i'll show you mine

Margo caught up to him at the start of the path, and she could see the barely contained excitement in the way he walked, half a step ahead of her, glancing back every so often like he needed to confirm she was still following. The path wound down through a stretch of dry brush before opening onto the beach itself, red sand mixed with pale pebbles that crunched underfoot; the lake spreading out wide and flat beyond it.

The beach had an easy weekend feel to it—families camped out on patches of grass, a group of teenagers kicking a ball near the water, a radio drifting from somewhere down the shore, low enough to blend into the background. Sergei’s eyes swept the shoreline methodically and then he stopped walking entirely when he spotted them.

“Look, Margo!” he exclaimed, pointing without quite lifting his arm all the way, as if a sudden movement might scare them off from this distance.

Margo followed his line of sight to where they lay a little further down the beach—ten, maybe twelve capybaras, sprawled in the shade of a tree near a cluster of rocks. Sergei’s whole face lit up at the sight of them, and for a moment he looked exactly like the boy Margo pictured whenever he talked about the nights he spent lying in the grass at his family’s dacha, naming every star he could find.

Sergei set the towels down quickly, dropping to his knees to spread them out before wrestling the parasol into the ground until it finally stood upright, leaning slightly to one side. He was already digging through the bag for his polaroid camera, always his first choice over anything digital. Before Margo had even gotten her sandals off, he was making his way down the beach toward the rocks, crouched slightly at the waist as though that might make him less conspicuous to a group of capybaras that had clearly seen ahundreds of beachgoers before him.

Margo pulled her sundress over her head, folding it and setting it on top of the bag, along with her sunglasses. She glanced around at the other people scattered across the beach, told herself firmly that no one was paying her any attention, and busied herself smoothing sunscreen along her arms while she watched Sergei be utterly absorbed in his mission.

He came back a few minutes later, closer to jogging than walking, with a glint in his eyes and a grin that made him look years younger.

“Margo! Margo, it is incredible! They did not even move!”

She looked up at him, unable to keep the fondness off her face at the sight of him this worked up over dog-sized rodents. “I saw.”

He dropped down onto his towel, leaning over and pressing a quick kiss to her lips before he’d even finished sitting down, then unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off and tossed it aside.

“Can you get my back?” Margo asked, already holding the bottle of sunscreen out to him.

“Of course.” He took it from her, popping the cap. “This is my favorite part of the beach, you know.”

His hands lingered, tracing slow lines down her shoulder blades that had nothing to do with coverage and everything to do with finding excuses to keep touching her. “Between the two of us, neither this skin—” a light tap at his own forearm, “—nor yours was made for a sun like this. We are a pair of very poor candidates for this hemisphere.”

Margo huffed a laugh. The sun in Brazil made Texas feel mild, and she suspected Iowa was barely worth mentioning in the same breath. So, after months here, Sergei’s skin had settled into a permanent light gold that hadn’t been there when they’d first arrived. Against it, the pale hairs on his arms and chest stood out more now, catching the light every time he moved, and Margo kept catching herself watching.

“And yet here we are.”

“Here we are,” Sergei agreed. “And there is nowhere else I would rather be.”

He finished with one last pass down her spine before pulling her back against his bare chest, wrapping his arms loosely around her waist.

“Sergei—now all of it’s just going to end up on you.” Margo wriggled halfheartedly against his hold, which did nothing except make his arms tighten slightly.

He laughed and reached up, fingers finding her cheek as he turned her head just enough to kiss her briefly.

“Ах, какая трагедия,” he said, smirking against her skin as he nudged the strap of her red one-piece swimsuit aside just enough to press a kiss there. “I suppose I will simply have to apply more.”

Margo only rolled her eyes. “Turn around,” she prompted, twisting out of his hold and reaching for the bottle herself. “Fair’s fair.”

Sergei obliged without argument, settling cross-legged while she worked the sunscreen across his back, and she found herself lingering too, brushing over a small birthmark on the nape of his neck before tracing two smaller ones lower down that she’d long since memorized.

They spent the rest of the afternoon moving between the water and the shade of the parasol, watching the capybaras do very little of anything from a respectful distance. At some point Sergei propped himself up on one elbow, watching one of them yawn enormously, and said to Margo, “Do you think they would get along with the cats?”