Love Her Madly Page 12

  When our week of school volun-tourism was over, we had a few unscheduled leisure days at Playa Tortuga, a beach town not far from one of the best surfing breaks on the Pacific. Our enthusiasm ballooned as our shuttle van drove up to the hostel, all tricked out in Rasta colors. Cyn pointed out a pot-leaf-adorned tapestry of Bob Marley on the wall and smiled broadly. With any luck, we’d be sharing a well-deserved spliff on the shore by sundown.

  We spent all day on the beach, but no one was surfing. The ocean was so flat that the guys who rented boards hadn’t even opened up shop. Instead, they splayed across their shack’s rotting wooden steps, watching the tourists and shooting the breeze. Hannah and Sadie were with us, both of them reading books, ignoring the parade of local guys who lingered by our blanket, many of them openly staring at Cyn’s coral-colored bikini and the shell necklace that dangled between her breasts.

  “Hello, beautiful ladies,” one of them said, in English. I liked his voice, so I looked up from the trashy magazine I had bought at the airport. I liked his face, too, and the rest of him. He was clearly a surfer, the ends of his long, dark hair golden from the salt and sun. He also looked like total trouble. He was our guy if we wanted to find any drugs. Cyn clearly recognized this, too.

  “Hola, guapo. Why is the water here so flat? We came here to ride the waves,” she bantered back, in Spanish.

  Clearly delighted to be addressed in Spanish by a gringa, his smile expanded into a wolfish grin. “I’m Marco,” he said, and he shook all four of our hands. He even took the time to compliment Hannah on the fuzz that was mushrooming on her scalp. “It’s very radical,” he said approvingly. She smiled politely, but I could tell that both Sadie and Hannah also saw what we saw, and didn’t like it. They pointedly returned their attentions to their books.

  “I don’t know what is happening with the waves,” he said with a theatrical shrug. “I am disappointed myself. Maybe tomorrow. How long are you staying in Playa Tortuga?”

  “Three nights,” Cyn answered, and laughed when Marco shook his head in exaggerated sadness.

  “That is not long enough.”

  “It’s all we have. We’re students,” I explained.

  “From America,” he said. “I want to go to America. To Los Angeles.”

  “It’s not as beautiful as this,” Cyn demurred.

  Cyn and Marco chatted a while longer. Cyn asked him about finding some weed, and he said to stop by the reggae bar that night. It was on the far end of the beach, but there was no sign. “The music is the sign. Hasta pronto.”

  When he walked away, Sadie said, “You’re not actually going to go there, are you?”

  Cyn laughed. “Why not?”

  “Stranger danger?” Hannah suggested sarcastically.

  “You used English. You owe us all a beer,” I joked.

  “It doesn’t rhyme as well in Spanish,” she said with a sigh.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Sadie warned. “But if you have to go, we should all go together.”

  Hannah released a loud hoot. “Oh? We should all go together? We see how it is, you little sneak!”

  Sadie blushed. “What? It’s for safety!”

  “No, it’s because that guy is a hottie, and you’re hoping he has amigos.”

  “Whatever.” She snapped her book open, then closed it again in exasperation. “I give up! Am I that transparent?”

  “No, honey, but that guy had a body. I may not be straight, but I’m not blind.”

  Cyn and I bought some cold-enough beers from a guy who wandered past, selling them out of a backpack, and sat in the sand, watching the sunset.

  “Man, I can’t wait to get some weed,” she said for the fourth time, her entire demeanor twitchy with the jones. “Sunset and marijuana are like peanut butter and . . . how do you say ‘jelly’ in Spanish?”

  I shrugged. We sipped our beers, watching the sun sink beneath the horizon.

  “It takes a little over eight minutes for light from the sun to reach our eyes here. Eight minutes traveling at the speed of light.” Cyn pointed her bottle at the red orb before us, squinting distrustfully.

  “Huh.”

  “If the sun just went out, I wonder how cold it would get, and how fast, after that final burst of light, like, right before minute nine.”

  “You might not notice right away, if it happened at nighttime.”

  “The moon would go out,” she noted.

  “Shit, you’re right. Like a night-light gone dead.”

  “That’d be such a bummer.”

  “Yeah. Well, it probably won’t happen tonight,” I opined sagely.

  “Not before we get high. I’m not gonna go out like that, Glo!” She jumped to her feet and saluted as the sun disappeared into the water. “¡Hasta mañana, sol!”

  It was go time.

  We got changed and gathered Sadie and Hannah. Together, we hit the reggae bar, or what we thought was the reggae bar. What we found was a dilapidated beach shack with a string of holiday lights above a weathered bar with a few tables set around it in the sand. The bartender was listening to a soccer game when we arrived, causing us to wonder aloud whether we were at the right place. Since our wondering took place in the local tongue, the bartender confirmed that we were in fact in the reggae bar, and accordingly, switched off the game and turned the music way up. We ordered what he suggested, pink rum punch. It was strong and delicious, so we ordered another. More people from our group showed up, and Sadie and Hannah went to greet them.

  Soon it was totally dark, the stars supercharged above the black sea. Cyn was almost finished with her third punch when the bartender brought over two more.

  “On the house,” he said, beaming. His ramshackle beach hut was surrounded by thirsty, Spanish-speaking Americans, and because we’d showed up first, he thought we were responsible for the good fortune. Maybe we were.

  Cyn took a sip of the new punch and winced. “This dude keeps putting an extra floater on top of our drinks.”

  “That’s nice of him.”

  “It seems nice. It might be hell tomorrow.”

  We clinked plastic rims and looked out at the water. In the distance, we could see the glimmering lights of fishing boats. The breeze was cool, and as I dug my toes into the sand under my chair, I was thinking that the moment was just about perfect. Or it would have been, if only Raj had been there.

  Cyn took a long gulp of her drink. “Glo, there’s something you should know.”

  I picked up my cup and sipped, reflexively. With all the weird stuff going on with Cyn, I’d been anticipating a drunken speech from her. I steeled myself for whatever might be coming.

  “You see,” she began, then sighed. “There are some things I do that I tolerate in myself because I can think, ‘That’s not really me.’ But I’ve gone to that place so often lately, the place where I’m not me, that it is me now. I’m dependent on it. But it’s not anything. And when I need to come back to being me again, I’m not sure what it even means anymore.”

  “Cyn, if this is about your work, then I can only say . . .” I looked for the words, but my sentence stalled out. My head was too foggy to formulate advice.

  “I want you to have Raj.”

  I looked at her and saw her eyes were glowing and wet. She nodded at me with certainty.

  “I’m not even a whole person anymore.”

  At that exact moment, Marco rolled up to our table. I was stunned and speechless, but Cyn was grinning at him warmly. The next thing I knew, I was shaking hands with Hector, a guy who Marco introduced as his brother. They looked so dissimilar that I assumed the “brother” part was slang. Hector was short and stocky, he didn’t have a cool hairdo, and he wore glasses. Hector also radiated a much different vibe; while Marco was sex and danger, Hector presented like a shy school teacher.

  I excused myself to find the
bathroom, which was already occupied by a large green lizard. I went in anyway and watched moths throw themselves against the naked lightbulb above the door. When I was finished, I stood at the sink, feeling dazed. I walked past where Cyn was sitting with Marco and Hector and stood ankle-deep in the surf. The moon was full, or almost full, and encircled by a misty halo. The ocean mirrored its brightness in a gleaming white streak that appeared to end at my toes.

  I took a deep breath and tried to chill out. As much as I wanted to hash the Raj thing out immediately, I knew it was no longer the moment. If she really meant what she said, it could wait a few hours. In truth, I wanted to hear it from her when she was sober so there’d be no taking it back.

  When I returned to the shack, Cyn and our new friends were leaning in toward one another, absorbed in fervent conversation. Marco was talking quickly about something or other off the beach a few miles down. When I sat, they explained that there was an island nearby that was supposedly haunted on full moons, when the spirits of Mayans would rise up and walk the jungle. When the tide was out, there was a sandbar that you could walk across to get to it. Oh, and that also, we were all going there tomorrow night, which happened to be a full moon.

  Cyn nodded happily. “Marco knows a private cove where we can watch the moonrise and have a bonfire, and he thinks he can find magic mushrooms. It should be amazing,” she followed up, in English.

  “Are you nuts?” I said, also in English.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked, looking genuinely shocked that I wasn’t into it.

  “You want to go to a haunted island to do drugs in a foreign country with some local guys we just met. That’s the problem.”

  Cyn laughed, but I was dead serious. Hector was watching me uneasily. “It feels like a lie not to say something. I speak some English. Just so you know,” he said, in English. Then he blushed and looked away.

  I blushed, too, embarrassed and growing angrier. Cyn laughed even louder.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said, his face strawberry red. Marco asked him what was wrong. “Nada,” he replied.

  Now I felt like a jackass. Hector seemed like a Boy Scout, and if he was friends or brothers with Marco, Marco was probably okay, too. But I had expressed distrust of both like a typical paranoid American. But this is the thing: I Knew It Was a Bad Idea. I wouldn’t have done anything like it in the States with guys I didn’t know, but now I felt like a racist, or xenophobe, or just an uptight bitch.

  And then Cyn said, “Well, I’m going. If you’re uncomfortable, you don’t have to come.”

  I could have throttled her right there. I seethed and finished my drink. There was no way I could let her go alone. If she was determined to do it, that meant, like it or not, I was doing it, too. I vowed that this would be our last trip together. I was furious.

  Marco announced that he had some weed. Did we want to smoke? If so, we should take a little walk away from the bar, just to be safe. Cyn nodded, apparently oblivious to how angry I was at her. I followed her out into the darkness, walking side by side with Hector, who wanted to speak a little English. At that moment, I welcomed the distraction. We chatted about college life (he was a student as well) while, in front of me, Marco and Cyn made plans for our haunted island outing.

  “Do you believe the island is really haunted?” I asked Hector.

  We took a few steps in silence. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think what, hermanito?” Marco asked. He pulled out a joint and lit it.

  “I don’t believe that the island is haunted.”

  Marco laughed loudly, a huge cloud of smoke engulfing him. “Those are just old wives’ tales. Or stories to scare children so they don’t drown trying to swim there.”

  “I thought you said it was walkable,” I said.

  Marco passed me the joint and wiggled his brow. “Only at low tide, you hear me? Otherwise, it really is an island.”

  “And even at low tide, you have to wade a bit,” Hector offered.

  “That’s true. Leave the long skirts and jeans at home,” Marco said with a laugh.

  Once we killed the spliff, I announced that I was calling it a night. What I really wanted was a chance to talk to Cyn alone and find a way out of this ridiculous outing. No such luck, since the brothers insisted on walking us back to our hostel, saying the beach wasn’t safe at night.

  As we passed the bar, Sadie and Hannah emerged, both of them extremely wasted. Hannah ran up and threw her arms around me and began singing some dirty Spanish song the bartender had just taught her. Marco and Hector knew the words and joined in. Our very merry band made a ruckus all the way back to the door of the hostel, and once inside, we became the drunk people stumbling around in the dark.

  I found my bunk, which seemed to be swaying on its springs, and the next thing I knew, the room was flooded with painful, eyelid-penetrating daylight. I swear the night was prematurely yanked away like a heavy drop cloth, my sleep stolen in some terrible prank. Across the room, Cyn’s bed was empty. Blearily I remembered I had a mission and, ignoring the pounding behind my eyes, found a way to my feet.

  I glimpsed Cyn on the hostel’s back veranda, nursing a can of pineapple juice, looking hungover.

  “Where’d you get that?” I grunted. She pointed toward a small cooler.

  “It’s part of breakfast. There’s coffee and bread, too, if you want to make toast.”

  I shook my head at the notion of eating anything and snapped open my juice. The hyper-sweetness of the fluid made my stomach quiver dangerously. I sunk into a plastic lounge chair next to Cyn.

  “No waves again today,” she mumbled, toying with a crust of toast.

  I literally didn’t have the stomach for chitchat, so I got right to it. “Did you mean what you said last night about Raj, or was that just drunk talk?”

  “I meant it.” She kept her eyes trained on the ocean, as if she had a ship coming in at any moment.

  “Does he know?”

  She shook her head.

  I looked out at the water, numb to the gorgeousness of the morning. The beauty of the setting, combined with Cyn’s abdication of our lover, should have had me trembling with joy. Instead, I felt queasy and suspicious. “Did something happen between you two?”

  She looked at me. “I need coffee to have this conversation. Do you want some?”

  “Yes.”

  As she went to the communal kitchen, I forced down the pulpy nectar at the bottom of my can, feeling like I was awaiting grim news at the doctor’s office.

  Cyn set two mugs on the table and sat down. “There’s no milk, so I put in a ton of sugar.”

  “Thanks.”

  She took a long sip from her mug. “Well, the quick, sober version of what I was trying to say last night is that I feel trapped. It’s not him. He’s a wonderful guy, and I do love him, but it just doesn’t feel right anymore.” She took another sip and glanced at me. “You’re surprised.”

  “Not as surprised as he’s going to be.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about ending it for a while, but I haven’t been able to pull the trigger. I guess telling you that I’m going to is sort of a dress rehearsal.” She raked her fingers through her hair nervously, reminding me, ironically, of Raj. “It’s just that he’s so serious about everything . . .”

  I waited to see if she would continue. She didn’t.

  “Serious about how he loves you, you mean?”

  “Yes, in a way. But I can’t fault him for being who he is. I’m the one with the issues.”

  “Has he told you he loves you?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. Then she shook her head in resignation and closed her eyes. “Maybe.”

  Hungover Cyn was not a great actress. “Maybe” obviously meant “yes.”

  She finally looked at me. “
Did he tell you?”

  “No.” I drank half my coffee in one long pull, not caring that it was steaming hot and scorching the roof of my mouth. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

  “Shit. Are you okay?” she asked.

  I angrily wiped the tears away, but they kept coming. I saw with sudden clarity that if it was over between Cyn and Raj, it was over for me, too. He would leave school rather than see her around if he couldn’t have her; he was already talking about transferring or dropping out. My love for him wouldn’t even be a consolation prize. It would be a painful reminder of what he’d lost.

  “He doesn’t love me,” I whimpered, letting the words tear me to shreds. “It’s so obvious. He only really wanted you. I was just the bonus girl.”

  “That’s not true, Glo,” she said forcefully. “How can you think that’s true?”

  “Because it is!” I sobbed. Cyn put her hand on my knee, a warning flashing across her face. I ignored it. “He never told me he loved me, so there’s that. And anyway, if he really loved me at all, he never would have complained to me about you not fucking him!”

  Cyn squeezed my knee hard, her cheeks coloring. I turned my head to see Hannah and Sadie standing by the cooler, staring at us. Sadie’s mouth was hanging open in shock. Cyn dropped her head and let her hair surround her face. When I looked back at the cooler a moment later, they were gone.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “Great.”

  Cyn shook her head angrily. “Who cares what they think? It’s not a big deal. None of this is.”

  “What are you talking about? It is a big fucking deal!” I shouted.

  Cyn slammed back the rest of her coffee and shoved the mug across the table. “He really complained to you about me not sleeping with him?”

  “Yeah. It was like he couldn’t help himself.” The memory still carried a fresh sting. “And why didn’t you want to sleep with him? Why did you even want him to be your boyfriend if you didn’t want him like that? I don’t understand any of it!”

  “I know.”

  “Well, you could try to explain it. I think you owe me that.”