After the tears were dry, we ate our picnic in the dunes, feeding each other morsel by morsel while the sun crossed above us. We were still dressed and decorous at that point, though the air grew hotter and hotter. I think I fell asleep on his shoulder. When I came to, he lay on his back, staring at the sky, one arm cushioning his dear head. The shape of his nose kicked the breath from my lungs. Despite the Atlantic breeze, the sweat trickled from my forehead and my armpits and between my breasts. I rose and nudged off my espadrilles and undid the buttons on my dress.

“I’m going for a swim,” I said.

I’d never swum naked before, certainly not in the warm, salt ocean. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The water whooshed along my skin, the surf played games with me. After a moment or two, Thorpe joined me. I discovered his bare shoulders, his waist, his churning legs, his fingers wandering across my ribs to the small of my back, to the curve of my bottom. Without the spectacles, his freckles sprang from either side of his nose, and I wrapped my legs around his waist so I could gather his face in my palms and kiss each one. We met a wave or two together, holding hands, until we washed up laughing on the beach in a state of nature, Adam and Eve, paradise. I licked the brine from his cheeks and marveled at the absence of panic inside me, at the mysterious way confession draws the poison from its sac, rendering you pure again. I told Thorpe he should get out of the sun before he burned, he didn’t have the right skin for it.

“But you do,” he said.

“My mother’s Italian.” I rose and tugged on his hand. “Come on. Into the shade.”

Into the shade, onto the picnic blanket. A real blanket, by the way, plucked from a closet in the cottage, scratchy but serviceable. We kissed and we kissed, until the heat and the draft swallowed up the last of the ocean from our skin, and then Thorpe sucked the salt from my breasts and stomach and between my legs while I hollered for joy. He settled himself on top of me, lifted himself on his elbows, and kissed me again. For the longest time we rocked together, a dozen lifetimes in which you fell in love over and over again, each time more deeply than the last, more comprehensive in your knowledge of the other. When we finished, we lay together unmoving. It seemed our skin wasn’t meant to part.