Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 3

face to face, and his dick was as thick and battering as I'd fantasized, a plug that lengthened and filled me utterly, as though it blossomed and reached into my chest and...I know. Eww . Blossoming penis. Was it like, pansies? Maybe columbines? Didn't seem so creepy in the dream, though.
    I might have been crying.
    Weird thing was (okay, yeah, the blossoming thing was weird too, I know), it didn't hurt, just an incredible expansion, like the stretch of muscles long cramped. He rocked into me steady, a slow bass drum, like the roll of waves when you get out a ways from shore. And fuck me, but I woke up sticky. Jesus. It'd been—what—since fifteen that I'd had a wet dream?
    But. The point is, it wasn't only the sex and the orgasm and the grinding feral sweat. He was making love to me, like nobody's made love to me in—right. Well, ever.
    And I dug it.
    That freaked me right the fuck out.
    ****
    On Tuesday afternoon, Tomás showed up at the resort again. Almost four on the dot. I'd set up for the evening shift—filled ice bins, checked the stock, that kind of thing—and was putting colored votives on the tables when he strolled in, barefoot, hands in the pockets of cream linen drawstrings, five o-clock shadow right on time...looking like he'd slipped out of an ad for an Acapulco condo. He had a car—a rental Ford Fiesta in brilliant blue, said we'd go for a drive. Sure.
    We drove up Highway One towards Mulegé, hugging the Sea of Cortéz until we reached Bahía de Concepción. We pulled off to the side and Tomás took out a basket from the hatchback. I shit you not. Wicker. And if I thought he looked like an advertisement before, then Jesus Christ, when he stripped his shirt and walked across the sand, the turquoise water a backdrop for brown shoulders and fine, fine ass...good Lord.
    I hurried to join him.
    We swam. Bare-ass naked, of course, and maybe Tomás didn't sail or surf but that didn't mean he flailed in the water. Playing dunk-the-sucker, he won. Every. Time. And I tried like hell not to enjoy his superior strength as much as I did.
    We worked up an appetite, dragged our wet asses to the blanket, and made a supper of sausage, cheese and bread. Now there was the elegance I'd expected.
    He even brought sparkling cider. Which—yeah. I had to ask. "You don't drink?"
    "I do," he said. "Sometimes. But some experiences, one wants to taste fully. Are you missing it?"
    And of course, I explained that I wasn't. Just surprised I hadn't ever had to turn down anything harder than local water.
    I asked him finally, point blank—what do you do? Or, maybe that was simply another way of asking again, who are you ?
    "I did finance in school." He had his pants back on. His hair was curling tight at the back of his neck as it dried. "My family.. .expected it of me. But I studied oceanography, too." On his chest. On his toes. "No degree plan, just courses, one or two at a time. Physical, biological, chemical—all of it."
    "That's what you wanted to do?"
    "Yes."
    "You dive?"
    He turned to me and smiled. "You could say that." He took a sip of his cider. "Have you been on the reefs?"
    I had, and said so. Back in March, the resort had been closed for renovations, and a few of the employees had booked a flight to Cancun. I'm not certified to dive, but I'd snorkeled while Flaco and Ceci explored deeper. Unreal—the color, the variety, the exuberance of a coral reef. Like walking in a wild meadow riot of flowers and grasses and bugs and birds—but fifty-fold.
    "They're dying." Tomás dug his heel in the sand.
    I'd heard as much. The tour guides had told us the danger they were in. Warming water, ocean acidification; they were choking on sediment, torn into for fish—
    "I need to stop it." Tomás had set his drink down, and now he locked his fingers into a single fist in front of him. Fingertips white with the pressure. "My family—my ancestors for generations—have relied on the oceans. On the waters, on the fish, on the grass nurseries. As it dies, so does my history and my culture." He brought his fist to his chest. "The ocean is here. It is in me." Eyes dark, shoulders tense, his gaze slid to mine. "I can't let it die."
    I honestly didn't know how to respond. I mean, I'd like to stop the destruction, too—that, and world hunger and violence and hate and greed. Didn't mean I was able to. But Tomás's passion made me feel small all over again. I'd been working on a law degree hadn't I? Dropped out, moved to Baja to