Ainhoa

Rick had, for the first time in his life, enjoyed a sensation inmensurable by any other experience he has had up to that point. For whatever reason, in the aftermath, he fixated on her hair. Its fragrance. The softness of it against his skin. How it started to curl from the saltwater. He ran his fingers through it as she rested her head against his chest.

She kissed him once more, tenderly on the lips, before she led him back to shore.

"Time to sleep," she said.

They dressed wordlessly. Rick couldn't take his gaze off of her. She was so achingly beautiful. This was true objectively, but also poignantly true, as an aftereffect of having made love to her, his first ever.

She smiled, wordlessly, at him as she pulled her wet bikini bottom up to cover her lightly tufted pussy and pulled her bikini top down to cover her bare breasts. Rick wanted to tell her something profound and sweet but couldn't find the words. He didn't know how exactly he felt about what had just happened. The passion still fizzled inside of him, but he had started to come to a slow realization that tomorrow he was disappearing down the coast with Manny in a van. He suddenly had an urge to stay. To just stay here forever and to hold Ainhoa. To run his fingers through her hair, again. To kiss her, again. To make love with her in the water tomorrow. He then wondered how she felt about him. What thoughts were hidden behind that smile? And those moonlit eyes?

He always thought that the loss of his virginity would feel like a triumphant landing; like how a conquistador might have felt upon the discovery of a new fruited land. He hadn't expected that the feat would feel more like embarking into an endless sea, where immense and immeasurable satisfaction quickly dissipates like morning fog, to reveal only listless, shaking uncertainty. Was this true only with her? Or was it universal, like a law of nature?

When they were both dressed again, she put her hands in his and kissed him.

"Sweet dreams," she said and walked away.

"Good night," he responded, but felt that his voice had disappeared in the wind before it could reach her.

Manny was snoring when he entered the bungalow, waking when Rick put himself into the adjacent cot. The two cots sat lengthwise so that their feet faced in opposite directions and the crowns of their heads almost touched.

"And?" Manny asked with his eyes still closed.

Rick smiled at him and said with a laugh, "yeah."

"My man," Manny said and held out his fist. Rick bumped it and laid his head back onto the pillow so that he could see the ceiling. Manny quickly fell back asleep into a buzzing snore. Restless, Rick stared at the markings on the wood above his head. The markings, which he decided were knots, appeared like thousands of scattered galaxies. He fell into an eventual and dreamless sleep.

The next morning, roosters and the crisp chill of the morning woke Rick. Manny's cot was empty except for unkempt sheets.

Rick remembered immediately the events of the previous night, thinking, at first, that perhaps it was just a dream. He discovered Manny outside lounging groggily with a bowl of cereal in a beach chair facing the lagoon.

"Man of the hour!" Manny croaked triumphantly. "Tell me the dirty details bro!"

Rick shook his head, grinning. "Nah dude, that's between me and her."

"Mmmmhmmm, beautiful, beautiful señorita Ainhoa," Manny sang dreamily with cereal milk dripping from his jaw. "You did good, bro. She's a good first. Ainhoa bonita. Beautiful Ainhoa. Ainhita..."

Rick frowned at him and didn't humor him with a response. He felt his stomach churn from the way that Manny kept repeating her name. He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and leaned forward on his toes as he breathed in the crisp sea air and gazed stoically at the golden glow of the sunrise creeping up from the razor edge of the distant horizon.

Just then, Kiké appeared from around the corner of their bungalow. "Buenos días, hombres," he said cheerfully.

"Buenos días!" Manny responded, raising his cereal bowl like an alcoholic beverage.

"Hey, before you boys take off, I was wondering if you can give me a hand with this propane tank."

"Yeah sure thing, what do you want us to do?" Rick asked.

"Just need you to lift the tank up into my truck bed. I want to take it into town to trade it for smaller ones."

Manny put down his bowl and jumped to his feet, "Alright! Let's do this."

Kiké led the boys over to the side of the house, where he already had his old Ford F-150 pulled up and the tailgate pulled down.

"Just that," Kiké said, tapping the tank with his cane.

Manny and Rick positioned themselves on opposite sides of the tank and Manny counted down to three and they lifted. It rose in inches, quaveringly.

"Ten cuidado, chicos! Be careful," Kiké said as he stood poised with his cane.

Groaning and through clenched teeth, Rick wheezed, "I don't know if we can do this,"

"Come on," Manny said. "Just a little bit more."

"It's not going to reach," Rick insisted.

"Naw, bro, don't give up! We got this," Manny growled deeply.

Rick felt his knees shaking as he put all his strength into pulling the tank up. His eyes started to tear up and his teeth grinded. He felt himself groaning loudly as his abdominals began to cramp up, but as his back gave in and his grip lost the tank, it landed with a cushioned leaf-spring bounce on the tailgate of the pick-up.

"Órale," Kiké exclaimed loudly with a clap.

Rick and Manny both stumbled backwards as they released the weight of the tank.

"Whew!" Manny sighed, wiping his brow.

He gave Rick a high five. Kiké shook both of their hands and slapped their backs.

"Well boys, I'll take it from here. Thanks a bunch. Feel free to stay as long as you need. I got no one coming in today."

He studied the boys with nostalgic admiration, then continued,

"I'll be in town for a couple hours, so if you aren't here when I get back..." he stuck his hands out for them to shake again. "It was a pleasure, amigos."

"Pleasure was ours, my man," Manny said.

"Yeah, thanks for having us, Kiké," Rick added.

Kiké nodded at them and shuffled into his pick-up. As he turned the ignition and the vehicle grumbled to life, Manny ran up and leaned in through the opened passenger side window to say, "hey Kiké, do you need a hand in town?"

"Nah, but if you wanna come check it out, you can tag along."

Manny looked at Rick and said, "you wanna go?"

Rick glanced automatically over to the beach and the palapa, searching for Ainhoa. He didn't want to pass up an opportunity to see her one last time, alone, so he shook his head and said, "I think I'll just chill out here."

When Kiké and Manny left for town, Rick walked over to the beach and took a seat in the sand. Towering storm clouds painted the distant horizon in grey-blue hues. The wind blustered, and the sand swept across the beach, stinging Rick's bare legs. Shortly, he heard a familiar soft voice behind him, springing life into his heart.

"That's Sonora over there."

Ainhoa plopped herself down and sidled up next to him, watching him with purposeful eyes. She wore a white cotton sweater and her hair spilled out from beneath a fluffy wool beanie. She wore a blue skirt today, of the same style as the red one she had on the previous day.

"Say again?" Rick said. His heart pounded at her very presence. Her naked arm touched his arm, and the familiar soft feel of her skin gave him flashbacks to last night.

"Sonora. Mainland Mexico."

"And where's Mexico City?"

She pointed her finger to the south east. "Over there. Very, very far. Mexico is a big country, you know. San Francisco is closer, even."

"Oh, for real?"

Ainhoa nodded.

"Have you been to San Francisco?" he asked.

She shook her head. "But someday I will. Someday I will travel the world."

"Not a lot of places out there as beautiful as this though," Rick said. He immediately felt stupid making the remark. Of course, to Ainhoa, that superlative meant nothing.

"If you could travel to anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?" he asked.

"Greenland."

"Greenland?"

"Yep. I want to ride a dog-sled in the snow. And see the aurora."

"That sounds great. Don't forget to invite me on your trip."

She smiled at him, brushing strands of loose hair from her face. She kissed him on the cheek. He took it as a consolation, and it made him melancholy. The politeness of the kiss betrayed the passion of the night before. He strongly suspected that she intended not to invite him to Greenland.

He felt pathetic to ask the question, but he asked anyway: "why don't you come with us? On this trip?"

She leaned back on her elbows and stared out at the distant storm with squinted eyes. Lightning spidered through an anvil cloud.

"That would be cool," she said but gave no definitive answer.

"You want to travel. This'll be your chance," he tried to reason.

What Ainhoa said next, Rick felt was unrelated, but seemed to her completely relevant for her response to him. She might have felt compelled to explain something about herself, like she somehow owed it to him. Or it was simply cathartic to speak her mind. It didn't matter if it was Rick, as long as it was someone who would listen to her and not react.

"My mother came here on a holiday trip. She met my father then. He drew her here. She stayed for him and she had me and my brother. Then he went to prison. That broke my mother's heart. And because this place is not easy on a woman, she became soul sick. Me, and my brother...we were only children then. So, she had to take care of us too. For five years she did this before he came back. She hated this place. She really, really, hated it. So, as soon as he came back, she ran away back to Spain. He is a good man, with only kindness in his soul. But he is sick. Very sick. And... he means the world to me."

She brushed a hand tenderly against Rick's face, looking at him adoringly, but with faded eyes that were as grey and blue as the storm across the sea.

"I guess that's a 'no'," Rick responded with a weak smile.

She placed her hand in his and they sat in silence for what could have been a few minutes, but in Rick's mind, an eternity. The eternity ended with the arrival of Kiké's grumbling Ford. Manny shouted out to Rick, "Hey bro, I got some fish tacos for the trip!"

Ainhoa walked with Rick back up the beach and gave Kiké a kiss on the cheek.

Kiké went back to his chair in his veranda under the bougainvillea, and despite the increasingly rough wind, sunk into it comfortably and opened his book. The brass birdcage behind him bounced in the wind. The blue and white bird sat silently on its swinging perch with its head turned inward, hiding its eyes and its beak. Trying to sleep, perhaps.

Ainhoa went to stand beside her father, shielding her face from the flying dust and sand, looking on as Manny and Rick checked to make sure they had all of their luggage packed into the van. Her brilliant indigo-blue skirt flapped violently like a tattered flag.

Manny got into the driver seat. Rick threw him the keys and climbed into the passenger side. When the van started up, Ainhoa walked up to Rick and handed him a sand dollar.

"A memento of your first time," she said with a wink.

"I won't have a problem remembering you," Rick responded.

Manny put his foot on the gas, and the van slowly rolled out past the gate where the sign read "Lupita's", between the rusted trucks. Rick watched Ainhoa longingly in the smudged side-view mirror. He watched her details fade as the van pulled away.

Her soft, curved face and her lips faded. The shape of her breasts faded. Her white sweater and beanie faded. Her blue skirt faded until she was a phantom smudge of white and blue. Then finally, her shape faded completely into the chalky yellow dust that the van had kicked up in the road. And that was the last he saw of her.

He stared pathetically at the sand dollar in his hand.

Manny, noticing his compatriot's silent brooding, prodded, "why so glum, chum?"

"Eh? Nah, I'm not. Just the weather, I guess."

Manny patted Rick's knee consolingly and said, "plenty more fish in the sea."

Rick smiled at Manny, appreciating the gesture, but not understanding how in hell he was ever going to get over Ainhoa. What struck him was the gravity and depth of her. Despite having known her for less than a day, she had pulled him utterly in to her unfathomable depths. He supposed he would never get over her, and that he would simply have to learn to live with only the memory. That was what the sand dollar was for.

Manny ribbed Rick with his elbow and said, "Bro, Kiké gave us a bunch of the sardines from yesterday. It's all in the cooler. He's an awesome dude. And this is an awesome place, even if there weren't any waves. I'm glad we made the stop, bro."

"Yeah. Me too," Rick replied.

Manny gassed the van onto the highway, and they headed south. Rick put his head to one side and mindlessly twirled the sand dollar between his fingers. As he twirled, he turned his gaze to the passing ocotillo and the saguaros, and the creosote bushes.

***

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