Free Return to Cancún by Lena Malick Page A

against her heart.
    After a month, she realized she was getting
worse, not better. If this was love, she wasn’t sure she wanted
anything to do with it. There was a constant aching in her chest.
She had to force herself to eat. She found herself crying at odd
hours. The worst was at night, when her need for him was so great
it would sometimes cause her to shake. She desperately wanted to
feel his body, to feel the weight of him on her. To feel him
penetrate her. She’d wrap herself around her pillow, imagining it
was him, and sob into it. Sometimes she’d move her hand down and
rub herself to a quick orgasm, crying right through it.
    She couldn’t share her feeling with anyone.
Vicky might have understood, but Terra was embarrassed and
pretended to be fine. In a desperate attempt to find relief, she
mailed the medallion back to the dive school in Cancun where she
first met Nik, with his name on the envelope.
    Three weeks later, it came back. With a
letter.
    Terra raced back to her dorm
room and poured over the letter. There was no explanation for why
he’d sent the medallion back to her. There was no talk of the time
they spent together. It was mostly about his plans for the diving
sanctuary he was building, written in his careful hand. She could
hear his voice in her head, making the same grammatical errors he
did in his speech. He wrote about how he’d found a partner to help
him... that his sister might be visiting from Greece again... But
nothing about them . Nothing about the extraordinary experience they had. Nothing
about the intimacy they shared, or the incredible sex they had.
Nothing about… love . Terra began to cry as she got to the end of the letter. He
just signed it Nik. Not love Nik ,
or thinking of you, Nik . No anything. And why did he send the medallion back? The one
his mother gave him, that he said was so important to him.
Why?
    She didn’t write back. She
started to a couple times, but couldn’t express what she felt. Or
didn’t want to. What was she going to write? I’m so madly in love with you that I’m walking into walls and
living on saltines and soda water? At night, I yearn for your touch
so much I can only fall asleep when I’ve cried myself to
exhaustion? Oh, and by the way, how’s the dive thing
coming?
    It seemed pointless. She really felt, brief
as their encounter was, that it was special. She had convinced
herself that what they’d experienced together really was unique and
powerful. At least it was to her. But who was she kidding? Maybe it
was her age. She was only twenty. He was… what? She didn’t even
know. Twenty-five? He’d likely known lots of girls, she thought
sadly. With his looks, and his obvious sexual skills, he probably
had been with all sorts of beautiful women. Probably is right now,
she thought sadly, imagining him making love to someone else. To
him, she was probably just another distraction on the way to
building his dreams. Dreams that didn’t include her.
    She gave up trying to write back, and gave up
hope that they shared any of the same feelings, resolving to suffer
her fate quietly.
    Another letter arrived. Terra
figured that if she wanted to get over him, the best thing to do
was to throw it away. But she couldn’t. Instead, she let it sit on
her dresser for a day before opening it. When she read it, she
found more talk of his plans. How he misses Greece, and his fear
that by opening and running the dive sanctuary, he’ll never get to
go back. But that a sacrifice I make for
my dreams, yes? But you would love it there. When it rain in
Athens, it’s like... Wait… what? She went
back and re-read that part. You’d love it
there. What did that mean? With him?
Together? She nearly slapped herself. Stop
it, Terra. His English is bad. He could have meant
anything.
    She wrote back. She talked
about school. About Vicky. About Michigan in the winter. About her
plans for medical school. About anything except her feelings for
him. It was a cheerful