Page 54 of Plus One

She swam over to him, laughing to cover her worry. He’d told her that he didn’t swim.

“This is—” He was laughing and glowing as he quickly figured out how to control his movements, as he sparkled and gleamed through the water.

She reached for him.

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. Where they touched sparked electric, and her skin danced.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“For what?”

“For…” He gestured around them, at himself, at her. “All of this.”

They bobbed there in the glowing waters, life vests bumping, legs kicking, eyes fixed on each other, with something more potent than magic flowing between them.

“Maurice,” she began. “I really wanna kiss you right now, but I need to say this…”

He blinked slow, faint blue sparkles clinging to his lashes and beard. She reached out a hand and stroked his face.

“You really are beautiful,” she said in a breathy whisper.

He pulled her closer, and the water between them surged with color. His hand found her waist under the water and held her to him as he leaned forward.

His lips were soft. Just like she knew they’d be. They tasted like the sea, salty, sweet, and vast. He cupped her face like she’d done to him with a tenderness that made her chest ache.

They bobbed there, surrounded by darkness and light. Each spark infinitesimally small alone. Together, they illuminated the entire bay.

In the distance, someone sang softly in Spanish about love and blessings and joy.

Eventually, they pulled apart, breathless, laughing, glowing, and not just from the waters. She reached for him again, and he welcomed her.

The guide ended his serenade and cleared his throat once. Then again. “Perdón, mis tortolitos. We must return.”

Maurice helped Monique back onto the boat where the guide handed them soft towels. They laughed as they blotted the water from each other’s bodies. Him touching her so freely, without analysis or fear, made her lower belly twitch. She flinched.

“You okay? Is it your hip?”

She looked up at him, curious. “My hip?”

He looked sheepish but also determined. “I notice you rub your right hip and your left shoulder. But you stop when you think someone’s watching.”

The boat continued to move forward through the mangroves and then arced around toward open water. The moon had never been so big to her.

“I’m recovering from cervical cancer, Maurice. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Technically in remission, but…”

She felt exposed, small, out there, but his hand was on hers. Maybe she would be okay.

“My mom died at fifty. Stomach cancer. I’m forty-seven. I thought I’d beaten it once. It came back, and they cut out everything that was left. Pumped me full of so much poison that I questioned if it was worth it. But my kids need me. I’m all they’ve got.”

He didn’t say anything right away.

She’d told only a handful of people that, and most of them were in her family. Everybody else got the abridged version, for their comfort. Maurice got it all out there with the darkness for cover and the bay glowing around them.

That usual response, the careful voices and pitying looks, deciding she was fragile, never came.

He just held her hand. “What about their father? The family?”

She scoffed. “Nathan? He split when we lost our house. Blamed me, like I had control over the markets.” Shaking her head, she remembered the fights about using her father’s military death benefits to save the house thathewanted but they could never afford. And more fights about him slow-walking the divorcehedemanded. “He’s around, but fifteen years on and he’s still trying to—I don’t know, and I don’t care. My kids know they can’t count on him or his people.”