It was impossible to feel self-conscious anymore. Everywhere she turned, people were laughing and smiling and having a good time. It wasn’t like being in a crowded club, where there were too many bodies pushing against each other and everyone was eyeing each other in judgment. Here there was such a mix of bodies and ages and people and outfits so that in the dark it was impossible to make out who was who or what they were doing. And besides, why would anyone care? The woman at the clothing store had been right—they fit in perfectly. It was nice to feel the ocean breeze on her stomach and to touch Blake’s chest, knowing he was right by her side. She needn’t have worried so much about what people would think; they were too busy having a good time to care about anything other than the fact that she was out there dancing and having fun, too.
“This is incredible!” she gasped when Blake pulled her out of the crowd so they could take a breather and buy some water from a woman selling bottles out of a cooler.
“I knew this was supposed to be a party, but I still had no idea it would be this fun,” Blake said, downing the water and then pouring some of it over his head and on Julia to cool them off. She laughed and took another swig.
“What would you be doing if you weren’t here?” she asked, imagining the celebrations in Sydney.
“I’d probably be by myself somewhere in Argentina, moping and thinking of you,” he said, flashing a grin.
“Not if you hadn’t met me.”
“I’d still be moping and thinking of you. It’d just be the you I’d wish I had met.”
“Yeah right, you’d be out dancing with some other girl.” She stuck out her tongue.
Blake pretended to shudder. “Perish the thought.”
“Come on, let’s walk down the beach,” she urged, skirting up the road that ran along the beach and trying to keep to the outside of the crowds.
“Something tells me you don’t spend New Year’s on the beach in Chicago,” Blake said.
“Polar bear swim!”
“You Yanks are insane.”
“I didn’t say I did it. I happen to like not freezing my ass off.”
“You also don’t jump off of cliffs,” he reminded her, and she had to acknowledge that he had a point.
“There are some things it turns out that I will, in fact, do. But swimming in Lake Michigan in the middle of winter still isn’t one of them. I think I’ll reserve the whole trying new things out for when I’m somewhere tropical, thanks.”
He laughed. “So you’re just going to go home and be boring?”
“I like boring!”
“You do not,” he smirked, and Julia had to laugh. Okay, maybe he was right about that. Did she really have to go home and be the same old Julia again, layered in sweaters in the middle of winter, staying in the classroom until nine at night because, let’s face it, there was nothing much calling her home and there was always more work to be done?
Could she be the person who jumped into pools, rushed down paths to waterfalls, hopped overnight busses, jumped off cliffs, danced in next to nothing with a crowd of strangers with the sand between her toes…even when she was far from here?
She tugged on Blake’s hand and pulled him through the crowd, this time leading the way instead of waiting for him to decide what they were going to do. Farther up the beach, they could look out and get a view of the crowds stretching all the way down the long crescent of sand, miles of revelers of every age and walk of life, the ocean bobbing with flowers and little wooden boats laden with wishes and prayers, offerings to the goddess of the sea.
Blake bought a bottle of champagne from a cooler for the equivalent of about three bucks, laughing that when in Rio, they’d better do as the locals did. Which, judging from the group they were watching along the shore, meant shaking the bottle and spraying everyone when they uncorked it with a pop as though it were a blessing to be shared.
Julia couldn’t stop laughing as Blake shook up the champagne. Whatever he said, she couldn’t hear it over a sudden roar of cheering from a nearby platform as a band took the stage. To a swinging beat that everyone started singing along to, she splashed her feet in the warm embrace of the ocean, letting the goddess Yemanjá take all her worries away.
Blake waded out to join her, pointing the bottle away so that when it popped the cork went somewhere into the water, their offering to the sea. It bubbled forth explosively and Blake covered the lip with his thumb, still managing to completely douse them both.
They splashed in the shallow waves as he poured the bubbles into her mouth. The bright fizz danced on her tongue. It wasn’t terrible, although most of it went down her shirt. Blake laughed and took a swallow himself, spilling more on his chin. A couple splashed by them and sprayed some champagne on them with shouts of Feliz Ano Novo, so Blake sprayed them back, and they cheered.
Everything buzzed, their skin soaked with sweat and salt and champagne. Swimming in their clothes under the darkened sky, watching the pulse of bodies writhe and sway in a dancing mass along the shore, the ocean felt like a vast, endless embrace. They swam parallel to the shore, keeping close to the beach but moving away from the crowds until an unexpected quiet filled them, so much more noticeable compared to the far-off thump of music and cheers from the beach.
Julia stopped swimming and stood up to her hips in the water. Blake grabbed her around the waist and softly bit the side of her neck as he pressed his warm, wet body against hers. Her hair was everywhere and she tried to knot it back but it was too wet to obey, so she let it go. She knew her white clothes were practically see-through now that they were soaked, but it was hard to care when she was in Blake’s arms.
A roar went up from the crowd as the first bursts of color exploded over the ocean. Neither of them had a watch, and Julia had lost all sense of time on the beach, but it must have been midnight because the cheering intensified along with the crackle and boom of the fireworks exploding overhead.
It seemed like the colors were raining down directly over them, spirals of orange and red and green and silver spreading wide, willowy arms across the sky. They burst and fizzled into darkness as the next round shot up. Julia dunked her head under the water and heard the boom reverberate in her ears. When she lay floating on her back in the waves, it felt like the colors were raining right on top of her.
There was so much cheering going on but in their own tiny bubble of the world they were quiet and awed. “Happy New Year,” Blake whispered, his wet lips against her ear, his breath making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“Happy New Year.” She kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips and the champagne on his tongue, and that indescribable Blakeness that only ever seemed to make her want more.
And then his arms were around her, crushing her, holding her tighter, and they were kissing and kissing as the fireworks exploded and the ocean heaved and sighed. Somewhere there were other people on the beach, there was an enormous party going on, but all of that was distant when she closed her eyes and slid into his kiss. Then it was only the darkness of the night and the dark behind her eyes and his body strong and alive against hers.
They sank lower in the water, unable to stop kissing, legs intertwined, Blake’s knee pushing apart her thighs where the tight fabric of her skirt wouldn’t budge. His body responded instantly to her touch. She bit his lip harder than she meant to and opened her eyes to apologize, but the look in his eyes was so insistent that the words died in her mouth. There was no way she could speak, no way she could do anything except move with him in the water away from the crowds, until they were somewhere farther up the beach where rocks jutted into the water and they were alone.
They weren’t out too deep and it must have been low tide because the waves were round and calm. Julia leaned back against one of the rocks, trying to get a handhold as Blake held her face in his palms and continued to kiss her furiously with his tongue. She was dimly aware that they were still in public, but the lights were concentrated farther down the beach and there were
no major hotels or landmarks behind them, which meant this wasn’t where people were spilling out on the beach.
A stronger voice in her head told her that she didn’t even care. Her nipples pressed through the thin fabric, scratching against the lace so that every movement sent a shot of pleasure coursing down between her legs. Blake’s hand on the curve of her breast made her arch her back to him, begging for his touch. His thumb pressed against her nipple through that tiny white shirt, so thin and wet as to be meaningless now. She reached for his pants, his hips in the water so that his cock bobbed above the waves. She was already so turned on she didn’t think she could take much more of his fingers pulling on her nipples without taking him inside her. Right here, right now, on the beach in Rio as the fireworks exploded overhead.
They shifted together as she slid down, and he pulled the bottom of her skirt up. She spread her legs, her knees bent up, knowing that she didn’t even have to tell Blake to fuck her because everything about her body position and her eyes and the quickness of her breath told him what she needed right now.
He held his cock in his fist and she wanted to take him in her mouth but she knew this would have to be a quick one, hard and fast with all their need, and so she pulled him closer, bracing herself against the rocks. He didn’t bother pulling off her panties, just pushed the cloth aside, slid on a condom, and plunged his cock in. She was slick with wanting and he slid in easily up to the hilt, pausing for both of them to savor the feeling of him filling her before he started to move.
He fucked her how she wanted it, how she begged him for it, the words no longer sounding strange and wrong in her mouth. “Harder,” she urged him breathlessly, her breasts bouncing in the lacy bra and the flimsy white shirt as he grabbed her thighs and plowed into her.
“That’s it,” he gasped, burying himself in and then drawing back to nail her again as she pressed her hips forward, taking him as deep as he’d go.
It was fast and rough and there was nothing held back, just the slap of skin against skin and her ass on the water as he worked her hips up and down. The fireworks boomed and the sea hissed and the distant crowd cheered as they danced the new year in, and Julia and Blake kept on fucking as the night unfolded around them.
Julia was feeling the low prickle of an orgasm building deep within when headlights flashed from the road. Immediately she and Blake dipped down into the water, just two people swimming exceptionally close… But the car didn’t stop and the headlights carried on. They heard the sound of car doors slamming as some group was dropped off, probably from a cab, and headed down to the main party on the beach while the car turned around and drove away.
Blake was still hard inside her as the waves splashed gently against them and he picked up their momentum as the darkness fell on them once again. The side of her panties chafed where he’d pushed them over but the rubbing added to her excitement and the illicitness of their whole affair. Her skirt pushed up over her hips, reminiscent of how he had taken her in her sundress under the waterfall. It was thrilling and filthy and wonderful, and she felt like she could hardly breathe.
“I’m going to come inside you,” he whispered in her ear as he wrapped her wet hair around one hand. It wasn’t a question; it wasn’t even a demand. He was just telling her, knowing that the words and the way he claimed her body would send a shudder through her thighs and bring her that much closer to coming with him.
Blake turned her around so he was entering her from behind and then found her clit with his fingers. “Come with me,” he whispered as his cock continued to press inside her, and then again: “Come when I come.”
His steady breathing, his insistence, the way he ground his hands and his hips into her, the splash of the water on her nipples, the feel of her feet trying to hold steady in the sand as he took her and took her and took her. The final, breathless finale of the fireworks overhead turning the sky into an explosion of color and light, and the cries from everyone who had gathered on the beach and in the water and lined the streets and the hotel balconies to see. Everything seemed to bombard her so that when he said “Now,” she couldn’t help it. She shattered.
The orgasm racked through her as she felt him release, and in the noise of the fireworks and the crowds and the sea she cried out while his hot, gasping breath filled her ears. She cried out for her orgasm and his, for the night and the new year, for her thirties and what had turned into an unimaginable gift: the chance to remember herself.
“Yes,” she cried out as he thrust one more time inside her, drawing out each wave of their pleasure together. “Yes,” she sighed as he rested his cheek against her back and buried his face in her salt-water hair.
“Yes,” he groaned back as he slowly withdrew and guided her panties back where they belonged, her skirt around her hips, her breasts tucked in her bra and her small white shirt covering everything just enough that nothing looked covered at all.
She turned in his arms so she could face him again and kissed him. “Happy New Year,” she whispered, pushing back his wet hair from his forehead.
“Somehow I have a good feeling about this year,” he said back, and together they swam slowly back to shore to rejoin the rest of the party, soaking wet and thoroughly sated and ready to dance the rest of the night away.
Blake was right. It turned out to be the first time she stayed up all night except for that one awful time with Danny. That had been a gray dawn, cooler than June should have been, everything misty and sharp. This was the first time she had seen the sunrise without having fallen asleep first, a lightening so subtle she didn’t even realize it was happening until somehow the sky had gone pink.
Brilliant streaks of orange seemed to rise straight out of the ocean, slowly and then more insistent, demanding that the revelers notice that the night was over and the new day ready to begin. The beach had thinned but it was a long time before the music stopped thumping. Julia and Blake made their way back along the sand littered with cups and bottles and flowers and discarded clothes, broken flip flops and sequined boas and all the detritus of the night that would soon be picked up by crews before it could be swept out to sea.
They walked back to the hotel room, ran a quick hot shower, and practically fell asleep in the steam. Julia collapsed on the bed, her wet clothes stripped off and discarded in a pile on the bathroom floor, too exhausted to toss and turn as Blake’s arm draped over her, holding her close as his steady breathing told the sunlight through the curtains to hold off until they were ready for the day to begin.
If she’d ever be ready.
The last thing Julia thought about as she fell asleep was that there was no more pushing this day from her mind. She snuggled closer to Blake and fell asleep wishing the sun would stop rising and the afternoon never come, so her plane never had to take off.
Chapter Nineteen
Saturday
Blake was surprised at how early he rose, considering they’d stayed up until late became early and the morning sun burned from bright orange to white. But his mind was too busy to sleep.
This was it. Today was the day.
Quietly he slipped on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt while Julia slept. On his way out, he stopped at the front desk to get them a later checkout time so they could stay as long as they wanted until the bus.
Then he went to procure them some breakfast. Who wouldn’t like waking up naked in bed, wrapped in soft sheets, to a delivery of hot coffee, fresh tropical fruit juice, and pastries? He lingered for too long over the counter, picking the ones he thought she’d like best. An apricot puff with vanilla pastry cream. A chocolate croissant marbled with cherries inside. He could practically taste the sugar on her lips.
It was still early, though, so on his jaunt back he stopped at the computers in the hotel business room for a quick check. He figured he should pop in and wish everyone a happy new year, see how his mom was, and find out whether Anderson had responded to his previous emails—even though Blake wasn’t expecting much to be happening o
ver the holidays. Really he wanted to give Julia a little more time to sleep, knowing that if he hung around the hotel room, he’d be too impatient about spending his last hours with her to let her rest.
If he was honest with himself, he needed the time, too. He hadn’t given any thought to what he was going to do next. He could barely wrap his head around the bus ride to São Paulo. And after she got on that plane?
He logged into his email. After was after. He’d deal with it then.
He had a few general happy new year emails from friends, a quick note from his mom saying everything was fine, no reply from Anderson, an update from the assistant director he set aside to read more carefully later, and an email from Jamie with the subject line, Ahoy there, mate. Blake clicked it open, hoping to hear that his friends were doing well in Chile and getting ready for their final flight home.
What he saw made his chest squeeze and his heart thud. Something thick and sour rose in the back of his throat and he wanted to log out, shut down the computer, get up and keep walking like he’d never stopped. If only he could pretend that he hadn’t seen what was on the screen, everything would be fine.
But instead he sat there, frozen, rereading the email as though he didn’t trust the words. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he ended the session and sat there until a German man in a loud floral shirt asked if he was done. Blake apologized quickly and left.
All the way back up to the hotel room, something hammered away in the pit of his stomach. He opened the hotel room door and got straight to work. He had to pack. He had to get his stuff together.
And then he had to leave.
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