RED 2: A Trick of Mirrors [#Wattys2017]

44. Full Circle

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Marisa stepped out the shower, closed all curtains and hunted for headache pills in the suitcase thrown in a corner. She shoved two into her mouth and swallowed them at once without water. Tossing away her towel and the pillows decorating the bed, she crawled under the sheet and there remained in fetal position. Soon her eyelids grew heavy and her sore body capitulated.

She dreamed she was with Marco on the ship, the two of them laying in the cabin after the day spent on the island. His warm breath caressed her neck and this time Marisa turned to welcome him in her arms. They rolled across the mattress, skin sliding on skin, legs entwined, mouths united in the same craving.

His head rested between her legs, her face against his thighs, their hands and lips set to explore the most intimate of pleasures in a game of give and take. They moaned and rocked and heaved. They smiled in the dim. He took her from behind, groping her hips, cupping her breasts, biting the nape of her neck. In one fluid motion he entered her and retreated slowly, slowly advancing again to reach a new depth. Hard flesh in soft flesh, wet flesh slipping inch by inch with a languorous spin. She arched to meet him halfway. They traveled to a boundless space where everything and nothing coexisted. Gliding, flying, dissolving into each other. Their pace changed, rawer and faster, urgent and heightened, a leap to ecstasy.

Floating. Floating down to earth. Sated, flushed, tingling flesh collapsed across the bed. Skin sliding on skin, legs entwined, mouths united in shared bliss.

As it should be.

Amid a sigh, Marisa woke up to the insistent knocks on the door. She groped across the bedstand to turn on the light and, for a second, couldn't tell where she was. The plenitude of the dream faded abruptly in the starkness of the empty suite. She plummeted and crashed into the cold. It must be room service, Marisa thought as she teetered to wash her face and rinse her dry mouth. Her headache persisted, she should really eat something. She pulled from the suitcase a crumpled pink dress to cover herself.

Only upon answering the door, while she still finished tying the bow of her halter dress, it dawned on her she hadn't ordered anything from the hotel kitchen. Marisa blinked a couple of times and knew it was a delirium: she had just woken up from a dream within a dream. Marco stood before her, one hand against the door frame, hair damp from the shower, black jeans and an incongruous red polo shirt that seemed to burn his face with its reflection. He didn't wait for an invitation, and Marisa instinctively yielded when he came in.

The diffuse clarity of the beaded lamp sprinkled drops of light on his features. His nearly black eyes sequestered Marisa's with their feverish spark. He retrieved a case from the pocket of his pants and opened it, proceeding to hurl it to the floor. It was a rapid move that Marisa couldn't decipher. Alarmed with Marco's commotion, she retreated one more step. He gripped her wrist, his fingers closing around her flesh like a steel manacle. She felt the cold metal against her skin.

"What is this, Marco?"

"What does it look like?"

Speechless, Marisa reviewed their entire relationship, from the day she fell in love with him in the classroom until that exact moment of shock. Or maybe to view was not the appropriate term. She rather felt. She felt the fulgor of happiness and the dark desperation when everything disintegrated in the past few days. Until that exact moment. Then something within her broke. The iron ring, the one she had placed around herself to prevent a collapse, gave in.