a warm blanket, smelling of salt and frangipani. The thump of music guided them past the resort gates and onto the public beach.
The party was a vibrant chaos. Tiki torches stabbed at the darkness, painting dancing shadows on the sand. A local band was pounding out cumbia rhythms, the singer’s voice raspy over the chatter and laughter. People swayed, drinks sloshing from plastic cups. Luna navigated it all with the ease of a diplomat, leading him straight to a thatched bar.
“Two of whatever is strongest and least likely to cause blindness,” she told the barmen. He slid two foam-capped plastic cups toward them. The liquid inside was a suspiciously neon pink.
“To efficiency,” Luna said, clinking her cup against his.
The rum punch was indeed terrible, syrupy and sharp with cheap alcohol. It burned a welcome path down his throat, easing the knots in his shoulders.
For an hour, they existed in a bubble. They talked about nothing – the absurdity of resort towels, the best food in Amsterdam, the worst client he’d ever had as a designer. She was relentlessly curious, her questions bypassing small talk. She asked about the last album he’d listened to all the way through, the last thing that made him genuinely angry, his favorite font. He asked about the challenges of being tall, the velocity of bicycles in Amsterdam, what she did to silence her own mind.
“I run,” she said, sipping her poison. “Until my lungs burn and my thoughts can’t keep up. You?”
“I get lost in design. In the logic of it. Making messy things clean.”
“A cleaner of messes,” she mused. “I am more of a mess-maker.”
She proved it by dragging him into the crowd near the fire dancers. The heat from the spinning flames was immense, a dry wave that pulsed against their skin. In the flickering light, her face was all sharp angles and profound blue. She danced with a natural, unthinking rhythm, her movements fluid and contained. He moved beside her, feeling awkward, then less so, the rum and her smile dissolving his self-consciousness.
A slow song bled from the speakers, the band switching to a softer, romantic number. Couples drew closer. Leo froze, the old script rushing back.
Luna didn’t hesitate. She closed the space between them, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders. Her height meant they were nearly eye-to-eye. He placed his hands tentatively on her waist, the linen of her jumpsuit smooth under his palms.
“See?” she murmured, her breath warm near his ear. “No biting.”
He laughed, a genuine release of tension. They swayed, a simple rocking motion. Her body was solid, warm. He could feel the definition of her back muscles under his fingers.
“Why me, Luna?” The question left him before he could stop it.
She leaned back to look at him. The teasing glint was there, but softer now. “Because you see me. Most men, they see this first,” she said, a slight gesture down her own body. “They see a challenge, or a fantasy. You saw a person. And you were afraid, but you came anyway. That is interesting.”
She leaned in again, her cheek nearly touching his. “And I like your hands,” she added, as a final, decisive argument.
When the song ended, she stepped back. The moment broke, but the charge remained. “I am done with this party,” she announced. “The rum has officially announced its regrets. I have a balcony. A better bottle. Come.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a simple statement of the next logical step. The panic rose in him again, a crescendo of the old, corrosive whisper.
She was already walking, expecting him to follow. He watched her for three heartbeats—the confident set of her shoulders, the straight line of her spine against the open back of her jumpsuit. He could walk back to his room, to safety, to the quiet grey hell of his own thoughts.
He took a breath of fire-tinged air and followed.
Her room was in a quieter wing of the resort, a third-floor corner suite. The balcony overlooked a dark stretch of garden and the moonlit sea beyond. She left the lights off, illumination coming from the moon and the distant pool-area glow. She fetched a bottle of reposado tequila and two small glasses from a cabinet, setting them on the small balcony table.
“No neon pink,” she promised, pouring two generous measures. The liquid caught the moonlight.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few moments, the raucous sounds of the beach party now a distant murmur. The tequila was smooth, smoky, leaving a warm trail.
“You are quiet again, Leo,” she said, watching him over the rim of her glass.
“Just… taking it in.”
“The view?”
“All of it.”
She put her glass down. She stood up and, in one smooth motion, untied the knot at the back of her neck. The black jumpsuit straps fell. She shimmied it down, stepping out of the pooled fabric on the floor. She stood before him in just her underwear, simple black cotton, her skin pearlescent in the low light. She was a breathtaking silhouette—powerful, lean, utterly unashamed.
For a long moment, motionless. Leo felt the sight of her enter his nervous system like a jolt, burning away rational thought. Then she took a step forward, closing the warm space between them, where their knees almost touched. The insecurity screamed, a piercing alarm. His hesitation, usually a minor trait, was now a yawning gap inside him. Luna just held his gaze, no judgment on,just a waiting. The night sounds. The pulse in his ears.
She slowly and with full confidence, unbothered by internal noise, slipped her fingers at the I said I just can't, he was cut off. I say I just can't, He felt like they were being lit up for someone's enjoyment.
Then. The sound came out unbidden.
He had a moment to see her eyes widened slightly as a deep, helpless, a laugh. Not a squeak either, a real genuine laugh that comes from low, that starts. She just did. she has control. He saw his own expression. He'd want any second she will come to say something in a moment, I hate this, but not a trace.
"Is that the problem? The big crisis that makes Leo is the quiet guy so loud in his head." And she said like it. Leo could not to the point was ridiculous. This is me. She was a man in the night of how they had looked into the whole. The man he is as, that they would.
"Is it that your problem is small, you are wrong."
"I said what do you, but Leo had thought.
She was not done.
"Or that, in your mind you are average. Unspecial. You believe this could never be special? This is not an engine to judge the car."
"What?" his entire body in.
"An engine? The design, yes, It was just, I have no idea what you are talking about I’m not a fool."
"What do you think I'm trying to be."
She said.
"There's the man from the engine you've given him? No. The point. The important parts are the hands. There is his words. A tongue. There's to pay attention, there's a brain which was just so beautiful before the machine you're sitting in.
"What."
"I'm going to show you in 3 and I bet you will ask to know how wrong is that we, Leo said he had a brain that is on it can think in the design clean messy things. Why not put your thought?
"I am."
"For an 4th, "Now, shut up and give a second about your thought and let it, and she smiled. "Stop it. you, Leo. I thought this in a design man, my man it's simple to think a product is all that matters because for they think a clean design is good the point is what is inside the system. You will help. We will fix your head."
They can be broken and the broken head, Leo said she broke something then he did. A soft noise; he did in her voice.
She was on her knees there to do an "what are you thought now".
"Are you really?"