PSA: Drugs are bad. Don’t do drugs.

This pill was different, and it was frightening, because it felt like the best thing that had ever happened to me.

It was a euphoric feeling, sweeter than a cold glass of white wine on a hot summer evening, a warmth on my skin, like a ray of sunlight in the middle of the night.

It was almost like flying. One minute, I was floating on the silk sheets, soft and warm like pools of milk. The next, I soared into the night sky and levitated in space, surrounded by stars and tiny sparkles of moonlight reflecting off the velvet cushions strewn about the bed.

I sucked in an endless breath, and every drop of oxygen I inhaled brought me a little closer to heaven. I unlatched my bra to let more air into my lungs, slipped its straps off of my shoulders to stop them from itching.

I gained a weird obsession with my own skin. It was the softest thing I’d ever felt, and I couldn’t help but touch every inch of it. I ran my fingers across every curve, every nook, every single hair I’d forgotten to shave. My body was electric, and my skin tingled and shivered under every caress.

It didn’t feel real, and it was as if I was stuck under somebody else’s skin. Under the blue hues of the moon, it looked so flawless, so pure, almost divine, too precious and delicate to be touched by anything other than myself.

I pushed off the blanket that covered me, and took off the few clothes I had left. I laid naked, staring at the ceiling, longing to do anything but fall asleep. I felt warm, calm and happy, as if I was tanning on a sunny beach. I could almost hear the murmurs of the ocean in the rustling of the sheets.

As light as my mind was, my head felt too heavy to lift. The sweet warmth of an imaginary sunlight quickly turned into an overwhelming heat, and pearls of sweat stuck to my skin like fresh drops of honey.

I slipped out of bed, silk sheets zipping against my skin, and went to open a window. I stood still for a minute, bathing in moonlight and a cool breeze.

“What are you doing?” mumbled Pablo behind me.

“Just, uh, opening the window,” I stuttered. “I’m a bit hot.”

He groaned as he pulled himself out of a deep sleep, and cleared his throat.

“And why are you naked?” he asked.

“I just told you,” I answered. “I’m hot.”

“Do you want a fan?” he said.

“Do you have a fan?” I frowned.

“Of course I do,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You told me you didn’t have any fans,” I replied.

“I don’t have any tiny handheld fans with led lights.”

“Well, you need to buy some,” I mumbled. “It’s a basic need, like blackout curtains.”

“I’ll get you one next time there’s a carnival in San José,” he groused, rolling his eyes as he let his head fall down on his pillow.

“They sell curtains at the carnival?”

“Gordita, it’s 3AM,” he sighed. “Just go back to bed.”

I shuffled around in a circle for a while, debating on whether I should close the window or not, finally deciding to leave it open before I crawled back in the bed and settled above the sheets.

I watched Pablo carefully, as I waited for him to fall back asleep. I didn’t feel tired, but I couldn’t do anything while he was awake, lest I acted too weird and made him suspect I’d stolen one of his pills. But his eyes didn’t close, and kept on shining through the obscurity like two dark beads.

“Why are you staring at me?” I whispered.

“Because you’re naked,” he retorted.

I nodded quietly. At least he was honest. He kept on eyeing me, his gaze running up and body. He seemed disturbed, almost angry, but perhaps it was just the shape of his mustache that made his mouth look like it was frowning.

“I’m naked because the bed is too hot,” I murmured. “I’m not doing it on purpose to annoy you or anything.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a fan?” he groaned.

“Oh,” I gasped, “can you fan me with a big leaf like you did the other day?”

“Sure,” he hissed, as he rolled over and turned his back to me. “Wake me up when you’ve found a big leaf.”

“Alright,” I breathed, as I tip-toed out of bed and over to the door.

I pressed down on the handle, and the sheets shuddered behind me.

“Where the fuck are you going?” said Pablo, as he sat up in the middle of the bed.

“To the garden,” I answered. “I’m going to get a leaf.”

“Aren’t you going to put some clothes on?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I cackled.

Pablo glared at me as I walked across the room to go and pick out a dress from the closet.

“Have you been drinking again?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, swallowing my spit as I let out a truth that felt like a lie.

“Let me come with you.”

He let out a long sigh as he pushed the sheets, groaned some more as he stood up and stretched.

“Are you sure?” I squeaked.

“Yes. If you were about to go running around the garden naked, who knows what else you’re capable of,” he muttered. “Bring a sweater, it’s cold outside.”

We both struggled to put on some clothes. We seriously lacked coordination, although it was for two very different reasons; Pablo was still half asleep, and I probably felt this way because I was on drugs.

“I can’t believe I just woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning just to go help you find a leaf,” Pablo complained as we walked down the corridor.

“I didn’t ask you to come with me,” I shrugged.

“I know,” he chortled. “I just can’t believe I did this on my own free will.”

“Then you must really like me,” I suggested.

He smiled softly. His fingers briefly brushed against my wrist before he shoved them in the pocket of his jeans.

A hundred fairy lights, strung up above the garden like dew drops in a spider’s web, flickered on as we walked out of the house. The forest around us was gloomy and eerily quiet. Even the swarms of crickets, that chirped so eagerly every other evening, seemed to have taken a day off.

While Pablo lit up a cigarette, I walked over to a little shrubbery and started shuffling through the ferns and the palm tree fronds. I searched for a while, but quickly started feeling as if I was being watched.

With a quick glance over my shoulder, I noticed the window of my old room, far up on the house’s last floor, by far the smallest window on that wall. I could almost see the long-gone Sarah Kennedy, with her messy blonde hair and her chubby cheeks, staring at me from above.

I remembered how many times I’d longingly stared at the same little grove I was trampling right now, daydreaming like a princess locked away in a tower, wishing I could one day step out of my lavender room and walk around the garden.

It wasn’t a bad feeling, more like a sweet nostalgia. If that old Sarah knew that one day she’d be roaming around here freely in the early morning, looking for a big leaf to be fanned with, she would probably be proud of me.

Although, if she knew that she would be doing that because she was high on drugs and hanging out with the same man that she was deadly afraid of, she’d either be very confused or thoroughly pissed.

“Not over there, Gordita,” Pablo called out from the center of the patio. “Those leaves are too small.”

“They look fine to me,” I mumbled, as I twisted and bent a frond to try and snap it off.

“Help me grab this one,” he said as he waved me over to a taller palm tree.

“It’s too high,” I answered. “Here, let me carry you.”

“Carry me?” he chortled. “You’ll hurt your back.”

“Just get on my shoulders.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “We could just–”

“Come on, Pablo,” I sighed as I knelt down beside him. “I want my leaf.”

He hesitated for a second before he finally climbed on my back, and chuckled nervously as I stood up. My legs wobbled a little, and I was laughing so much that my ribs began to hurt, but I managed to stand straight until Pablo was done sawing a frond off with his pocket knife.

“I didn’t think you were that strong,” he laughed as I let him down.

“Yeah, well, years of carrying around childhood trauma will do that to you,” I shrugged, stretching my sore back.

“Fair enough,” he snorted.

As he picked up the frond and started waving it around to cool me down, his throat tightened, and I noticed him flexing his arm. I could almost hear him wondering if he himself had gained any strength from dragging around his own fair share of baggage in life.

I thought about what his life could have looked like, if he had a normal childhood. He’d probably be some kind of successful businessman, happily married to a beautiful woman, a caring father and loving husband, living in a pretty house in a quiet town.

And if I had grown up with loving parents, I’d probably be a different person too. I would have had the time to shape my dreams, and the stability to chase them once I was done with highschool. I’d be a journalist, or a therapist, or maybe I would have opened my own restaurant. I’d be anywhere but here, tripping balls in a drug lord’s back garden.

I wondered if our paths would have still crossed, had our lives been different. Would we have met at a beach bar during a vacation, bumped into each other on a busy street, or sat next to each other on a long flight across the ocean? Would we share a smile, a few words, a same sense of humor, or an unforgettable night of lovemaking?

I couldn’t help but feel like we were destined for each other. It was like there was a string pulling us together, and no matter what happened, which lives we’d lived or which choices we’d made, we would have ended up meeting anyway. Perhaps it was the drugs speaking, but when I placed my hand over my heart, I could almost feel the thread that tethered me to him.

“Do you feel better yet?” he asked, once his arms were tired of all the fanning.

“Yeah,” I said. “We can go back to bed if you want.”

“I’ll stay here,” he shrugged. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep now.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up for this,” I mumbled shamefully.

“It’s fine, I had fun,” he said with a smile. “Plus, it’s nice to spend some time alone with you. We get along better when there’s no one around.”

“That’s true,” I murmured. “I guess I get too nervous around other people.”

“Yeah, me too,” he answered.

Although he’d only spoken three words, in the world’s most nonchalant voice, what Pablo had said seemed to carry so much meaning. Pablo never opened up to me, or anyone else for that matter, and tended to keep his feelings for himself when he didn’t let them out in violent bursts of anger.

The fact that Pablo, who always seemed so proud and confident, had told me he felt nervous around other people, seemed like something promising. Maybe there was some empathy left in him, and this was his first step towards becoming more emotionally mature. Perhaps there’d come a day when I could trust him not to murder me the second I told him about what had happened with Juan.

Or perhaps I was overthinking, and my perception was warped by the drugs I was on.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” said Pablo. “Fancy a cup?”

“Sure.”

Something about this strange morning made me feel closer to Pablo than I ever had. Something that made my heart fonder, more tender, and made me feel the emotions I thought Pablo could never have.

As Pablo walked into the kitchen, the sun began to rise on the horizon, painting the sky in the softest shade of purple, and bleeding crimson stains in the sparse clouds above my head.

The night owls fell asleep, and the day birds shook themselves awake. Their soft songs turned into a symphony, growing crescendo as daylight began to bloom at the crest of tall trees.

The world took on a new color, a new texture, and turned into a cartoonish, fairytale candyland. I could see it in the pearls of dew on the strands of grass, in the way my hairs rose on end and curled up on my bare arms, and the thick, voluptuous swirls of vapor rising from the freshly-brewed coffee Pablo had just brought me.

“I heard you were looking for some sugar cookies,” he said as he sat down next to me. “So I got you these.”

He’d brought me a plate with a dozen perfect-looking biscuits, filled with a smooth layer of caramel and gently powdered with icing sugar. I wasn’t feeling hungry, but I knew from the very first bite that I’d finish every single crumb of those divine little cookies.

“Thanks,” I whispered, wiping sugar off my bottom lip. “They’re delicious.”

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Never been better,” I answered with a grin.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Just a little,” I shrugged, as a shiver ran down my neck.

“I told you to bring a sweater,” he murmured. “I’ll go get you one.”

“Don’t,” I mumbled. “You’ll miss the sunrise.”

He smiled, and sank into his seat. He wrapped his arm around me, and I pressed my head against his cheek. It was too good to be true, too peaceful, the coffee was too tasty and the cookies too sweet. I could have fallen asleep on Pablo’s shoulder, but shook myself awake when a quiet moan escaped my lips.

“Is everything okay?” said Pablo.

“Why do you always ask me that, like, a thousand times?” I muttered.

“I don’t know,” he chuckled softly. “I guess I must really like you.”

My heartbeat rose to a level sky high, but for once it felt right. I rubbed my chest with one hand, to calm down the butterflies that had been burning up inside. His thumb stroked the side of my jaw, releasing the tension that had been clenching it shut, despite my peace of mind.

We leaned in closer to each other, and kissed for the first time in what seemed like forever. It was a real kiss, a loving union, something better than anything I’d experienced before.

It was nothing like those pecks he’d leave on my cheek to try and taunt me, or to keep up appearances when there were people around. It wasn’t like those kisses on the neck I’d reluctantly spit out whenever I tried to get him to do me a favor. Not even like the playful bites we’d exchange whenever our hormones took over.

Kisses turned into caresses, and our clothes fell to the floor. Passion flowed like a waterfall, and he only let go of me for no more than half a second, to stop me from knocking over the half-full coffee mugs we’d left on the table.

Skin to skin and heart to heart, I straddled his hips as I rotated mine. His lips slipped down to my breasts, and he looked up at me with awe-filled eyes. He tried his best to leave a few more kisses, but soon his mouth stopped closing, hanging half-open in what seemed like disbelief.

His brow scrunched up and his teeth clenched each time I bucked, his fingers dug deeper into my flesh with every passing second. It wasn’t often that he’d let me take control, but God was it good when he did.

If every single day started like this, I wouldn’t need pills. Hell, I wouldn’t even need walls to keep me in this damn place. It was pure bliss, liquid happiness, an overdose of oxytocin.

You know what they say, an orgasm a day keeps the looming desire to kill yourself away.

We loved until our lungs caught fire and our throats turned sore. He let out a long and longing breath next to my ear, while I rested my head in the crook of his neck, inhaling the rough scent of his skin.

“I’m not cold anymore,” I whispered.

“Yeah, that was...” he panted. “That was hot.”

“I’m going to jump into the pool.”

The water was cool, deep and dark, hardly touched by the day’s first rays of sunlight. My muscles seized as I submerged myself, and my mind went blank for a minute, as if the cold had just reset it. Pablo soon followed me, and sucked air in through his chattering teeth as he slipped into the pool.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist, telling myself I was just warming him up, and not that I was already lusting for him.

“I’ve never had sex in a swimming pool,” I murmured in his ear.

“I can tell,” he chuckled. “Once you’ve done it before, it doesn’t seem that exciting.”

“At least let me try it,” I muttered.

“Anything you want,” he whispered.

He put his lips on my neck, his fingers between my legs, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. But between two lascivious breaths, and the noise of water gently splashing around us, I heard the distant sound of gravel popping under tires.

“I think there’s a car coming,” I said.

“No, you’re just tripping,” Pablo replied.

“No I’m not,” I mumbled.

I kept my worried gaze riveted to the clothes we’d left strewn around on the back of our chairs and the floor of the patio, trying to convince myself that it was just another hallucination. I ignored all the strange shadows peering out the corners of my eyes, closing in on us, as if they were spying on our intimate moment.

Then the Sandovals showed up.

“Are we interrupting something?” Hernan snickered.

“Why are you here so early?” shouted Pablo.

“It’s already eight,” he shrugged. “You said we had tons of work to get done, so I figured we’d show up earlier than usual.”

Juan kept quiet, cowering behind his father, exchanging dumbfounded glances with his disgusted fiancée.

“Well can’t you see we’re busy?” spat Pablo.

“Of course,” sneered Hernan. “I didn’t know you were talking about that kind of work.”

Juan was staring at me now, his black eyes weighing down on my bare shoulders like a ton of bricks. I glared back at him, and he shook his head.

“Are you going to fucking leave or are you all just waiting around to see her tits?” yelled Pablo.

Manée coughed, and the Sandovals turned away. Pablo and I tore away from each other, hoisted ourselves out of the pool and hastily got dressed. While Pablo called the others over, I went to fetch a glass of water at the pool bar, to soothe my parched throat.

“Well that was awkward,” muttered Juan, as he leaned on the other side of the bar.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I retorted, staring at Pablo as he sat down at a table on the other side of the patio.

“Why did you do that?” Juan asked.

“Do what?” I replied, as I picked at the wet clothes that stuck to my drenched skin.

“You know what I’m talking about, Sarah–”

My face turned bright red, and I held back a horrified gasp by wrapping a hand around my own neck.

“Don’t you ever call me by that fucking name,” I seethed.

“What, do you want to be Emilia forever?” whispered Juan.

“No, I just want to stay alive,” I hissed. “And if anyone hears us, we’re both going to end up dead.”

“Which is why I’m trying to help–”

“Why do you think I need your help?” I spat.

“Because you obviously do,” he mumbled. “You were literally just having sex with the guy who kidnapped you.”

“Jesus christ, Juan, will you fucking shut up?” I seethed. “They have microphones everywhere.”

“No they don’t,” he snorted, rolling his eyes at me. “You’re being paranoid.”

“Then explain to me how the fuck does Pablo find out about every single thing I’ve said,” I muttered, as my hands felt under the bar, searching in vain for anything that could be recording our conversation.

“Is this how you want to live for the rest of your days?” he whispered.

“What if I do?”

“It’s fucked up,” he scowled. “What he did to you is fucked up, and if you don’t see that then you should probably stop doing drugs.”

“I don’t do drugs, Juan,” I hissed, slamming my glass down on the bar, “and honestly, it’s insulting that you think I do. My mother was an addict, and I suffered a lot from it while I was growing up. I have always promised myself I’d never turn into someone like her, no matter how bad things get. It’s the only thing I can still be proud about, so I’d appreciate it if you could just respect that.”

Fuck. It hurt to say those words out loud, and it was so much painful knowing that this lie once was the truth.

I swallowed the lump in my dry throat, and blinked to chase away the tears. Juan stared at me in silence, with his brow scrunched up and his jaw tense. A sorry sigh escaped from his tight lips, like a deflating balloon.

“I didn’t know that,” he deadpanned. ” I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath and a gulp of cold water to stop my voice from breaking, and gripped the edge of the bar to stop my fingers from trembling.

“You think you know me just because I accidentally told you my real name,” I muttered under my breath, “but you know nothing about where I came from, what I went through and why I’m still here. So maybe you shouldn’t be so judgmental about the choices I make.”

“I understand,” he answered calmly.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“But I’ll still be here if you change your mind.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, and choked back a shaky breath. I mouthed out another quiet thank you, but Juan had already turned around.

I finished my glass of water, and later went to grab a sugar cookie, hoping it would bring back some color to my pale face, drained of its blood after my altercation with Juan.

“What’s going on with you and Juan?” Pablo whispered as he wrapped an arm around me.

“Nothing,” I answered. “He’s trying to be my friend or something.”

“And?” he frowned. “Do you want me to tell him to back off?”

“No it’s fine,” I murmured. “He’s just a bit weird.”

I curled up against his chest, but now that the drugs were wearing off, it just didn’t feel the same. The brain fog had lifted and I could see it more clearly.

Pablo wasn’t my lover, he wasn’t even my friend, he was and would always be my enemy.

If only things could always be as peaceful and easy as they had been this morning.

If only I could forever forget all the fucked up things he did to me.

Kerning

Skin to Skin

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