I’m going to tell you the truth, because nobody here knows my name. I wanted him that night more than I have ever wanted anything, and part of what I wanted was the chance that someone might see.
It was the last week of the rainy season in Ayampe. Our villa sat on the hill above the river mouth: bamboo walls, a teak deck, an outdoor shower wrapped in heliconias, and a balcony that faced, across a strip of jungle no wider than a swimming pool, the balcony of the villa next door. A couple from Quito were staying there. We’d shared a nod at the beach and a bottle of wine at the bar on the sand. I’d caught him looking at my mouth. I’d caught her catching him, and smiling.
Nine o’clock
The power went out at nine, the way it always does there. The whole hill went dark at once, except for the candles. Ours on the railing, theirs across the leaves: two small gold lights facing each other in the humid black. The air was so thick that my dress clung to me everywhere, and I didn’t want it to stop.
“They can see us,” my husband said, behind me, low.
“I know.” I didn’t turn around. “Isn’t that the point?”
I felt him go very still. Four years together, and I had never said anything like that out loud. I had thought it, on long drives and in hotel rooms and in the shower with the water too hot. Saying it felt like stepping off the edge of the deck into the dark.
The rules
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
So I did. I told him I wanted him slow. I wanted him to make me wait until I was the one begging. I wanted the candle to stay lit. I told him I wanted the people across the leaves to wonder, and never quite know. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded like the woman I’d always half suspected I was.
He laughed under his breath, and that sound went right through me. “Then hold the railing,” he whispered, “and don’t let go until I tell you.”
I held it. The wood was wet and warm. Across the jungle, their candle flickered as if someone had moved in front of it, and then it was still again. Watching. Or not. Not knowing was the most delicious thing I had ever felt.
Slowly
He took his time. His breath at the back of my neck. The edge of his thumb at my shoulder, sliding a strap down an inch, then waiting, then another inch. He told me, in a voice I’d never heard him use at home, everything he’d noticed about me that day: the salt drying on my skin at the beach, the way I’d licked lime from my fingers at the bar, the way I’d looked back at the man next door one second longer than I should have.
“You liked that,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Say it again.”
“Yes.”
The zip of my dress came down so slowly that I felt every tooth let go, and the warm night touched my skin where the linen had been. I didn’t cover myself. I held the railing, as he’d told me, and I let the dark and the candlelight and whoever might be watching have the shape of me. My heart was so loud I was sure the whole hill could hear it.
The storm
Then the rain came back, all at once, a roar on the thatched roof, warm sheets of it blowing in sideways under the eaves. We were soaked in seconds. I finally let go of the railing and turned and pulled him to me, and whatever control either of us had left went into the storm.
After that I only remember it the way you remember music: rhythm, heat, the rain drumming, his name in my mouth, the candle across the leaves going out at last. Whether they blew it out or the wind did, I’ll never know. I like it better that way.
In the morning the power came back and the fan started turning. My dress was in a puddle on the deck. At breakfast on the beach, the couple from Quito sent over two coffees and didn’t say a word. She smiled at me over her cup. I smiled back.
We have not been polite since.
Names and identifying details changed. Reader stories may be edited and dramatized.