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“Río,” I whispered, out of breath, and not from wheezing. “You make me feel like I’m kissing the tides.” “Benigno,” he whispered back. “You make me feel like I am holding the moon.”
“I think you’re even more beautiful underwater than you are in my dreams.”
“Brother, I am far more concerned about what Sam’ll say when he finds out the merman who’s been giving him the cold shoulder since day one is playing Romeo and Julio with the hired hand.”
Men sweet on other men, ladies sweet on ladies, folks sweet on nobody at all—who cares so long as everyone’s living happy and hurtin’ no one?”
“And like”—he cleared his throat uncomfortably—“the tail and the fins and whatnot. That don’t bother you?” “Aw, jeez, Matthias—” “What! It’s an honest question!” “Well, I dunno, on him they’re nice,” I admitted, my ears on fire.
When I’m with Río, I feel like maybe all my dumb decisions weren’t so dumb if they brought me to him.”
I’d never wanted someone like this. Like a drought was inside me that a kiss alone couldn’t quench.
My stunted heart had become another foreigner in a sea of extranjeros, but when I was with Río, it seemed to come back home.
“From the moment I first saw you, I knew you were a miracle.”
I kissed Río the way he breathed: Slowly. Deeply.
“Benigno, surely you know,” he breathed. “You are my heartsong.”
“Teach me how to love you, Río.”
“A human might find it overwhelming.” “And if I wanted to be overwhelmed?”
If Río’s soul was an ocean, then I’d found the sea floor.
I felt the whole of the Atlantic sing in his heart for me. His love is so sublime I thought it might turn me to foam.
“My whole life, I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” I whispered. “How can you expect me to cast you back to the water when I’ve only just found you?” He sighed and looked despairingly up at me through the bars. “So says every man who has ever hooked a fish.”
“How much do you love him?” he asked. My voice still sounded like steel wool. “I can’t breathe without him.”
I tried hopelessly to brand him into my mind. Hopelessly, because, when it came to losing people, the more you tried to make them permanent on the shorelines of your recollection, the more time eroded them away.
“When I look at you . . . I see the earthen reefs where I played as a child,” he murmured between strained breaths. “When you hold me . . . I feel the shallows warm around me. I have collected your smiles, your laughter, your songs like precious pearls. When I was alone, I held them close”—his voice caught in his throat—“to guard against my nightmares.”
“We will meet again,” added the madam, “in this life, or the next.”
Why did new beginnings feel like the end of everything?
“Make freedom your destination . . . and you will know what metal you are made of soon enough.”
“S-soy boricua, pa’ que lo sepas. I’m with it, for it, n-never against it,” I croaked.
storm. “Mi luna.” He kissed my forehead and covered my wound with a soft hand. “Nunca te abandonaría.”
