Checkout at 11, bus at 7, and a whole blazing afternoon to burn in between. Chu and Tia paid for the extra half day and spent it the only sane way in that heat: naked in the room, cold beer, AC on full, beach firmly cancelled.

On a whim, Tia threw it up on Reddit. Anyone else out there spending their last Goa day like this? 

One guy answered and made it over in 45 minutes flat, more beer and a bag of chocolates in hand. Party of three now, all bare, that loose easy charge of strangers who've dropped every layer. He caught a few candid shots as the afternoon went.

Then Chu had his vision. Chocolate, melting. Chu, drunk. Chu, suddenly convinced he was a body-paint artist with Tia as his canvas. He was not an artist. The result was a glorious mess, Cadbury everywhere it had no business being, Tia wearing the bulk of it, all three of them wrecked with laughter.

Eventually someone clocked that no one had eaten. Lunch, ordered in. When it landed, Chu strolled to the door exactly as he was, beer in hand, warned that the room was clothing-optional bordering on clothing-hostile, and got nothing but a smile back. Goa does that. Nobody flustered, everyone at ease.

That was the afternoon. Three people with nothing to hide and no urge to hide it, stretched out through the heat exactly as they were. Then, reluctantly, clothes, bags, bus. But for those hours, being seen and being ourselves were the same thing.

The Send-Off Nobody Was Dressed For