Free Return to Cancún by Lena Malick Page B

letter, but inside, Terra felt torn up, like
her heart was being slowly pulled apart. It wasn’t at all what she
wanted to tell him. She thought of including a picture. Maybe that
would awaken something in him. He’d never really seen her at her
best. Stop it, there’s nothing to awaken
in him. He doesn’t see you like that anymore. She signed the letter Terra . Not love, Terra . No thinking of you, Terra . No
nothing.
    He wrote back again. More about
his plans. Others were joining him. He now had seven people
committed to helping him build and run the dive sanctuary. And now
it was going to be a research center as well. And he’d received a
government grant to help pay for it all. He included more drawings
and renderings of what they were building. He also talked about his
mother in Athens, saying you’d really like
her. Terra didn’t let herself dwell on that
part, knowing right away it was something she could easily obsess
over.
    And that’s how it went. Every few weeks,
another letter would arrive, and every few weeks, Terra would write
back. He said it was good practice for his English, as it forced
him to look up words. She noticed his writing did get better, with
fewer grammatical errors. He included more drawings and sketches,
often quite elaborate, like works of art. Sometimes there was sand
in the creases of the paper. She imagined him writing on his deck,
looking out over the ocean. But still no mention of the intimacy
they shared, or the bond she felt they had established.
    Terra found herself opening up more in her
own letters, talking about things she couldn’t even tell Vicky. Not
about her feelings for him, but about how she felt about life, and
the things that were important to her. She felt free to express
herself, uncensored. She wrote about her mother, and how her dying
had affected her. Putting all these thoughts on paper, sealing them
up and putting them in the mail, was therapeutic for her. She began
eating normally. She started running again and going to yoga class
with Vicky.
    She still loved him. She knew
she did, but she found it was getting easier not to acknowledge it
to herself. She still craved him at night, sometimes pressing his
letters to her face, trying to get the smell of him. But she was
coping, and that was enough. Each day got a little easier. In the
spring, Vicky asked where they were going for summer vacation. His
next letter arrived that day. It was similar to his other ones, but
there was something else included. A plane ticket, with Terra’s
name on it. Terra clutched her heart. It was an open-ended ticket,
good until the end of summer, from Detroit to Cancun. Stuck to the
ticket was a post-it note, which simply said, come see me . Terra could swear her
heart stopped beating.
    ~ ~ ~
    Terra tried his cell phone again. Right to
voice mail. Again. The airport was less crowded now. She realized
the frenzy of people came and went with each flight that arrived or
departed. In between it nearly cleared out. Her eyes were aching
from searching faces, looking for his green eyes. It had been half
an hour since her flight arrived. He said he would meet her there
in the terminal. She began to think maybe she misunderstood and he
was down in the baggage claim area.
    Just then, she saw him.
    He was running through the terminal, toward
her. For a moment, time actually stood still. Like it does just a
couple of times in a person’s life. In that instant, all the love
she’d felt for him, all the love she’d been holding back, came
flooding forward in a rush. She knew in that instant that she loved
him more than anything in the world. It was beyond her. Bigger than
her. More than she could contain. Trying to suppress it now was
like trying to hold back the tide. The thought was both terrifying
and exhilarating.
    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he panted, taking
her hands. She had thought of his brilliant green eyes a thousand
times over the last year, imagining them looking at her,