I made myself step away before I fell into pieces at his feet. I peeled his hands off my h*ps and said, “Later.”
Later, when I could get a grip. I just needed to shove all these emotions and memories into a box and pack them away into the back of my mind. Then things could go back to normal.
I saw his eyes drop to my lips, and I knew what he was considering, so I moved toward the door, putting several feet between us.
I said, “Absence makes the hard grow fonder.”
I turned the doorknob, and he embraced me from behind.
“I don’t think I could be any more fond of you.”
We followed the lover’s path once more toward Manarola. When we passed our lock at the mouth of the tunnel, he pulled me tight against his side and kissed my temple.
The easy path led us into the village within ten to fifteen minutes. Manarola sat perched on a rocky outcrop of land right on the coastline. It was even more colorful than Riomaggiore, and seemed to be more reliant on the sea than the first village. There were boats everywhere we turned, even if we weren’t down by the water.
We had some of the best gelato of our trip so far at 5 Terre Gelateria e Creperia. Another couple there directed us toward a swimming hole down by the rocks. The village streets declined steeply as we approached the harbor, and the swimming hole that the couple had mentioned was a natural pool encircled by rocks. Judging by the dark blue color in the center, I’d say it went fairly deep, too. We could climb down onto the rocks ourselves or there were some ladders that led down to the ocean. But it was a warm summer day and the water was already crowded with tourists. I saw a pasty, middle-aged, white man in his forties strip down right there on the rocks to change from his clothes into his swimsuit.
Hunt pressed his face into my hair, laughing.
We knew there were more places to swim in the other villages, so we decided to pass on that particular swimming hole and keep exploring.
The path that led from Manarola to Corniglia, the third village, couldn’t have been more different from the lover’s path. It was more of a true hike, winding upward away from the coast to the rocky hills. Eventually, the rocks gave way to green fields of lemon and olive trees, and grape vines and wildflowers. The smell of sea salt combined with the perfume of the flowers, and when Hunt caught me sniffing repeatedly at the air, he laughed.
I laughed too and shoved him. “What? It smells good.”
He dropped a kiss on my shoulder and said, “You smell good.”
Each time he said something like that, an ache formed in my chest. Not in my heart. Or my lungs. But in hollow places, in the gaps. Like a phantom limb, it ached in the places where I had lost a piece of myself along the way.
As we neared the village, we could see it set up above the rocks. As it turned out, there was a long flight of stairs at the end of the path that led up to the village. And based on our recent experience with the epic stairs in Heidelberg, I knew enough to know that getting up to the village was going to be a bitch.
I looked at Hunt.
“Don’t even think about pretending to sprain your ankle again. I’m on to you.”
I smiled. “I would never use the same con twice, sweetheart.”
Desperate to avoid the stairs, I started looking for another option to get up to the village. Maybe a train or a funicular. Instead, I stumbled upon some hand-drawn signs on a rock that said, “Guvano Beach” with an arrow. The word secret was scrawled above Guvano, and I was sold.
“Jackson!” I yelled. He followed, and together we took off in the direction of the arrow.
But it quickly became clear that an arrow was not going to suffice, and we had no clue where to head next. We walked down to a nearby house and an old woman stood hunched and sweeping on the porch.
Hunt tried to talk to her, but she didn’t speak English. I said, “Guvano.”
Her expression changed, her mouth making a small “o” and she nodded. She gestured for us to go around behind the houses and then mimed pushing a button.
We stood there unsure, and she gestured us away with her broom.
“Um . . . okay.”
Hunt took hold of my hand and together we walked behind a few houses down an ever-steepening slope until we found an old abandoned train tunnel. Another scrawled note said Guvano with an arrow through the tunnel. We found the button that the woman must have been referencing, and it said lights in both Italian and English above the button. Hunt pressed it, but nothing happened. He pressed again, still nothing.
“Let me try.”
Pitch-black.
We found a breaker box, and flipped every switch. Nothing.
“Are we doing this?” I asked, eyeing the dark path of doom ahead of us.
I mean, I wanted a beach, the more private the better. And since it seemed we had to travel to hell and back to get to this one, I was willing to bet it was pretty private.
Hunt shrugged his backpack off one shoulder, and pulled it around in front of him. “Hold on.” He rifled through his bag and came back with a cell phone.
“You have a cell phone with you? How did I not know you have a cell phone?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t really use it. For emergencies only, you know.”
I pulled mine out of my backpack and followed his lead. “Mine too.”
We passed through the entryway. The cell phone lights were feeble in the vast darkness of the tunnel, and it did little more than light up our arms and give us a vague, shadowy view of our feet.
I grasped Jackson’s elbow, and we shuffled slowly through the tunnel as it sloped downward. It was dank, and I could feel the grime settling on my feet as we walked, but I kept telling myself it would be worth it once we got to the beach.
We walked for a few minutes, and I kept expecting to see a light at the end, but there was nothing. The darkness stretched on forever and ever as we walked down and down, our footsteps echoing through the empty chamber around us.
When we were about ten minutes into the tunnel, a low rumbling began below my feet and then migrated to the walls. I heard the whisper of tiny pebbles falling and scattering to the ground. I looked at Hunt in horror, but it was too dark for me to see his face.
I clutched his waist and said, “Jackson. Train!”
The second word was drowned out by the roar of a train passing by. Not through. By. Still squeezing Hunt with all my might, I realized it was in the tunnel next to us. I breathed a sigh of relief that was swallowed by the noise of the train, and Jackson brushed a kiss across my forehead. I was too numb to react.
After that, we walked a little faster and within minutes we saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
We jogged the last one hundred yards or so, just ready to be back in the daylight. Here in this decrepit tunnel, I desperately missed the sweet air that I’d been enjoying earlier on our hike.
I tried not to think about how closely this resembled my earlier thoughts in the room. Thoughts about light and darkness. I was doing everything I could to not think about this morning and that stupid dream.
We emerged out into the sunlight, and it pierced our eyes at first. I squeezed my lids shut, and waited to adjust to the light. When I looked again, I saw a man waiting at the end of the tunnel, and we had to pay him five euro for the use of the passage.
Hunt was skeptical, but I rolled my eyes and pulled the money from my pack. I was reaching to hand him a few coins when a man about Jackson’s age walked past completely nude, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.
My jaw went slack, and I dropped a euro. It went skipping down the rocks in the direction the nak*d man had gone.
I laughed hesitantly, and fished out another coin for the tunnel troll.
Hunt said, “Are you sure you want—”
“We’re already here, aren’t we?”
I gripped his hand and pulled him away from the tunnel down toward Guvano Beach. It wasn’t a sand beach like I had pictured; instead, it was rocky like the rest of the villages, a small pebble slope that reclined into the water. There were less than ten other people on the beach, half of them completely nak*d.
We walked past a nude man and woman sun-bathing on a nearby rock and Jackson said, “Before you ask, no.”
I pouted. “Aw . . . come on. Don’t tell me you’re self-conscious. Believe me, you have nothing to worry about.” “I was talking about you, actually. But no, I’m not doing it either.”
“Me? Are you telling me what to do?”
I stepped away from him and pulled my sundress over my head. His eyes raked across my swimsuit-clad body. And he reached a hand out to the small of my waist. His thumb grazed the underside of my breast and he said, “I’m not sharing you with complete strangers.”
I slipped off my sandals too and said, “Look around, Jackson. They could care less. Besides . . . this is an adventure.”
My argument fell flat because he never took his narrowed eyes off of me.
I stepped out of his reach, and my hands went to the tie at my waist that kept the straps wrapping around my body in place.
His eyebrows pulled down into a warning glare. “Kelsey.”
“Jackson.” I smiled back.
This was good. This was what I needed, to live in the now and let go of the past. If I could cement myself in the present, all the craziness that had been drudged up could be washed away.
Slowly, I untied the knot at my hip. When I finished, the strap unfolded, uncovering more of my stomach. I let it hang down behind me while I reached for the knot on my other hip. When this one was untied, I would be able to unwind the suit completely, baring much more than my stomach to the air and sunlight.
“Kelsey, you’re not funny.”
I pressed a hand to my heart, pretending to be wounded. Then I smiled, and pulled down the fabric over my chest just a little, just enough to tease him.
He gave me a heat-filled look. Whether that heat came from anger or something else, I wasn’t sure. Nor did I care.
“What?” I shrugged. “Nobody likes tan lines.”
I untied the second knot, and started unwrapping the fabric, but before I could reveal much more than my stomach, Hunt charged.
He threw me over his shoulders, stopping me from unwinding into nudity.
“Jackson Hunt! You can’t just do this every time I do something you don’t like.”
“It’s worked pretty well so far.”
He started wading into the water with me on his shoulder. Two could play at this game.
I reached down for the waistband of his swim trunks, and tried to push them down over his hips. One of us was going to be nak*d one way or another.
I didn’t get his trunks down but an inch before he tugged me over his shoulder and tossed me into the water.
The salty water went up my nose, and I rose out of the water coughing, and Hunt burst out laughing.
“Oh, you’re going to be sorry, Hunt.”
I pushed the soaking mane of hair back from my face and glared at him. I backed away, knowing I’d need space for my next maneuver. When the water was up to my ribs, and I was far enough away from him that I felt sure he couldn’t get to me quickly, I grabbed my bathing suit top and tugged it over my head without unwrapping it the rest of the way.
The cool air hit me first, and I managed a small smile before Hunt reached me, and shoved me under the water, which seemed a little colder on this second dunk.