It was loud when I met her and I didn’t catch her name. She talked with her eyes, her face, her body. We danced until our feet felt as if they were on fire. It had been a long time since I danced like that, so much so that I had wanted to thank her for existing, for being born and making all of those steps that brought her to the club tonight. I felt stupid. Absolutely and frighteningly stupidly happy.

I must had been smiling to reflect my feelings because she was about to break away and leave when her eyes caught my face. Something in it made her paused in her tracks, already her body turning halfway from me. The lights in the nightclub changed and a flash of brightness swept past us. I was breathing hard, my chest rising and falling, my lips grinning ear to ear. She looked at me and then she broke into a laughter that I could not hear. The music boomed and swelled and all I could hear was the sound of my own heart beats.

She reached out and took my hand in hers and led us outside, through the throng of dancers and revellers, and then out into the night. My ears were ringing in the sudden quiet but the beats of my heart were almost deafening. Her hand was hot and firm. I didn’t want to interrupt our heat with words so I gripped back and followed.

We walked a fair distance along the beach until the copse of coconut trees became denser and then we went around some bushes and shed our clothes rapidly. In the dark, it was difficult but we somehow managed. She sounded impatient and there was a sound of a ripping fabric. We didn’t let it bother us. Urgently, we were at each other’s face with rapid, warm breaths and almost immediately after, our bodies were dancing together again, though connected now and to the rhythm of our own music.

The sounds of morning birds woke me up. I felt the chill of dawn’s air upon my skin. Groggily, I sat up. I was still at the beach, behind the bushes. The waves were coming and going, there was sand everywhere. I dumbly noticed my clothes and started to collect them through a process of auto-pilot. Then, I remembered the night and I remembered her. I looked up and she was there, smiling at me as she held her own torn clothes to her chest with her hand.

I didn’t realize she was blonde. In the club, it had been difficult to see. She talked with her eyes, her face, her body. I knew acutely that she was saying that it had been pleasant. And that it was good-bye.

I did the only thing I could.

I thanked her for existing, for being born, and for making all those steps that brought her here.

I smiled.