Te Au Moana

I rubbed the back of my tender neck. The hotel barber had done a good job on my hair, even though I'd presented him with months of overgrowth. He'd cut the back and sides tight to my skull, closer than I'd worn it since before I got married. I liked the way it made the gray at my temples seem like it might just be a trick of the light. I looked like my father when he was teaching me to drive; I felt like a shorn sheep. The little hotel patio was well-shaded by the angular lace of the shadows of palm fronds, enough that the prickling at my hairline was psychological, not an actual sunburn starting. Ice shifted and clinked in my glass and the ocean breeze teased the naked tops of my ears.

I gave up on even the pretense of reading the book I'd gotten in the airport, marked my place, and set it aside. There's not an ugly place on Oahu, not this close to the beach, and it's a damn shame not to take in the sights. And what sights there were! Through the jasmine dripping off the lashed bamboo pergola, I had a clear view of the wooden sun deck in front of my shaded patio, particularly of a girl in an acid green string bikini and giant, bug-eye sunglasses working on her deep tan. She sat up and rubbed her hand searchingly from her golden kneecap up to her hip and back again, then reached into her canvas tote bag for a spray bottle of oil. The starting spark of orange in the setting sun lit the cloud of tanning oil and it bloomed into fire over her thighs. She stroked her glistening skin, fingertips disappearing into the crevice between her legs. A long lock of blonde hair pulled loose from her ponytail and spilled across her face. She puckered her lips and huffed at the strands unsuccessfully before tucking it behind her ear. She was on her knees in front of me, pushing that same stubborn piece of hair away from her mouth before rubbing the head of my cock against her lower lip. I hooked my thumb under one green string of her bikini top and slid it up to the knot-

"Don't waste your time," a throaty woman's voice, to my left.

"Sorry?" I was embarrassed to be caught staring.

"Your book, Eat, Pray, Love? Don't waste your time. It's a bunch of soccer mom yoga pants navel gazing bullshit. Mind if I share your table? It's got the best view of the beach and the sun's gonna set here in a minute." Wild brown curls, kissed with sun and salt, framed her face. I couldn't tell how old she was, since her sunglasses covered her eyes, but from her throat, the swell of her breasts against the keyhole opening of her blue halter swimsuit, my guess was mid-thirties. I had fifteen years on her, at least.

"Go ahead," I gestured to the chair she was already grabbing to pull out. "Do I need to worry that you're going to take my drink, too?"

"Is it bourbon?"

"Scotch."

"Then no. I'd take a margarita, though. Shame not to drink a margarita on the beach, it's what they're made for." She had a lopsided smile, flirty even when she was being straightforward, though she was certainly flirting with me. I signaled the bartender to come over and soon I was brushing the salt from her margarita off the rim of my second scotch where we'd clinked them together.

"To pretty strangers in need of margaritas and sunsets," I offered.

"To handsome men staring thoughtfully out at the surf," she added.

"I'm Stephen."

"Amanda." She pushed her sunglasses up to the crown of her head. Her hazel eyes crinkled with her smile in a way that made me wonder how they'd look tightly closed in pleasure.

"How far did you get in this monstrosity, anyway?" She grabbed the paperback and flipped it open to where I'd stuck a narrow rectangle of printed card stock a dozen pages in. When she saw it, surprise and shame pulled her eyebrows together. "Jesus, I'm sorry. I thought you were here on vacation."

"Can't vacation in the place where you're from," I said, plucking the funeral program card from the pages. "My cousin, Chris."

"Were you close?"

"Yeah, when we were kids. Real close. Our birthdays were a week apart, we used to have our parties together." I sensed a shift in her mood like the pull of a wave. We'd been headed in a good direction before she found out what I was doing here. If I could resume that momentum, I might have a chance at a pleasant dinner with her. "He had a car and a later curfew when we were in high school. I used to come home on Friday at ten, make sure my parents saw me go up to my room, then shimmy down the ladder Chris kept in the trunk. We got it down to five minutes, house door to car door."

"I guess if you have to go to a funeral, paradise is the best place it can be."

"Having family on the island has its perks."

"How long have you been gone?"

"Since I-" got married "-graduated college. Wanted to see more of the world and got my wish. Nice to be back home, though, it's been a few years."

"Where's home for you now?" Amanda dipped the tip of her middle finger in her drink and used it to catch salt crystals from the rim of her glass before popping it in her pouting mouth. Heat flashed through my linen pants, and I thought for the first time that more than dinner might be where momentum was taking us.

"Now that," I chuckled, signaling the bartender for another round, "is an interesting question."

"Is it?" She leaned forward, close enough for me to see the freckles that scattered her nose like the line of shells left at the edge of the surf with the foam also stretched across her shoulders. "I'd say it's a boring question, unless the man is particularly interesting."

"Well," I leaned forward, too, only the breadth of her margarita glass between us, "I'm a beach bum, as of last week."

"And that means..?"

"I'm homeless." I expected her to pull back in shock, but all she did was raise an eyebrow.

"Homeless?"

"Technically homeless. The sale of my house finalized ten days ago, same day I found out Chris was in the hospital on short time. I was supposed to start looking at apartments, but being here seemed a lot more important. I hired a moving company to pack up everything left in the house and put it in storage until I decide where I'm going to land."

"Ever thought about staying here?"

"On a night like this?" I cut my eyes at the beach, gone to ruddy fire in the setting sun. "I can't think of being anywhere else. Can't hold anywhere else in my mind too long before what's right in front of me floods it out."

"Well, if you stay, you can work on your tan lines." Amanda broke the seal between us and ran the fingertips of her right hand along my jaw. I had forgotten about my pale cheeks -- the hotel barber had taken off my six months of untrimmed beard with short, even strokes of his straight razor along with my hair. Her hand dropped lightly over mine and she rubbed the other patch of white skin, the one my ring had covered for more than thirty years. "All of your tan lines."

"I'm here alone. I'm divorced."

"I don't need to know that." I couldn't tell if the huskiness in her voice was the continuing riptide of our attraction or some wound I didn't have a clear enough view to see under her freckled skin.

"I need you to know. It was important to me for a long time."

****

In the elevator on the way up to my room, I put my hand on Amanda's lower back and she tilted her head up to me. Without a thought, I bent down and pressed my lips to hers. When I thought about kissing her all through drinks on the patio, through dinner, through our walk on the wet sand, I had imagined it being a trembling and nervous thing, like being fourteen again, or a thing seized up and shuddering with flashfire passion, the way I kissed women when I was twenty-four. At fifty-four, it seems I kiss women as the compulsion of a natural force, the small gravity of our need pulling our tongues together. Her wild cloud of hair and brassy approach had made her large in my mind, but she was a head shorter than me and her bare shoulders didn't span full across my chest.

The only light in my room pushed in from the balcony overlooking the sea. She pressed against me, catching my lower lip gently between her teeth. I pulled her closer with both arms, one hand sliding over her pert, sarong-covered buttocks. Her mouth tasted like the best parts of her margaritas, acid and salt but mostly sweet against my tongue. I kissed her neck to find out if the rest of her skin tasted like it smelled, coconut suntan lotion and the sea. Her moan tickled the millimeter of hair left over my ear. I unknotted her sarong and it whispered to her feet. Pulling the knot loose behind her neck didn't leave her naked, but it freed her breasts into my palms. I had expected them to sag softer into my hands without the support of her swimsuit, but they were so firm I let out a surprised whistle.

"Thirty-three and never been pregnant has its benefits," she whispered, amused. She'd gotten that reaction before, then. I circled one brown areola with my tongue and felt the edge pucker before I sucked it between my lips. She slid her swimsuit off her hips and cupped one hand against my erection on her way back up.

"Mmmm," she sighed, squeezing through my thin linen trousers and pulling a matching groan from me. "You're so thick. You're going to need to open me up before you try to get that inside me."

"If it takes all night." I probed between her legs with one finger. She was slick with arousal and her completely hairless mound, the first I'd ever touched, seemed vulnerable under my hand. "Age comes with benefits, too."

"Does it?" She sighed, grinding against my finger before I pulled it away and put it in my mouth. Acid and salt, but mostly sweet. She seemed uncertain of herself for the first time all night. "What's your...uh... stamina like?"

"I can come two or three times tonight," I kissed her deeply to punctuate how much I wanted it to be three. "And I'll last a lot longer after the first one, especially if you use your mouth."

"Good, that's exactly what I had in mind."

She unbuttoned my shirt and stripped me out of my pants and boxers, then gave my bobbing cock a playful tug as she walked out on the balcony. I joined her, my apprehension about being seen rolling away when I saw the hotel behind us was darker than the moon-reflecting sea in front of us. Her hand closed around me again, but there was nothing playful about the way she squeezed me and rolled the skin forward across my shaft. She got on her knees in front of me and licked the underside of my cock in long, flat strokes from the edge of her closed fist to the very tip. She stroked her hand along my moistened cock and teased the head with the tip of her tongue until a clear drop of precum swelled out of the slit. I sank my fingers into her hair and she opened her lips and took half my length into her crooked-smiling mouth.

She worked her hand, lips, and sweeping tongue up and down my throbbing cock like she was wringing pleasure out of me. Even as she pulled me closer to orgasm with every dip of her mouth, I felt I was wasting an opportunity by not enjoying the view of the beach. I knew how rare this experience was, but I couldn't look away from her upturned eyes, crinkled in genuine enjoyment of the texture of me sliding through her mouth. She cupped her free hand beneath my balls and teased the hot space behind them with her fingers. The scintillating rush of my orgasm shot from deep in my belly down through the iron core of my cock and I came across her tongue in eight even surges. She kept her lips closed around me with gentle suction until she had swallowed everything and even my dry spasms had stopped. Her eyes were closed, so I felt finally free to look out at the ocean while I stroked her hair.

"Would you look at that? It must be later than I thought."

"Hmm?" She rubbed her cheek against the front of my thighs and looked up with the beginnings of another crooked smile.

"The tide's almost in."

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