Last Day
At dawn we’ll lose ourselves in a tangle of sheets, washed in water so hard your skin is chalky to my kiss. We’ll feast on fresh bread thickly spread with homemade preserves, or maybe local honey, lemony and golden, as we gaze eagerly towards the sun-flooded bay.
We’ll have the beach to ourselves. You’ll grump about sand and fidget while I frolic in warm, gin-clear waters.
At dusk we’ll bathe in a phosphorescent ocean, scalded skins aflame with cold fire, before wandering slowly, sun-wearily, away through lemon trees, befuddled with their fragrance, while fireflies hung like lanterns light our way.
#####
I load up on the good stuff. When it kicks in I wake you gently, stroking your side to soothe you into the day. The first faint rays help our fingers find each other, yours heartbreakingly hesitant. My lips reassure your body, testing your control until I feel it break. Shatter. Your reserve bursts over me, a tsunami of longing and loss and love. Swept up, subsumed, we welcome this day as if it was our first.
Sweat-slick we lie twisted and tied up in each other. My face finds its accustomed place, that angle where elegant neck meets boyishly-freckled-shoulder. You smell of sun and sex, of sea and salt and sadness.
Your job is making tea. The chalky water and last-forever milk makes the resultant concoction curdle and froth, and we call it “tea-cuccino”. Some mornings it makes us choke, but we’re English, so we drink it anyway. I always hack the crisp-crusted country bread into chunks, and we slather them with our favourite toppings: I favour peach conserve, or local honey, while you unapologetically top yours with the Marmite we brought with us.
By unspoken agreement we linger over breakfast – a second cup I never drink, the last half-slice of bread you can’t waste. Spread with an unaccustomed jam it takes you five agonising minutes to choose. We avoid each other’s gaze, staring burning-eyed out over the blindingly beautiful prussian blue bay.
You load yourself up with everything we could need for a lengthy siege, plus the little fold-out chair made from azure and white striped fabric, the colours of the Greek flag. You insist upon bringing it, but have never once used it.
The day is heavy with heat. We hurry along the shadeless track, linger in the cool gloom of the citrus grove. Surreptitiously I pluck one single orange from the closest branch, lumpy, rough-skinned, and covered in rich ochre dust. My first ever theft, and I hope it will taste all the sweeter for that!
The little cove with its fine shingly beach peeps teasingly through the glossy leaves as we draw closer. Never once have we met a stranger here, and we have come to think of it as ours. Today is no different. We pretend – as every day – to debate the merits of various spots, before deciding upon the very centre of the scimitar-shaped strand.
You set about laying out the five huge towels you’ve brought into a patchwork ten carefully-traced paces above high tide, repositioning each one several times until you are certain not a grain of sand can breech the defences of your beach-blanket fort.
I make straight for the nearby water, leaving you to your work. The coarse sand is both sharp and scorched, and I walk wincingly, unsteady on the shifting grains. Looking back, I catch the frown before, slightly too late, you smooth your face into a smile I recognise all too well: your lying smile. The “Everything’s fine, nothing to see here” one. Oh how I hate that smile, and my part in it. But I have my own fib-face, so I grin, wave cheerily and lumber into the warm shallows, sinking down and half-swimming through the clearest water I’ve ever seen into cooler, deeper places where I’ll play happily for hours.
The day disappears like it has never existed. We stay out later than ever before, but after one last shared bathe you pull me, resisting, out of the blood-warm water and into the towel you have left unpacked, ready. I lean into your comforting strength as you dry me like a child, arms around me and rubbing until every part of me glows from the rough cotton scrubbing my sun-crisped skin.
A sulky teenager, I drag my feet as we trudge up the hill through the orchard, cool now, and growing darker with every reluctant step. We stop at all my regular places so I can admire the view one more time, and neither of us mentions that it has grown too dim to see them. Hand-in-hand we meander up to the villa as fireflies gather, chilly little nightlights in the blanketing darkness. My grandmother once told me that fireflies are all the people who ever loved us, come to light our way and guide us safely home.
Wearily I throw myself down on our bed, sighing voluptuously. I pull you close, and whisper against your ear that as I’m a bit achy, perhaps you should go to “our” taverna alone tonight, maybe bring back some baklava for later, as a treat.
Your body stiffens into stone as your arms snake tightly around me, head on my breast. I hear the refusal in every strangled breath. Your tears dampen my skin, but you swallow them and surrender. We hold each other tightly for a while, bodies melting into one before you pull away, leaving me colder.
As soon as you leave I reach for the small bottle on the nightstand. It was hard to come by, and I have kept it safe these last months, hiding it in a make-up bag I have no use for. Plausible deniability, I think they call it. It tastes bitter.
When you leave the taverna later and walk back slowly along the dark track, we fireflies hung like lanterns will light your way.
Flight of the dragonfly 