The Accountant in Tulum

I'm Ruby, I'm twenty-eight, and I do taxes for a living. That last part matters, because I'd never done a single spontaneous thing in my life until this trip.

Enrique was standing in the middle of our hotel room holding the white sundress up like a dare.

"Put it on," he said. "Come on. Just for tonight."

"I'm not wearing that out. It's see-through, Enrique. People will see everything."

"So?" He grinned at me. He's thirty, he photographs beautiful strangers for a living, and he has never once worried what people think. That's probably why I keep him around. "That's the whole point of Tulum, Ruby. Nobody here knows you. Nobody here cares."

I stood there in my bra and underwear doing the math I always do. Cost of embarrassment versus probability of regret. And for once, weirdly, the numbers came out different.

"Fine," I said. "But if anyone laughs, we're leaving."

Nobody was going to laugh. I knew that. But saying it made me feel better.

The dress had come from a little boutique off the beach road, and that story is worth telling, because I wouldn't be standing in that hotel room without it.

* * *

We'd found the shop that afternoon, mostly by accident. Enrique wanted to photograph the light through the palm fronds and I wanted air conditioning, and the shop had both. The owner was a woman named Anne, thirty-five, had lived in Tulum for eight years. She took one look at me in my sensible travel outfit and my sensible sneakers and something lit up in her face.

"Oh, you're the one," she said.

"I'm sorry, the one what?"

"The one who needs this dress." She pulled it off a rack before I could argue. White linen, thin as a promise, short. "You've been told your whole life to be careful. I can see it. You sit in your body like it's an office chair."

I laughed. "That is a horrible thing to say and also completely accurate."

"Try it on. And listen to me." She leaned in like she was sharing a secret. "No bra. It's not made for one. It's meant to be worn like this." She held it up to the light and I could see her fingers through it. "Trust me. You'll thank me at two in the morning."

"Two in the morning," I repeated. "Ma'am, I usually go to bed at ten."

"Not this week you don't." She was already steering me toward the fitting room. "Go. And come out and show me. Don't do the thing where you hide in there and come out saying no."

She had my number, which was annoying. I put the dress on, skipped the bra because she'd been standing right there when she said it and I couldn't face the interrogation, and stepped out.

Anne put her hand over her mouth. Enrique, sitting by the door with his camera, went quiet in a way I'd never seen him go quiet.

"Well?" Anne said.

"I look like I'm not wearing anything."

"You look like you finally showed up to your own life." She rang it up before I could change my mind. "Now go. Dance. Sweat. Get sand in it. That's what it's for."

* * *

So there I was, back in the hotel room, holding the dress, heart doing overtime.

Enrique watched while I pulled it over my head. And I want to tell you, the second that linen settled against my skin with nothing under it, my breath actually caught. It wasn't sexy-movie stuff. It was more like the fabric was a living thing, cool and soft and moving with me, and every time it shifted I felt it everywhere.

"Wow," Enrique said. Just that. His eyes had gone wide and he wasn't even pretending to look at my face.

"Say something useful," I said, turning in front of the mirror.

"I'm trying to remember how cameras work and it's not going well." He raised his phone and took a picture before I could object. "Sorry. I had to. You understand. I had to."

I did understand, actually. I couldn't stop looking at myself either. The dress moved like water. You could see the shadow of everything underneath and the shape of nothing, both at once.

"Okay." I grabbed my heels and put them on. "Okay, let's go before I talk myself out of it."

"Ruby." He caught my hand at the door. "For real. We can stay in if you'd rather."

I looked at him. He meant it. That's the thing about him, he always means it.

"No," I said. "I'd rather not be me tonight. Let's go."

* * *

The club was a ten-minute walk down the beach, low season, so the sand was half empty and the music got louder the closer we got. It was a Thursday, which apparently didn't matter at all, because the place was packed.

The floor shook. The DJ had reggaeton turned up to a level I could feel in my teeth, and the bass came through the boards under my heels like the building had a heartbeat.

I stopped just inside the entrance. Everybody was moving and I was standing still in a see-through dress and my whole nervous system was screaming at me.

"Hey!" Enrique's hand landed on my hip, warm and steady. "Look at me. Nobody's looking at you."

"Everyone is literally looking at me."

"Well, yeah, because you look incredible. But not in a bad way. In a wow way." He pulled me a little closer, his mouth near my ear so I could hear him over the music. "Feel it. Just feel it. That's all you have to do tonight."

A bartender caught my eye across the bar. Older than me by a few years, maybe thirty-four, built like he'd been pouring drinks his whole life, and he'd clearly already clocked the dress. He raised an eyebrow at me like, you sure about this?

I raised one back like, ask me tomorrow.

He laughed and slid two drinks down the bar to us without being asked.

"From the house," he called over. "You look like you need it."

Enrique paid him anyway, because Enrique is incapable of accepting free things, and I took the glass and drank half of it in one go, which is not like me at all.

"Whoa," Enrique said. "There she is."

"There who is?"

"You. The one who does shots at weddings and then apologizes to everyone the next morning." He was smiling. "I like her."

And the thing was, I was starting to like her too. The bass was in my chest. The linen was moving against my skin every time the air moved. My hips were already finding the beat without asking my brain for permission, and my brain, for once, was fine with it.

"Enrique," I said.

"Yeah?"

"I think I might be fun. Don't tell my boss."

He laughed and pulled me toward the floor, and I went, heels and all, into the crowd, into the noise, into whatever this night was going to be.

The bartender came back before our glasses were even warm. He set down two shots, tequila, real tequila by the look of it, and slid them across the wood until they bumped our fingers.

"On me again," he said. "You two look like you're celebrating something."

"We're not," I said. "We're just here."

"Then celebrate nothing. Nothing is the best thing to celebrate." He winked at me. Actually winked. "I'm Rico, by the way. I moved here from Cancún four years ago and I have never once gone to bed before two."

Enrique laughed. "This is Ruby. She goes to bed at ten."

"Ten!" Rico put a hand over his heart like I'd shot him. "Madre santa. Okay. Tonight you go to bed at two and you say ten was a different woman."

And right there was the crux of it. Everyone kept saying versions of it. Anne said it. Enrique said it. Now this stranger with the shaker in his hand said it, and every single one of them looked at me like it was obvious. Like the woman in the white dress was the real one and the spreadsheet lady was the costume.

I picked up the shot.

"Ruby," Enrique said, half warning, half delighted.

"Ten was a different woman," I said, and threw it back.

It burned. It burned so good. My eyes watered and I slammed the little glass down on the bar and Rico whooped and Enrique whooped and some woman next to me who I'd never met whooped too, and I was laughing, actually laughing, with my whole chest.

The linen shifted against me when I laughed. I felt it everywhere again. And I noticed, I couldn't not notice, that Rico's eyes dropped once, quick and respectful, and came back up with a grin. The dress was working on everyone. The dress was working on me.

"Go dance," Rico said, waving us off with the shaker. "You're wasting a good dress standing at a bar talking to me."

* * *

Enrique found a pocket of floor near the edge of the crowd and pulled me into it. The DJ had slowed into something thick and rolling, all bass and hips, the kind of song that doesn't ask permission.

He turned me around so my back was against his chest and his hands settled on my hips, and we moved.

I don't dance. To be truthful, I do not dance. Weddings, work parties, I'm the one at the table with the purse. But the tequila had unlocked something, and the bass was doing the thinking, and Enrique's hands were warm through the thin linen, and my hips just... went.

"Okay," he said into my hair. "Okay, wow."

"Shut up and dance."

"I am dancing. I'm also admiring."