We fall asleep smiling.
Ten
I wake up too early. It’s still dark outside, though the corners of the sky are coming alive, stars fading.
I lie in bed for at least an hour, listening to Dex breathing deeply beside me, sound asleep. I go over the events of last night, of how we woke up after midnight on the floor, then proceeded to get into the hot tub, where again we had some crazy fucking sex, though not as insanely otherworldly as before.
We finally went back to bed somewhere in the middle of the night and I had fitful sleep the whole time, tossing and turning. My mind just wouldn’t shut off, no matter how dazed I was from sex.
I’m still dazed, and a little sore too. My back stings and I don’t have to look in the mirror to know I’ve got rugburn down my spine, my dress providing no protection from Dex’s ruthlessness. I nearly screamed when I went into the hot tub.
Despite it all, I’m bursting with this warmth inside me, like my heart has spilled over and is filling every inch of my chest.
I told him. I finally told him.
And his reaction was more than I could have ever dreamed and hoped for.
He wants this baby as much as I do, wants to start a family together, and that is the greatest gift of all (though of course the plane tickets to Hawaii aren’t half-bad either).
Of course, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about it, unless you count the way we communicate with our bodies. We did a lot of that.
But I wonder if he’s ever felt the fear that I feel about having the baby. Right now, that fear feels very far away. Like it was eradicated last night, the moment I opened my mouth and let Dex in to my wants and needs. Even all my other problems, like Ada, my father, Max…it all seems to belong to a different lifetime. Right now it’s just about me and Dex, and that’s it, that’s the whole damn world.
But I can’t lie in bed, staring at the ceiling forever. I feel this itchy buzz at the base of my skull, the urge to move, to do something. I get up to go pee and splash water on my face, then wonder if I can make coffee without waking Dex. The man seems like he needs to sleep for days.
I decide that the Keurig will be too loud, so I get dressed into my pajama pants and a long t-shirt, not bothering with a bra. I slip my Chucks over bare feet and shrug on my coat, making sure I have my wallet and the key card that works, before slipping outside.
It’s still early and everything is still and quiet. Even the waves have lessened, the color of worn metal that matches the grey brown sky.
I’m on the path heading toward the coffee shop I spotted in the lobby when movement on the beach catches my eye.
It’s a woman with long black hair, walking toward the waves. Above her flocks of small black birds move in synch, swooping and diving in the sky.
I stare at her, unable to move. She’s so far away but I have this inexplicable need to get closer. To really see her.
I abandon the path and walk directly onto the sand, trudging across the beach, a cold wind picking up and throwing sea spray in my face, stinging my eyes.
The woman is now straight ahead of me, walking into the surf. I realize she’s not wearing a white coat like I thought earlier, but a long white nightgown, her hair black and flowing down her back.
I should be afraid of her. There’s this tingling in the back of my brain telling me that I should feel fear, that I need to stop walking, that I need to turn around and go back to the hotel.
But I don’t. I don’t feel anything right now. I’ve gone numb from the inside out and I keep walking. Compelled to reach this woman.
I must reach her.
It’s beautiful here. The grey of the endless beach and the infinite horizon, the depth of the sky, the grace of the birds.
And she’s beautiful. I can’t even see her face but I know she’s gorgeous through and through. An enchantress. Someone I want to be just like.
Come join me, she says, the words sifting into my brain like grains of sand. Come feel what this is like to be so coupled with the world.
“Okay,” I whisper, walking into the waves. I don’t even feel how cold the sand is beneath my bare feet, or the glacial temperature of the ocean.
I’m closer now. I notice patches of blood on the sides of her nightgown, blood that won’t wash away.
“Just a few feet more,” she says, and her head begins to turn toward me.
“Perry!” a faint voice yells in the background, a voice coming from another place.
“A few feet more,” the woman says.
Her head completely turns around, like an owl, and I find myself only inches from her now. Her eyes go black and she smiles with broken teeth, her mouth opening wider and wider and wider and—
“Perry!” A hand grabs my elbow, whipping me around so hard that I almost fall back into the surf. Dex catches me by the waist, pulling me to him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he cries in anguish, his eyes wild with panic as he looks me over. Before I can say anything—what is there even to say?—I look back over my shoulder at the woman.
But she’s gone.
Dex pulls me out of the surf, back to the shore, and it’s only then I realize I’d taken off both my shoes and coat, leaving them in the sand.
What the hell was I just about to do?
I know Dex is thinking the same thing as he places his hands on my shoulders, peering at me, trying to calm his breathing but it’s not really working.
“What the hell were you doing? Why were you trying to go in the ocean? It’s freezing.”
I stare down at my feet. They already look a little blue, my pajama bottoms soaked to mid-thigh. All at once the immense cold of the water and the air hits me, and my teeth start chattering. “I-I don’t know.”
He bends down and picks up my coat, putting it around me. Then he grabs my Chucks with one hand and effortlessly picks me up, hauling me up on his back. I’m too dazed and cold to protest, letting him carry me down the beach and back to the room.
At the last minute I look up, staring at the waves as a drizzle begins to fall.
There’s something black and long swimming in the water.
Just the hint of a tail rising from the waves.
I close my eyes shut, trying to make sense of it all and failing, until we’re back in the room and Dex carries me right through the sliding door to the private patio and straight to the hot tub where he gently lowers me into it in my clothes.
The water is breathtakingly hot and works instantly to end my chills. I sink in a little bit deeper, the water up to my chin, trying to breathe in deep.
Dex quickly strips to his briefs and gets in the hot tub with me, crouching in the water as he faces me, hand at my neck. “Tell me what happened.”
“I’m not sure,” I say quietly, trying to think. It’s like it all just…slipped away. “I think I saw someone out there. In the water. Maybe she needed help.”
“You saw a woman?”
“Yes, in the waves, I think.”
I close my eyes and try to concentrate but it feels like just a dream. That there was no one there at all. My mind wants to put the woman I saw in the restaurant in the ocean, make me think that’s who I saw.
But was it?
“Maybe I was sleepwalking?” I ask him. Though I have a memory of grabbing my wallet and key card. I wanted coffee, didn’t I?