Drops of water trapped between her lashes reflected the light like miniscule diamonds; each one sending sun spots dancing across the lids of her eyes and her cheekbones. Bathed with splotches of bright where the leaves parted over our heads, her stomach looked almost like a leopard basking on the branch of some rare rainforest tree. Like a thick winter blanket the air hung over us, heavy with the heat of the summer and the sticky presence of the sea she had emerged from moments ago. In the shade of trees above us her hair lost its splendid sparkle in all but those spots illuminated by the few rays of sunlight that managed to fight through the canopy of leaves.

Beauty incarnate, I thought as I lay there, our hair tangling in a mix of radiant red and dark, slate black. In the summer heat I could feel the cool of her water-chilled skin as she laced her fingers into mine and rested one pale calf against my own. Moments like these, with the breeze drying the water on her body and the sun bronzing my skin the warm caramel shade it became through June and stayed through September, I wished we could have been more alike. But beyond her water-wrinkled prune fingers on my own and the occasional brush of renegade strands of fire red hair on my cheek and neck, we were as dead to each other as two corpses sharing the same grave.

She loved and I loved and we loved together, but we did not love each other. Even so, for years we had been meeting like this, secretly, covertly, like spies behind enemy lines, hiding in the shade of trees to keep away from prying eyes. I cannot truly say why we hid ourselves away on a beach as empty and wild as the one we chose for our multiple rendezvous; our meetings were not taboo such as they were and we rarely spoke of anything. Indeed, I remember having but one conversation with her, both of us preferring the peace of silence and the waves breaking on the sand, the rustle of leaves in the wind and the shouts of pelicans diving for fish over the azure sea.

Like most conversations with her, though, I am not quite sure how this one started. It may have been the translucent, pale green of the sun-soaked leaves above us or the dried powder of salt remaining on her skin. Hopeless romantic that I am, I find myself wishing that it were some beautiful, small detail like that, but as the years go by I can not help but think more and more that she simply ignored the beauty that surrounded her and the words she spoke were cold and generally untrue. She had a sense of suitability and I believe that the circumstances of this particular meeting (although no different from the ordinary), struck some chord in her pretty head and the appropriateness of the words on this particular day happened to be to her liking.

Sunset threatened the horizon with threads of gold and rose as she returned from a last swim in the sea, where I had seen her slicing through the water swift as a mermaid. The expression on her face when she finally approached echoed perplexity and instead of lying down on the sun-warmed sand beside me as I had come to expect, she dropped in front of me into an Indian-style, cross-legged pose. By now I was curious, her eyes, as green as the foliage above us, were surprisingly lucid and clearer than I had ever had a chance to see them; in the lethargic humidity of the summer’s day it took effort to pull myself into a mirror image of her pose and when I did, she took a few seconds to study my face, no doubt in her sudden clarity of mind, clouded and jaded as hers had been moments ago.

As she spoke I could sense in her a change, a calm, even fluidity to the words that for years had come broken and jagged and short. Unveiled… She was like a bride unveiled, I remember thinking; where through the mesh she had seen muddled outlines she now saw every line in detail.

“I noticed,” she said and arranged her fingers in a steeple beneath her chin before continuing, “I noticed, for the first time today. After all these years, I know…” I nodded and raked a hand through my sand-knotted hair as she hesitated. Whatever it was she had to say, my interest had been spiked and soon enough she continued, “For this first time, it feels as if I’ve really seen this place. I saw you lying there, so peaceful and dark and calm. You’re usually like a black hole, absorbing everything around you and never letting anything out. But here I can see you relax.”

“I do--” I tried to interrupt, but swept away in her sudden, uncharacteristic monologue, she would not let me put a word in.

“Shh. let me finish. I thought coming here to see you was a way for me to let go because being around you has always been a relief. You’re always so steady. You’re like that plastic bit that helium balloons are tied to so they don’t float away, and I guess I’m the balloon then. Anyway, coming here has always felt like a way for me to escape and tie that knot a little tighter. I thought you did it for me. But…” For a moment she turned away and I could see the sun illuminate her profile from behind, polish her skin a rich golden shade, it was the calmest I have ever seen her. “But I saw today, you under that tree, with the sun setting around you and your gaze set on something far away. I can see what this place does for you, the calm… I’m jealous that you don’t come here only for me.”

Again I tried to speak and again she interrupted, “No, I need to finish. If you’re my rock, then this place is your rock. It’s a way for you to escape from everything and everyone you know. And even if you don’t come here just for me, well, I just want to say thank you for taking me along, for letting me be the only person from the outside world in. I think that means more to me than anything, more than life, maybe…” There she paused, I can remember a pelican behind her swooping low, sending sprays of water as its feet brushed the sun streaked surface of the sea; I can remember the exact pattern of the sunset, because this moment, the words she was saying… They were earnest and yet, simultaneously, I could not help but feel some falsehood below the surface (I never could quite grasp her emotions). In spite of this falsehood I sensed, the words she spoke to me on that day remain the truest I have heard to this point in my life.

“I finally see what this place means to you and… Thank you. I know practically nothing about you and you’re still the closest person I think of. Just, promise me one thing. Promise never to forget me, keep me alive when we part ways by thinking of the waves and the trees and the sunsets. Can you do that one thing?”

Her flow of words ended there as the sun dropped completely beneath the waves and darkness began to settle like a blanket across the beach. Like ghost-white birds, her hands closed on my face and when she kissed me, I tasted salt for hours afterwards. That day in late August was the last I saw of her, two months later my job whisked me to the crowded, claustrophobic streets of New York City where the sun shines through grit and paints the world in rust and grey.

On that beach in a world of ocean and beauty and luminescent green leaves and swooping pelicans a hotel stands and used condoms lie half-buried in the sand, floating like a kelp forest of latex every time a wave washes across the beach. In this forest cigarette butt fish swim among needle barracudas and the water is no longer blue streaked with golden sun and snow-white foam but murky, muddled urine scented turquoise. Although our secret Eden is destroyed and not long afterwards, so was she, I still hold onto my memories of coveted, covert meetings and April green on milk white on fire red. As I walk the dirty, grimy streets of a hideous city lacking in color, I will keep a promise I made in a world of beauty and tangled fingers and a kiss salted with tears and sea to a mermaid’s profile etched in gold.