La Mar
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t always wanted a woman like her.
But I’d also be lying if I said I’d imagined a woman like her could even exist.
It wasn’t just her age–her maturity, I should call it. It was the way she carried herself: Regal, like a queen. Her dress was white, backless. I could see the outline of her white panties through it. My eyes traced the triangle back of them for an hour as I watched her from the other side of the restaurant. She never turned to look at me, but I had a feeling she knew I was there.
That’s why I took the dare from my friends to talk to her. It was our last day of our guy’s trip. We’d spent a week surfing in aquamarine colored water, popping straws into freshly picked coconuts, and lounging around in flip flops and shorts before we headed back to our cold apartments in Mexico City. This was our last night to have fun and maybe get a story to bring home with us.
We were messing around with each other all night. Enrique tried to hit on the bartender with the blonde braid, but she shot him down with a few words. Raul tried to talk to the two American girls a few seats away, but the moment they turned to look at him, he spun on his heel and raced back to us. We roared with laughter.
It’s not easy to approach women, as much as they think it might be. Especially a woman like her.
In between watching her sip her drink, I had been doing most of the shit talking. It was only a matter of time before my friends called me out.
“And who are you going after?” Javier asked me.
I didn’t want to tell them. You don’t give these kinds of things away when your buddies are messing with you. You have to hold back a little or else they see your weakness.
But they saw me look at the mirror. Its gold frame held her image like a portrait. Her brown hair was casually pinned up to reveal her neck and she wore a simple white dress with almost nothing underneath. I could tell she was beautiful even without seeing her up close. I wanted to kiss up her spine – the place her dress left bare – tasting the saltiness and feeling the humidity of her skin.
“Her,” Raul said, nodding in her direction. Javier and Enrique turned to look. As if she felt our attention, she ran her slender fingers along the nape of her neck. I froze, hoping she wouldn’t turn around and see us staring at her.
I said nothing. Even thinking of her made me feel a little hard. Lifting her long white skirt, revealing the white triangle, the triangle beneath that…
“Your turn,” Javier said.
I couldn’t back down. You can’t when things get this heated.
I walked to her side of the bar and took the stool two seats away from hers. I saw her eyes glance at me, but her head barely turned in my direction. Yet it gave me enough: she acknowledged my existence. I needed to prove myself to my friends—and not give them something to make fun of me for the rest of my life.
I watched myself in the golden mirror that had framed her all evening. I was sweating through my white cotton shirt. My face was damp, too. My ex-girlfriend told me I had a baby face. Not a good quality for a man, but she said she adored it. At 27, I was ready to look 47. To gain the composure of the men in movies who never seemed to sweat in the heat, and always knew how to claim the attention of the woman they wanted.
But my baby face didn’t know what to do. Awkwardly, I lifted my hand to catch the bartender’s eyes, the same one who had sent Enrique running. Beautiful to look at, but icy. Not my type. The bartender pretended not to see me. I called out to her, but even then she didn’t respond.
The woman in white smiled. An inviting smile. A warm smile that came with a smattering of fine, feathered lines at the edges of her deep brown eyes. A lock of her light brown hair that had fallen out of the pinned up style hugged her face, softening her pointed features.
“¿Te ayudo?” she asked me playfully. “She seems to ignore the young men here.”
I grinned in response, leaning toward her. Her dress was cut low, revealing more of her chest than I’d expected. She had that reddish tan tourists from cold places get when they come to the beach and a tan line that encircled her long neck. My eyes glanced quickly down to her small, perky breasts pressing against the fabric of her dress. I wanted to see more.
She lifted a hand and waved to the bartender. In Spanish, with an American accent, she told the bartender I wanted a drink.
I asked for a beer. The bartender gave it to me, a little bit warm.
“Thank you,” I told the woman in white.
“Some things are easier with age,” she smiled. I feel more attracted when a woman smiles like that. As if she knows how hard it is for a guy to walk across the bar to a stranger. As if she were willing to give me a break.
“Are you visiting from the U.S.?” I asked her. “Or Canada?”
She took a sip. “The U.S. Just down for the week.”
I wanted her to ask me something next. I wanted her to tell me it was okay to want her. I wanted her to tell me that I was welcome to give her the attention I wanted to give her despite the bridge between our generations. Instead, she rubbed a finger against the condensation of her glass.
I looked at her hands. The veins showed through the skin in a way that only happens with age. It’s sexy to see how a woman learns to carry herself when she’s older. Girls my age seem too concerned with how they look. That fixation seems to fall away as a woman gets older. Like when she turns forty, she walks through a special curtain. On the other side, she is not as self-conscious. Or maybe she is more conscious in a different way. Like she has come into her body fully.
I’d never been with an older woman, but I’d often noticed them. My mother’s friend, Lupe, ran a small cafe in my hometown. She had curly hair and a permanent stain of pink lipstick. She yelled at her employees and customers in a raspy voice that demanded their attention without being mean or cruel. Whenever she saw me, she called me guapo and told me to be good to the girls. Sitting two stools down from the woman in white, I thought of Lupe. They both had an aura of playfulness alongside an air of wisdom.
The woman in white crossed her legs and I saw her ankles and calves. Strong and tanned. Smooth. All I wanted was to kneel on the ground in front of her and slide my hand up, but I knew enough from Lupe to know that a woman of her age didn’t waste time with foolish behavior. I had to be smooth.
“What’s your name?” she asked me.
I was so busy thinking that I didn’t even hear her.
“Cómo te llamas?” she asked again.
Suddenly she was looking directly at me. Her eyes were intense. I felt nervous, far more nervous than I’d ever been talking to a woman. Yet the way her lips took a soft shape–not quite a smile, but welcoming–told me I could relax. There was nothing that I could do wrong.
“Daniel,” I told her. “Yours?”
“Daniel. Mucho gusto. I’m Adeline.”
We smiled at each other, locking eyes. It put me at ease.
“Are you traveling alone?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I had a busy winter and needed to go somewhere I could just sit on a beach and clear my head. Sometimes traveling with other people is less relaxing than following my own desires.”
I wanted to ask her, “And what are those desires?” but I could barely get any words out at all.
“It’s brave, coming to a new country alone,” I told her instead. I gave the reply a 6 out of 10.
“I lived in Oaxaca when I was younger,” she confided. “I wanted to see if it was possible to live in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language.”
“Was it possible?” 7 out of 10.
“Somewhat. I lasted about nine months before the difficulties got to me. But I learned some Spanish so I consider it a success.”
Here she turned toward me. Her chest facing me, I could see the shape of her nipples beneath her dress. I had the urge to rest my hand on her breasts and feel them press against my palm.
She took the last sip of her drink. The few bits of ice slid back into the bottom of her glass.
“Would you like to watch the sunset with me?” she asked.
“I’d love to. There’s a beach just over the hill that has a nice view. Have you been?”
Her cheeks pinked up. “The nude beach?”
“Yes,” I said, holding her gaze. I was finally feeling smooth. “Is that okay with you?”
She nodded and stood up. As we walked, I felt the mirror behind us reflecting our passage out the door. I couldn’t believe I was leaving with her.
I led her out the long way, avoiding the table with my friends. I could feel their eyes on me, but I ignored them completely. I didn’t want them to ruin whatever was going to happen.
The beach outside the restaurant was empty except for a few couples walking on the shore.
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