Soft as Limestone

Sam opens his eyes, rolls over, and looks at Alice. He admires her picture-perfect face and resists the urge to kiss her cheek, lest she wake up. His feet slip onto the hotel's ceramic gray tiles. He quietly opens the curtains and steps onto the balcony. Giddy children splash and shout in a communal pool in the courtyard below. His skin drinks the sunlight like warm coffee.

Of the resort towns on the mediterranean island of Mallorca, Cala d’Or is low-key and family friendly. Sam and Alice picked it for this reason. They both preferred to revel in a second bottle of wine at dinner than a touristy nightclub. They picked it, too, for its collection of calas—or coves, in English. These narrow, postcard-worthy beaches spill into clear turquoise bays, framed by beige walls of jagged limestone.

Waiting for Alice to get up, Sam reads about the formation of calas. It comes down to the unique properties of limestone: Unlike igneous rocks born of cooled magma, limestone is softer; the residue of living things. Coral fragments, shells, and microscopic skeletons are pressed together for eons until they form something, geologically speaking, solid as a rock. But not fully. Limestone is porous, riddled with invisible channels where seawater sneaks in and starts to dissolve the calcium carbonate molecule by molecule. Over time, the weaker parts of the rock disappear, carving deep notches into the coastline, leaving cliffs standing over peaceful bowls of water: the calas.

He and Alice visited their first cala yesterday. It was everything one could ask of a beach and more. They walked past an open-air bar to find sand perfect for relaxing, water perfect for snorkeling, and even cliffs perfect for jumping. Brave tourists tread gingerly across the rock, pointy and gravel-like, and leap with whoops into the sea below. Their ripples join the waves eating imperceptibly away at the landscape.

“Guten morgen,” Alice is up and announces her wakefulness with an exaggerated accent. German sounds clumsy in her mouth, but the attempts are ever endearing. She joins Sam on the balcony and tilts her chin up for a kiss. Sam obliges and grins at her.

Sam and Alice arrived in Mallorca the day before. Sam, from their apartment in New York, but Alice has been in Europe for more than a month now. A dancer, she's here on business; auditioning for limited spots in dance companies of varying stature, criss-crossing the continent for multi-day workshops. Her sights are set on a well-known state theater in Germany. At the audition a few weeks ago, she made the final cut—one of twenty dancers from a pool of more than 200, though she hasn’t heard back yet. Sam referred to her as a “top 10% dancer” after this, which she always deflects with a laugh. Sam knows she won’t accept the label even if she does get hired. Alice is allergic to praise.

He pulls her in for a hug on the balcony. “Buenos dias, mi amor,” he says.

“Muy bien.” She says, nodding in approval of his pronunciation. She assesses the pool, palms, and promising weather. “It really is beautiful here.”

They hold in embrace, soaking up the sunlight and novelty. “I’m excited for our boat ride today,” Alice says.

“Me too,” says Sam. “But first, coffee?”

“Yes, please!”

He brews two cups inside and brings them out to the balcony, where Alice is rolling a cigarette. “Want to share?” she asks, “or want your own?”

“I’ll do my own. I’m feeling indulgent,” he says, pinching tobacco into the fold of a paper. “I’d say this is very European cosplay of us,” Sam jokes, “if we weren’t always doing this in New York.”

“Hm, I guess you’re right,” Alice says. She doesn’t appear to find this very interesting.

Sam looks at her sidelong. Maybe she’s just tired, but he feels a vague twinge of annoyance. The ritual of cigarettes with a view is something like their origin story.

They met five months ago, when Alice filled a vacancy in Sam’s 3-bedroom apartment. She had a habit of smoking on the fire escape to unwind. Sam didn’t smoke, at least, not until they started stealing quiet moments together during the day. They crawled out her bedroom window onto the rusted metal slats and took slow pulls of nicotine-infused leaves, beholding the city skyline. They joked about whether it was a good idea to have a crush on your roommate, even as their legs brushed and their mouths drew closer.

...

Alice found the boat tour on an experience booking app a few days earlier. She and Sam arrive almost late, but soon enough are in repose on waterproof cushions on the deck. They accept chilled rosé from the gregarious tour guide as the boat pulls out of the harbor. About a dozen other tourists share the boat with them, all older than Sam and Alice by at least ten years. Nobody seems interested in making friends. Each group appears content to pretend the outing is for them alone.

Alice looks off the boat, studying the gray cliffs where Mallorca meets the sea. Sam looks at Alice, taking in her freckles, eyelashes, lips—like they’re as fleeting as the passing coast. He smiles, watching her frown at something in the rocks. He wonders what she’s thinking. He finds her remarkable, talented, interesting, valuable, and feels very lucky to be next to her. Almost disbelief. It’s crazy they’ve only been dating for three months and they’re on an international trip together. He hasn’t done anything like this with his previous girlfriends. Then again, none of them were interested in auditioning for foreign dance companies.

She catches him staring, “What?”

“I’m just admiring you,” Sam says. She kisses his cheek and nuzzles into his shoulder. Sea salt air blows strands of her hair across his face.

Another couple sits across from them. Perhaps late-40s, they lounge like models, staring at different points on the horizon. The wind ruffles the man’s linen shirt while sunglasses dutifully shield his eyes from light and perception. His bone structure gives the impression of someone entitled to wealth; someone for whom the world opens up. His counterpart, blonde and trim in a sundress, gets up and approaches Sam and Alice.

They say a friendly hello. She smiles at them wistfully.

“You two look so sweet over here,” she says. “You’re looking very in love.”

They say thank you awkwardly. They’ve gotten this a few times on the trip as well as back in New York. Sam hasn’t voiced it, but he suspects these people are spuriously correlating attractiveness and happiness.

Alice says she and her husband look very in love too. Sam politely conceals his skepticism; he thought they looked bored.

The woman waves away the compliment. “I hope this isn’t weird,” she says, “You looked so cute, I took some photos of you guys, can I send them to you?”

“Oh, of course,” Alice says, “Thank you, that’s so sweet of you.”

The woman looks at the photos on her phone. “I remember feeling like this,” she sighs, then smiles encouragingly. “Enjoy it!”

Sam’s eyebrows raise involuntarily. The women exchange the photos over Bluetooth. Alice asks if she and her husband want a photo too, but she demurs, bowing out back towards the man looking fixedly at something beyond the boat. Sam and Alice huddle over the phone to see what so moved her. Alice swipes through a few unremarkable portraits of the backs of their heads.

“That was weird,” Alice says, “What do you think she meant by that?”

“Maybe we’re hot and they used to be happy? Who knows?” Sam says.

“Come on, we can do better.” She angles her phone and they lean in for the selfie. Her brow smooths into a practiced smile.

...

The boat glides into a cala and sets anchor. Sam, Alice, and some of the other more adventurous tourists jump into the fantasy blue water and swim ashore. Sam curls his toes into the pebbly sand worn smooth by the tide.

"Let's go sit for a moment," Alice suggests. And they climb onto the low cliffs along the bay. Rocks bite at their feet as they make their way to a flattish spot, where they let their legs dangle over the water.

“Are you going to jump in?” Sam asks.

“Soon,” says Alice, stretching out to sunbathe.

The sun beats down. Sam thinks about the sunscreen he's not wearing. Penetrating ultraviolet rays evaporate the remnant beads of seawater on his skin, leaving motes of salt, which dissolve again into sweat coaxed out by the heat.

After some silence, Sam shades his eyes and looks at Alice next to him. “When do you think you’ll hear back from Germany?” Sam asks, trying to sound casual, as though merely making conversation.

Alice sits up and plucks at a tuft of grass barely rooted in the rock between her legs. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I know I did my best, but I’m not sure that's good enough.”

“I’m sure it is,” Sam says, “I have a feeling this is going to work out for you.” He feels reverent, proud, maybe a little jealous. “You’re so talented, Alice. They would be crazy to pass on you.”

She looks up at him, grateful, “You’re too sweet to me. What would I do without your optimism on tap?”

“You’d be dancing in Germany,” he says softly.

Alice twists the grass between her fingers with intense focus, pulling it from the ground. “What if I actually get it?”

The question has hung in the air since she before she left New York. Indeed, Alice was registered for the audition before Sam even met her.

“You mean... if you achieve your dream?” Sam asks. His tone almost conceals the small pit of sadness in his chest. “Then, that will be incredible and I’ll be very proud of you.”

Alice looks sad, “But what about us?”

Sam squeezes her hand. Privately, he is a little gratified the choice feels hard for her. But he’s certain that, if push comes to shove, it would be him she gives up. “We’ll play it by ear, I suppose. You said the job didn’t even start until next Fall, who knows if we even make it that long?”

She looks down at her twisted, fraying grasses, “I hope we do.”

Sam considers her. Deep down, he suspected—he thought they both did—that her success would mean an inevitable breakup. Was she actually willing to put in the work to stave it off? Was he?

“Well…” he ventures, conscious of her watching him now. “I suppose the best case scenario is, you get the job, of course. Then, we have a year to figure out where this”—he gestures at the space between them—”is going. I have family in Germany. I could start looking for jobs over here. And, who knows, maybe we have a crazy little European chapter.” He looks at her, unsure, smiling like he almost believes it. Maybe, if they both believe it hard enough together…

They hold each other’s gaze for a moment. Alice breaks into a winning smile. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” he says automatically. The boat bobs in the harbor. They are very far from home.

He leans forward to meet her for a kiss. He thinks about leaving New York, his job, his friends—for someone he's only just starting to understand. He puts out an arm to steady himself, braced against her lips and the rock. Sharp edges of coral and shell fragments press painfully into his hand.