I wake up with my heart pounding, bolting upright on the couch and staring bleary-eyed around the dark living room. I swear I felt someone’s fingers brush my arm.

“Hmmmwhozere?” I mumble, voice groggy as I rub at my eyes.

I hear a stifled laugh from beside me.

“Shhh,” whispers a familiar voice. “You’re going to wake everyone up.”

I turn to find Christina crouched beside the couch.

“Whizzit? What timezit?”

She covers her hand with her mouth as another laugh threatens to escape her.

“It’s almost sunrise,” she whispers, after she’s calmed herself down. “I woke you up so we could go watch it. Come on.”

She straightens up and starts to move towards the front door. My body protests and urges me to go back to sleep, but I fling the blankets off me and follow her. We pull our shoes on and she pulls the door open inch by inch so it doesn’t make any noise.

Out on the street, she takes my hand and leads me down the bumpy road past all the white houses. The sky has just started to go from black to blue, so there’s enough light for us to make our way around the ruts in the road. Yesterday was hot enough for me to be sweating, but the early morning chill today makes me wish for a jacket as it jolts me awake.

We make our way through the silent streets, not saying anything but not really needing to. Everything is still and even the rolling of the waves sounds gentle right now. I feel like we’re walking through people’s dreams.

We make it to the edge of the town and start up a cobblestone path that follows the curve of a cliff. A rock wall guards the edge and there’s a few stairs to go up every now and then.

“This is the spot all the tourists come here for,” Christina pants, breaking the silence as we climb. “I hope we have it to ourselves.”

The night continues to fade as we keep moving. Eventually Christina stops and turns, just as lines of pink light begin to streak across the sky.

“There,” she says. “That’s what you see on all the postcards.”

I follow her gaze and once again my hands twitch with the need to pull out my camera. From here, you can see the whole town, cradled by the cliff that circles it like a strong arm fending off the ocean.

“It looks like it’s always been here,” I observe, “like the town is just a part of the rocks, like they grew together.”

She nods. “To me, it looks like home.”

I reach out and wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her close. She leans her head on my shoulder for a moment and we watch the pink light of dawn start to turn into the yellow light of day. Then she leads me to the wall that runs along the viewpoint and takes a seat on top of it, swinging her legs over the edge. I follow suit.

“Here,” she offers, holding out the paper bag I noticed her carrying earlier. “Pastel de nata. The best breakfast there is.”

I fish two of the custard tarts out of the bag and pass it back to her. We had them for dessert last night and they somehow taste just as good today. We eat in silence, cupping our hands under the pastries to catch the crumbs.

“So,” Christina begins, “I’ve been wondering something, ever since what you said at the airport.”

“And what’s that?” I ask, my eyes fixed on the now-awakening town.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she blurts out. “About her? About everything? Even if it had just been to let me know why you couldn’t be with me, it would have been better. I could have handled that. Did you not trust me enough? Did you think I’d be angry?”

I shake my head, staring down at the water far below us as I try to come up with an answer. My palm brushes a few small stones sitting on top of the wall over the edge of the cliff.

“I just panicked,” I tell her. “I kept it all bottled up for so long. I pushed everyone away, before they even tried to get close. I’m not really as big of a douchebag as I pretend to be. It was the only way I knew how to protect myself, to keep people from seeing too deep inside me.”

“Aaron.” Christina reaches for my hand where I’m still launching pebbles off the ledge. “You have way too big of an ego for that to all be an act.”

I let out a weak laugh, grateful that she sees how hard this is for me and is trying to lighten things up.

“I mean, you’ve seen me. How could I not have an ego, with a face like this?”

Her hand moves up to grip my shoulder. “I will actually push you off this wall, Penn.”

“Easy, Peaches.”

She shoves me forwards a bit and bursts out laughing when I can’t help but gasp in surprise.

“Okay, okay, lesson learned,” I urge.

We lapse into silence again for a bit and then I sigh.

“I wanted to tell you,” I explain. “I kept thinking about it, kept waiting for the time to be right, but now I see I was just making excuses. I should have been braver. You deserved someone brave.”

She tilts her head towards me. “Aaron, you are brave. You went through one of the hardest things a person can go through. You survived losing someone you loved, someone you never imagined yourself having to lose.”

I lace my fingers through hers. “And you made me feel something I thought I’d never be able to find. I mean sure, I joked around a lot. I flirted with girls. I looked like I was having a good time, like I’d recovered, but none of it ever felt real. Except for you. You made me want to...to wake up. To try again. To actually care, and that terrified me.” I bring her hand to my lips and breathe my next words onto her skin. “But I’m not scared anymore. It still hurts, but I want to get through it. For you. With you.”

“Of course,” I hear her whisper.

She shifts herself closer so our thighs are pressed together. I let go of her hand and wrap my arm around her shoulders.

“Tell me about her,” she says, “if you want to.”

A flash of pain sears through me, the same one I feel every time I conjure up an image of Tiff, but I don’t turn away from it this time. I let the memories burn their way through me and hold Christina even closer until the flames start to die down.

Then, with her head resting on my shoulder and her hair brushing the skin of my neck, I tell her about Tiff. I start with the day we met and I don’t stop until I get to the day she died. I let everything pour out, even things I’m not sure Christina wants to hear. I tell her about our first awkward attempt at sex, how I felt whenever I was taking her photo, the way she’d draw her eyebrows together when she was lecturing me. I almost have to stop when I get to the last time I saw her, leaving for her rafting job, but I push through to the very end: the phone call that told me she was gone.

Somehow, I feel stronger afterwards, like I can breathe in the ocean air just a bit easier than before. Christina, on the other hand, is crying into my t-shirt.

“You must miss her so much,” she chokes out, her voice thick.

“I do,” I answer solemnly, “all the time, but I’m going to learn to handle it better. I finally talked to my mom about it. I’d never done that before. I didn’t even know, but she’s been seeing a grief counsellor about Tiff and I’m going to try it out.” I tilt her chin up so her eyes meet mine. “I want you to know that I would never have done any of that before I met you. I love you, Christina.”

She jerks away from me. “You do?”

I’m sure my eyes are as wide as hers right now. I hadn’t planned on saying that.

“Uh, yeah,” I venture. “Is that...okay?”

She blinks at me a few times and then her body relaxes. “I guess,” she sighs, like she’s granting me a huge favour. “I’d say I love you too, but I know that will just inflate your already overinflated ego.”

“No need. I already know you love me, Peaches. Who doesn’t?”

She pretends to push me off the cliff again.

* * *

“Hurry up!”

“You sure this is a good idea? The tide is coming in!”

I splash my way through the knee-deep water after Christina.

“Yeah, so hurry!” she calls over her shoulder.

We walked along the beach for a bit after leaving the viewpoint, and are apparently now on our way to some sort of secret alcove in the cliffs that’s out of sight of the whole village.

“Won’t we get stuck when the water comes in?” I ask, as Christina scrambles over a rock.

“Only for an hour or so!”

I can barely keep up with her. She manoeuvres around the tide pools and boulders as if she has them memorized, and I realize that she probably does. We finally make it to a tiny alcove that carves a semi-circle into the cliff, the ground padded with a stretch of soft sand just wide enough for two beach towels. The side that faces the ocean is lined with huge boulders we have to climb over to get inside, so it feels like we’re standing in some kind of fort.

“We used to play a game here,” Christina explains, settling onto the sand and digging into it with her toes. “All the preteens in town would come down to the beach, and the guys would each get paired up with a girl. Then you’d have to spend ten minutes in here with your partner. We’d keep going until the tide came in and whoever was in here last would get stuck with their partner for an hour.”

“Sounds kind of like seven minutes in heaven,” I observe, dropping next to her on the sand, “only with the added possibility of drowning.”

“What can I say?” she laughs. “We were hardcore.”

“Were you ever the one that got stuck?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “This was the first place that I ever kissed anyone, though.”

“Oh?” I wag my eyebrows at her. “And how was your first kiss with little Armando? Or was his name Paulo? Please don’t tell me it was Fernando.”

Christina swats my arm.

“It was Bernardo,” she finally admits with a huff.

I laugh so loud it bounces off the walls of the cliff, echoing around the alcove.

“Oh god,” I gasp, “how will I ever compete with the passion of first love? With the flame that burns in your heart for Bernardo?”

She tackles me, pushing me onto my back in the sand and straddling my body.

“You. Are. Such. A. Carahlo.” She accentuates each word with a punch.

“Hey!” I shout, grabbing hold of her wrists. “You’re not even going to give me a chance to try? I bet I could make your forget Bernardo even existed.”

“Oh yeah?” she asks, her eyes starting to spark with desire.

“Yeah.” I wet my lips with my tongue. “I’ll make it so you’ll never be able to think about this place without remembering me and what I did to you here.”

She wriggles out of my grip and puts her hands on her hips. “I don’t know, Penn. I’ve kissed a lot of boys in here. You sure you can deliver on that claim?”

As an answer, I hook my thumbs through the belt loops of the tiny pair of jean shorts she’s wearing and tug her forwards, shifting underneath her to let her feel how hard I am already. Her eyes close and she lets out a moan.

When she starts grinding against me I let my hands travel up under her t-shirt, caressing the taunt skin of her stomach and moving to trace the outline of her spine. Her head falls back and I grip her hips, pulling her into me even harder, forcing her to quicken the rhythm of her thrusting.

Her hands find the zipper of my shorts and I feel a slight ease in the pressure that was building up hard enough to hurt, but it only makes me want more.

“Get up,” I order.

She looks down at me with hooded eyes and tugs her lip between her teeth before obeying. When we’re both standing, I back her up against one of the boulders and crush my lips against hers, pressing our chests together. The tide is rising even faster now, lapping at the other side of the rocks, but they’re packed tightly enough together that none seeps into the alcove.

She goes right for my zipper again, tugging my shorts down and leaving me in my boxers. I kick the shorts away and she reaches for my shirt next. She pulls it over my head in a hurry, like the second it takes me to get it off is way too long.

Before I let her kiss me again, I strip her of her t-shirt and bra. Her skin glistens with drops of salt water and sweat. Her nipples are already hard and she shivers as I brush my thumbs over their tips. Up against the rock, with the midmorning sun beating down on her and the ocean spraying around us, she looks like some kind of sea goddess.

“I want you to take me,” she says, her voice low and demanding, “here, against this rock. I need to feel you inside me right now, Aaron.”

I don’t wait for her to ask again. Stepping back, I pull off my boxers as she shimmies out of her shorts and underwear. She reaches out to grip my shoulders and pulls me back to her, pressing my body into hers. The tide has risen so high now that droplets splash down on us as the waves crash against the other side of the rock. The coolness of the water mixed with the heat of the sun is sending all my nerve endings into overload.

There’s no time for teasing or taking it slow today; all I want right now is to be thrusting in and out of her, feeling how wet and tight she is as I take both of us higher and higher. I grab one of her thighs and hook her leg around my waist and then I let myself slide inside her.

I watch as her eyes roll back and her head sinks against the rock. A moan escapes me and I start picking up speed, building a rhythm. She’s already so wet.

“Fuck, Christina,” I hiss, as she tilts forwards to lick the salt water from my neck.

“You feel so fucking good.”

Her last word is lost in a gasp as I use the hand that’s not supporting her leg to pinch her nipple. She bites down on my neck in response, and any hope I had of self control is lost. I slam her against the rock and fuck her so hard she screams. Her hands claw at my back and for the next few minutes we’re dragged under our own tide, swept up by the current of desire.

I try to wait for her to come, wanting to reach that height and tumble off it with her, but when she sucks at the skin behind my ear and tugs my earlobe between her teeth, I give in. All it takes is a few fevered thrusts, and then the climax is ripping through me, the world a blur of sand, salt, and skin.

When I can finally focus again, I find Christina’s hands tangled in my hair, her face pressed to my neck as she lets out a content sigh.

There’s no fucking way I’m leaving her at just ‘content.’

I slip out of her and we both gasp at the loss of contact. She looks up at me with glassy eyes and gives a dazed smile, thinking we’re done.

“Aaron, that was ama—”

“Turn around.”

I don’t even give her time to do it herself. I grab hold of her and flip her so her chest is up against the boulders.

“Ass up, Peaches.”

She complies with what almost sounds like a whimper, shifting to brace herself with her forearms. I run my hands over her hips and cup her ass, amazed at the way her body dips and curves in all the right places. She has a few scratches on her back from the rock, and the fact that I put them there, that I fucked her so hard she has marks to prove it, turns me on enough to feel like I’m about to get hard again.

Right now isn’t about me, though. Right now is about making her come so hard she forgets her own name.

I slide a hand around her waist and over her stomach, moving downwards until I can slide two fingers inside her. She gasps and bucks against me, but I pull out right away and move my now wet fingertips up to her clit, circling around it and teasing her with a bit of pressure every few seconds. When she’s shaking and gasping every time I push down, I use my other hand to enter her from behind, thrusting two fingers inside and stretching her out until I can fit in a third.

She’s letting out loud moans now as I time my thrusts with the rhythm I’m using to work her clit. I increase my speed a bit and I know she’s right on the edge of losing control.

“Come for me, Christina. I want to feel you come.”

Every muscle in her body tenses up. She goes silent for a moment and then she’s falling apart in front of me, screaming out my name and trembling against the rock. She’s absolutely soaked and dripping down her thighs. I feel her clench and spasm around my fingers as she rides the orgasm out. I keep working her clit and thrusting into her, only taking my fingers away when she begs me to stop.

“God, please,” she gasps. “I can’t...I can’t...Oh god.”

I let out a raspy laugh, feeling almost weak at the sight of her coming undone like that. I squeeze her ass hard and move back so she can turn around.

Our eyes lock together and she steps into my arms, drawing my head down to place her lips on mine. She tastes like the ocean.

“So,” I say, when the kiss ends, “what was his name again? Luciano? Marco? Cristiano?

The corner of her mouth pulls up. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”