Notes- Another short and sweet one, sorry. These will get longer I swear. I really ought to do more for this ship.
Carlos- Cuba
Anri- Belgium
...
Carlos didn’t know if the world could get any more perfect right now.
Honestly, this moment was something from a dream, and he had to wonder if it was indeed something from his imagination. The burn of the rum in his cocktail, the salt of the sea and the warmth of the woman next to him, the vanilla scent of her hair in his nostrils, told him otherwise.
This holiday had been a fantastic idea. They were both more relaxed than they’d been for the past year, the stresses of work gone for two weeks as they wiled away their time lounging on a Cuban beach, eating ice creams and chocolates, sometimes paddling in the sea to cool down, mostly snuggling up together in a hammock in the shade of a wide parasol. Next to them was a table covered in bottles of differing levels of emptiness and the melted remains of yet another helping of ice cream, mint with generous heaps of chocolate and toffee sauce and spoons licked clean.
The sun was setting now, golden like a good bottle of rum. It stretched out over their heads to become the purple night sky, and before them it melded into the calm sea, sparkling and twinkling for them.
Anri snuggled closer to him, curled up in front of him in a little summer dress, dozing with a smile on her full lips. His entire body was resting against her back, almost protectively. Her hair tickled his face and the arm her head was resting on was long dead, but Carlos didn’t care one bit.
Maybe later, when they’d finished dozing, they could go to a nightclub, or even just get something to eat and snuggle up in the beach house, about twenty metres behind them. And who knows what they’d get up to tomorrow? A city tour? More lounging about on the beach? Whatever Anri felt like, he was happy to go along with. There was only one thing he really wanted to do before this fortnight was up: visit his family a few times and introduce her to them all. It would take a few days to get through everyone- he had a big family- but Anri told him she didn’t mind, and was really excited to meet them all.
He just wanted to show her off to everyone. He wanted to walk up in front of a crowd of people and shout about how much he loved his girlfriend and how great she was.
But instead, Carlos stroked at her hair and planted a kiss on her cheek.