Pablo spent the morning bringing me cocktails to drink by the pool, but there wasn’t an amount of spicy mango gins that could wash away the awful aftertaste of what had happened the day before.

Things only got worse once people started to arrive. Andrea squeezed me even harder than she ever had before, Oscar asked how I was at least five times in the span of fifteen minutes. Unfortunately for them, there wasn’t a feeling in the world that I hated more than pity, and my frown grew bigger every time someone tried to make me happy.

Then, the Sandovals arrived, in an ominous and ridiculous parade of five armored pick-up trucks. Half a dozen bodyguards spilled out of the cars, shook hands with Oso, and spread across the premises. I ran away before I could see the Sandovals’ ugly faces, pretending that I needed to change clothes.

I looked for a comfy place to isolate myself – a hammock with an ocean view, a rattan armchair shaped like a cocoon, or even a broom closet. I started to understand the need for so many sitting areas, if you were going to fill up most of them with unpleasant people.

I crept down the smallest alleys, and lurked in the darkest corners, but there wasn’t a place in the house that was far enough from everyone, nowhere I could feel like I was truly alone. I felt like someone was always watching, listening, inching towards me.

My search for peace ended with a crushing defeat when Juan pushed me up against a wall, spilling my drink down the front of my dress and slamming my skull against the cold, hard stone.

“I know what you did,” he snarled.

“What–” I started, but my words were cut off by Juan’s hand wrapping around my throat.

“You got rid of Gustavo,” he spat. “You got Pablo to kill him because he knew the truth about you.”

I tried to stand on the tip of my toes and push down on Juan’s arm to relieve the pressure on my neck, but he only choked me harder.

“Yeah right,” I croaked. “And you’ll be next if you don’t let go of me.”

“Tell me,” he seethed.

“Tell you what?” My voice was a pitiful squeak, and I was losing my grip on his wrist.

“Who do you work for?” he barked.

Juan looked over his shoulder to check if anyone had heard him, while I was at a loss for words, both lacking an answer and the oxygen to say anything.

I knew I should have planned for this moment, when Juan grew tired of guessing and decided to confront me about the big spy lie. I would have come up with something a while ago, had I not been so distracted, locked up and abused by a whole other lot of awful men.

“What are you, CIA? DEA? SEIDO?” he hissed, and with every word he uttered, he squeezed my neck a little more. “Or are you another one of those Zeta whores?”

Tears were streaming down my face now, but I didn’t know whether I was crying in fear or laughing hysterically. Juan, who was as confused as I was, finally let go of my throat.

“God, Juan, you’re so fucking stupid,” I cried out.

I buried my face in my hands to try and hide my reaction, but my shoulders kept on shaking with hiccuped breaths, either sobs or cackles, perhaps a bit of both.

“What?” scowled Juan, as he took a worried step back.

Inhale. Count to four. Exhale.

I rubbed my eyes to wipe off the tears, and looked up at him.

“It was a fucking joke, man,” I muttered.

“What do you mean?” he asked sluggishly.

“We made up an entire story, with Pablo,” I told him, and it wasn’t even exactly a lie. “I was annoyed because you didn’t believe I was from Hungary, so we invented a fake identity to prank you. The whole idea was to come up with something so dumb that only you would believe it.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” he frowned.

“Yeah, that’s the whole point, Juan,” I groaned. “Although I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you were such a fucking psycho.”

He looked down at the hands he had just strangled me with, and then back at me.

“Wait, so you’re actually Hungarian?” he murmured. “But– you can’t even pronounce your name right. Or even your birthplace. It’s boo-duh-pesht, not boo-dah-pest. Did you even know that?”

“I pronounce it the English way, because I grew up speaking English,” I replied, rolling my eyes at him. “My dad’s a diplomat, remember? I’ve spent most of my life in the US.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” he whispered.

“What happened to not showing your cards until you’re certain you’ve won?” I snickered as I rubbed my sore throat.

“No, you’re actually fucking with me, because that’s the thing,” he frowned. “We had proof, Emilia. Gustavo said he’d found tons of dirt on you. Fake passports, pictures, federal badges, even a bunch of communications he’d intercepted. He was going to show my Dad everything.”

The look of horror on my face was genuine. Had Gustavo not been killed, it would have been me dying a traitor’s slow and painful death. He’d forged a bunch of things to get the Sandoval’s to kill me, and blame it on my own plan’s recklessness.

“Juan, he made that up,” I whispered. “Just think for a second. If he had evidence, why wouldn’t he show Pablo?”

His nose scrunched up in disbelief and his mouth hung agape.

“Why would he do that, if it was just a joke?” he breathed.

“Well, we weren’t on great terms. I guess he– he wanted me out of the way,” I stammered, taking a breath between every other word. “He did some things to me, things that he didn’t want Pablo to hear about.”

“So it’s true then,” Juan mumbled. “He did–”

It was a hard word to say out loud, for me as well as for Juan. As he pieced together what had happened, and what role he had played in Gustavo’s cruel scheme, his eyes slowly widened, and his mouth progressively dropped.

“Are you fucking sorry?” he blurted out.

I tried to jump away from him, but the back of my head banged against the wall. As Juan grabbed my shoulder, I let out a frightened whimper.

“Holy shit, no, fuck– wait,” he panicked. “Em, no, fuck, that’s not what I meant. I wanted to ask if you were okay and tell you ‘I’m so fucking sorry’ but it came out wrong. So fucking wrong. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I breathed, still stunned by his outburst.

“No it’s not, it’s fucking awful,” he cried, whipping his head around like a maniac. “God I’m such an asshole. I’m sorry for not–”

“It’s fine, Juan, you don’t need to apologize,” I murmured, as I awkwardly patted him on the upper arm. “It’s not your fault.”

I don’t know if Juan noticed how hard he was grabbing at my clothes to stop his hands from shaking, or how close he was to my face that I could feel his rapid breaths on my skin.

“How are you though?” he panted. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“Physically, I’m good,” I muttered, as I tried to pry his fingers off of my shoulders as gently as possible. “Can we– can we just let this go?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled nervously, as he pushed his hair out of his face and wiped the sweat off of his brow. “I’m just going to dig a hole in the garden and die of embarrassment. If there’s anything I can do for you–”

“Find me a shovel and I’ll help you,” I smirked.

“Sure,” he chortled, as he took one last deep breath to calm himself down. “Again, Emilia, I’m so sorry.”

He leaned in for a hug, and I instinctively took a single step back.

“Right, maybe– maybe no physical touch. Totally understandable. Sorry. Sorry about that,” he stammered, before pointing at my empty glass. “Let me go grab you another drink, okay?”

He ran off before I could even say a word, and I looked over my shoulder to watch him stumble away, tripping over his own feet. I blinked a few times, pinched the skin on my arm to check if it was all real. Juan, the dorky, dark-eyed demon who had been haunting my nightmares and dreams for days on end, had apologized. And then, he had hugged me.

•••

I arrived late at lunch, since I’d had one too many cocktails to get over my interaction with Juan, and thus forgotten what it felt like to feel hungry.

“Sit down and eat,” Pablo mumbled in my ear. “You’ve skipped more meals than you’ve eaten, this week.”

The awkward atmosphere did nothing to help my appetite. Everyone was staring at me, their eyes as dead and still as the grilled fish on our plates. Juan was the worst. He wore the weirdest smile on his face. I answered with a toothy grimace.

“So, when are we going to the beach?” I asked, hoping to fill up the deadly silence.

“We are at the beach,” answered Pablo.

“No, I mean, the actual beach. Like, where the ocean is.”

“What for?” Pablo scoffed.

“To swim,” I muttered.

“We have a pool right here, Gordita,” he sighed.

“And if you want to make little castles, we can buy you a sandbox,” snickered Hernan.

“Or we could just go to the beach,” I huffed. “It’s just down the street.”

“Why do you want to go to the beach?” Manée sneered. “It sucks.”

“Alright, well– sorry for suggesting,” I muttered, raising my hands in defeat.

“It’s just kind of ugly,” Andrea added, a little more softly. “You can’t take nice pictures there or anything.”

I would have argued more about how I wasn’t planning on taking pictures anyway, but it just wasn’t worth it. I quietly finished my plate and refrained from talking until the meal had ended.

I spent most of my afternoon like I spent every other day, unenthusiastically drinking cocktails on a sunbed. The others had all jumped in the pool to escape from the sweltering heat. Manée and Hernan were smoking cigarettes in the shallow part of the water, while Juan had climbed on Pablo’s shoulders and was trying to push Andrea off of Oscar’s.

After his third defeat in a row, Juan called it quits, and hoisted himself out of the pool.

“Wanna play?” he said to me as he grabbed a towel off of the back of my sunbed. “You can have your boyfriend back.”

“I’m good,” I muttered.

Juan smiled, nodded, and walked into the kitchen. He showed up again less than a minute later, holding a chilled bottle of beer in each hand.

“Want one?” he asked.

“No thanks.”

“Alright,” he said, and put one of the bottles down on a small table. “I’ll just leave it there in case you change your mind.”

“Why are you being nice?” I scoffed, staring him down from above the frame of my sunglasses.

“I guess because I’m a nice person,” he shrugged.

“No you’re not,” I snorted.

“Who says?”

“Every single conversation I’ve had with you since I have met you, says you’re not,” I said.

“Well it’s different now that I know you’re not here to ruin my life and sabotage my future,” he chuckled.

I smiled, and laid back down on the sunbed.

“I can’t believe you believed that,” I snickered.

“Oh I knew it was a joke, I just played along,” he chirped.

“Yeah, I’m not falling for that,” I chortled. “You tried to harm me several times. Like, actual harm. You were strangling me just a few hours ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier that it was a joke?” he groaned.

“If I told you straight away, it wouldn’t have been a good joke,” I answered, stretching my arm out to grab the beer bottle. “And I had so many more tricks I wanted to pull. I didn’t even get to show you my shoe phone.”

“Nah, the shoe phone wouldn’t have fooled me,” Juan frowned as he opened the bottle for me and handed it back. “Shit’s straight out of an old James Bond movie. I’m not that dumb.”

I smirked, and Juan squinted defiantly in my direction.

“Hey, if you want to go to the beach, I’ll go with you,” he said after a brief moment of silence. “We can grab some beers and go there. It’s only a five minute walk away.”

I stayed quiet for a while, as I tried to figure out if spending time with my arch-nemesis was a fair price to pay just to see the ocean.

“It’s not as bad as they say it is,” Juan added.

I was still hesitating when I noticed Pablo sitting on the edge of the pool, and throwing me a deadly glare. He, the man who said he loved me, the one I was supposed to trust and relied on to protect me, had done less for me than my worst enemy.

“Sure,” I told Juan. If I wasn’t doing it for pleasure, then I’d do it out of spite. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go in an hour or so,” he replied. “When it’s closer to sunset and the sun isn’t as hot.”

“I’ll go find my bodyguard,” I murmured.

“You don’t have to bother him,” Juan frowned. “It’s a pretty safe area. Mostly just tourists.”

“Pablo won’t let me out without him,” I said, and bit my lip. “He thinks it’s too dangerous.”

“Ugh, my Dad used to be the same,” Juan winced. “It’s fine then, we can get Oso to carry the beers.”

An hour later, we were standing by the open gates of the estate. Oso asked us to sit still while he discussed something with the guards, and I waited patiently, downing half a gallon of water to wash down the boozy taste of a dozen cocktails and a mouthful of apprehension.

“Jesus, why are they taking so long?” Juan muttered in my ear. “The security protocols aren’t that complicated.”

“Maybe because of what happened with Gustavo,” I lied.

Juan shrugged, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. Juan may have known that I wasn’t a spy, but I couldn’t let him in on the other half of the truth. I was a hostage under close scrutiny, and the only reason why I was allowed to go for a walk outside the walls was because everyone, including my captor, pitied me.

“We’re going to miss the sunset,” he mumbled. “Let’s just grab that bicycle over there. I’ll pedal, you can sit on the rack, and then Oso can catch up with us when he’s done.”

“Are you sure–”

“Come on, they’re not watching,” he whispered, and grabbed me by the hand. “Go, go, go.”

Oh shit, I thought, but I had no time to question it. Juan pulled me one way, and the adrenaline rushing through my veins pushed me in his direction. I wondered if I’d get in trouble for this, and how I could pin the blame on Juan.

As soon as I had swung my leg over the bicycle, even before I could hold on tight enough, we wooshed past the gate and a thick wall of hollering guards.

I clenched my teeth to stop myself from giggling like an idiot, or yelping in pain everytime we hit a pothole. The wind in my hair was refreshing, and so was the sight of normal people, locals and tourists, enjoying their lives free from the influence and control of criminals.

Flying gravel prickled my legs, water splashed the soles of my bare feet everytime we drove through a puddle. All around us, stood the walls of half-built hotels, and barren fields filled with exhilarated children playing with firecrackers. Thick, yellow smoke blew onto the road, hiding us from Pablo’s guards, tickling my nostrils and awaking all my senses.

We swerved down the road, avoiding all the chicken, children, iguanas, and sunburnt surfers that got in our way. But as we got to the end and hit the beach, the front wheel got stuck in the sand and the whole bicycle flipped over, sending us both flying face first to the ground.

I coughed up big mouthfuls of sand between two uncontrollable bouts of laughter, cackling like a maniac as I scraped it off my tongue. Once I sat up and caught a breath, I caught a glimpse of the little tropical heaven around us.

Perhaps the beach wasn’t the prettiest one in the world, but it was the most unique one I’d ever seen. The sand was jet black, and glittered in the sunlight. Past the lush coconut groves that stretched along its edge, the beach was barren, and almost deserted, aside from a couple side-eyeing us from where they sat, about a hundred feet away, and a lone surfer by the shore.

Despite how dark the sand was, the ocean was a beautiful shade of blue. Swarms of pelicans danced in the sky, before diving down to graze the crests of perfect waves. There was a tiny line of plastic trash in the sand, right where the high tide would have reached up on the beach, but it was hardly enough to tarnish the beautiful landscape.

Behind us, Oso was running full speed through the cloud of firecracker smoke, struggling to keep up his rhythm since he had to carry a heavy icebox. Juan was still laying on the ground, squirming in pain, with his legs tangled in the bike’s frame.

“Oh fuck, that was tho painful,” he lisped.

“Oh no,” I said, biting my tongue to stop myself from laughing. “Are you okay?”

“Holy thit,” he gasped as he clasped his hand on his mouth. “I think I broke my tooth.”

My jaw dropped and I started to wheeze, but when I reached out to move away his hand and check his injury, he swatted at my arm.

"Thtop laughing, Emily Thmith, it’th not funny,” he scowled. “My thexy thmile ith a therious thubject.”

“Oh my God,” I groaned, as a sly grin grew on his face and peaked past his fingers. “You are so lame.”

“I’m just joking, I’m fine,” he gloated, proudly revealing his perfectly intact smile. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, and by the time Juan managed to help me back up on my feet, Oso had caught up with us, and greeted us by smacking Juan on the back of the head.

“No, Juan, very bad,” shouted a red-faced Oso as he wagged his finger in the boy’s direction as if he was talking to a dog. “You don’t break security, and you don’t break Emilia.”

“Got it. My deepest apologies,” murmured Juan as he bowed his head down sarcastically low. “Emilia, please tell him you’re okay before he blows a fuse.”

“I’m okay, Oso,” I chortled. “Are you going in for a swim with us?”

“Maybe later,” he groaned as he sat down on the trunk of a fallen palm tree and grabbed a beer from the icebox to cool himself down.

As soon as I stepped out of the shade of the palm trees, I felt a burning pain under the soles of my feet.

“Holy shit,” I hissed. “The sand is really hot.”

“Yeah, so is the sand oval,” Juan grinned.

“What’s a sand oval?”

“Sandoval,” he rolled his eyes. “Pinche tonta.”

Stupid idiot.

I blew a raspberry, unimpressed by his dumb joke, and he smiled.

“It’s because the sand’s black, it absorbs the heat from the sun,” he explained. “I can carry you, if you want.”

“No,” I answered. “I don’t trust you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first of all your arms are like half the size of mine,” I snickered. “Second of all, since I’ve met you, you tried to drown me twice.”

“Don’t be silly, Miss Emily Smith,” he scoffed. “I never tried to drown you. The first time, I just playfully threw you in the pool, and the second time–”

“–you just playfully tried to murder me,” I muttered, trying to skip my way to the ocean as fast as I could before I had no skin left under my feet.

“If I ever wanted to murder you, trust me, you’d already be dead,” said Juan.

“Ugh,” I spat, “You sound like Pablo when you say that.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” he chortled.

I stopped in my tracks, and gave him a stern look.

“Hell no.”

Juan let out an awkward chuckle, and our conversation ended there.

Swimming in the ocean was by far the best feeling I had felt in a while, although the bar for that was pretty low. The water was as warm as a bathtub, yet the waves were so powerful it felt like we were diving straight into the open sea.

Juan attempted to do backflips over the smaller waves, while I only managed a few disgraceful belly flops. He taught me I had to dive under the bigger waves so that I wouldn’t be dragged across the seabed, and how to put my head underwater without pinching my nose.

We played in the ocean for a while, letting the swells carry us back and forth, tumbling around in crashing surf and laughing until we almost drowned, choking on mouthfuls of salt water.

Once we were tired enough to drag ourselves out of the water, Juan ran back to get our drinks from the icebox, while I sat on the shore. The sun was already halfway beneath the horizon

Watching the sunset was the highlight of the show. A warm breeze blew in the air, our beers were nice and cold. The silhouettes of the clouds above our heads were a surreal shade of red. The seafoam was blush like blooming cherry trees, and each wave stained the shore with the bright pink reflection of the evening sky.

“Why does everyone say it’s an ugly place?” I asked. “This is beautiful.”

“They’re sand racists. They only like white beaches, like in the Caribbean,” answered Juan. “They don’t like this sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”

“Yeah I have sand all the way up my buttcrack, it’s awful,” I muttered.

“TMI, Emily Smith,” chuckled Juan. “It’s a movie reference. Get it? From Star Wars? Episode 2, Attack of the clones?”

“I’ve never seen the Star Wars movies,” I mumbled, turning my head away so that he wouldn’t see me blushing. “Well, I watched one with my dad when I was a kid, but I don’t know which one. I just remember it had a lot of spaceships.”

“Well that narrows it down a lot,” he snickered.

I rolled my eyes and took a long sip out of my beer, while Juan laid back and stared at the sky.

“I’ve only seen them about three times each but I would love to watch them again,” he said. “You always notice small details you hadn’t noticed before when you rewatch a movie several times in a row. You understand all the foreshadowing and the easter eggs that the creators hid inside of it. It’s super interesting. Sorry if I’m rambling, I’m probably boring you out.”

“No, it’s interesting,” I answered with a tight-lipped smile.

“Honestly, Em, stop me if I talk too much,” he added as he turned to me. “I’m a huge movie nerd, so if you don’t tell me to shut up I’m going to go on for hours about 1920′s soviet cinematography and its use in propaganda.”

“I get you, trust me,” I sighed. “I get obsessed about really weird things too. Not– Not like sovietomography and tropaganda or whatever, but other things. Like butterflies.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, with a boyish grin and one raised eyebrow. “You know I’m now obligated to give you a trivia quiz on lepidoptera, right?”

“Try me, bitch,” I dared him.

“Alright. What’s a black witch moth?” he asked.

“The largest noctuid moth in the Americas,” I answered smugly. “Bat-shaped, dark brown wings with little eye-like dots at the bottom. They’re very badass.”

“They’re a bad omen, too.” Juan nodded. “It’s bad luck if you see them, and here we say that if it flies to the four corners of your house, someone will die.”

“Is that why Pablo’s houses are so big?” I cackled. “To protect himself from the killer moths?”

“Yeah, perhaps,” Juan chortled. “Anyways, that was an easy one. Now describe a dryas iulia."

“Bright orange, triangular wings, looks like a flying Dorito,” I answered, as I stuck out the tip of my tongue from between my teeth.

“That’s cheating,” he frowned. “You heard me call them that, right?.”

“Nope,” I said proudly. “Well, yeah, but I called them flying Doritos even before I met you.”

He smirked, and I turned my head to watch as the red lights of the sun dived beneath the ocean, and to stop myself from smiling back at Juan. Even though I looked away, I could still feel his dark eyes burning holes into the side of my face.

“Damn, Emily Smith,” he murmured. “Perhaps we’re not that different, after all.”

Kerning

Double Bluff

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