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THIS TIME
OLLY SMILES. HE will not stop smiling. He gives me every variation of smile that there is
and I have to kiss his smiling lips. One kiss leads to ten until our kissing is interrupted by
the sound of Olly’s stomach growling.
I break our kiss. “I guess we should eat something.”
“Besides you?” He kisses my bottom lip and then bites it gently. “You are delicious, but
inedible.”
I sit up, holding the blanket to my chest. I’m not quite ready to be naked again despite
our intimacy. Unlike me, Olly’s not feeling at all shy. He’s out of bed in a single
movement and moves about the room completely naked. I lean back against the
headboard and simply watch him move, all grace and light. No dark angel of death now.
Everything’s different and the same. I’m still Maddy. Olly’s still Olly. But we’re both
more somehow. I know him in a new way. And I feel known, too.
The restaurant sits right on the beach and our table faces the ocean. It’s late—9 P.M.—so
we can’t really see the blue of the water, just the whitecaps of the waves as they crash
against the beach. We hear it just beneath the music and chatter all around us.
“Think they have humuhumu on the menumenu?” Olly teases. He jokes that he wants
to eat all the fish that we saw while snorkeling.
“I’m going to guess that they don’t serve the state fish,” I say.
We’re both starving from all the activity of the day, so we order every appetizer on the
menu: poke (tuna marinated in soy sauce), crab cakes, coconut shrimp, lobster pot
stickers, and Kalua pork. We don’t stop touching for the entire meal. We touch in
between bites of food and sips of pineapple juice. He touches the side of my neck, my
cheek, my lips. I touch his fingers, his forearms, his chest. Now that we’ve touched so
intimately, we can’t stop.
We move the chairs so that we’re sitting right next to each other. He holds my hand in
his lap or I hold his in mine. We look at each other and laugh for no reason. Or, not for no
reason, but because the world just then seems extraordinary. For us to have met, to have
fallen in love, to get to be together is beyond anything either of us had ever thought
possible.
Olly orders us a second helping of lobster pot stickers. “You make me very hungry,” he
croons, eyebrows waggling. He touches my cheek and I blush into his hands. We eat this
plate more slowly. It’s our last. Maybe if we just sit here, if we don’t acknowledge that
time is passing, then this too-perfect day won’t have to end.
As we leave, the waitress tells us to come back and visit again soon, and Olly promises