When We Believed in Mermaids(55)

He chooses my bedroom.



At midnight, I’m lying on my stomach. Javier lies next to me, tracing the dip in my spine with light fingers—up, down, up, down. It’s hypnotically soothing. “Tell me about your broken heart,” he says, “this one broken heart that has kept you away from love for the rest of your life.”

“Oh, it’s not that dramatic. I haven’t had a lot of time to fall in love.”

“Psssht. Love does not need time.”

I turn my head to look at him. My carapace of protection has disappeared, and I don’t even know where it is at the moment. “His name was James. I met him when I was very lonely, after the earthquake.” Easily, I trace the round of his shoulder, trail a finger down his biceps. “He had a girlfriend, but we started working together at Orange Julius.” I pause, remembering. “I had the worst crush ever. I could hardly breathe when he was in the room.”

“I am a little jealous.”

I smile. “He broke up with his girlfriend, and for a whole summer, we were inseparable. We taught each other everything, really. No one was ever home at my house, so we just hung out there and explored each other.” On my back, Javier’s touch has shifted to an open palm, moving up and down. “I was so very much in love. It filled every part of me. And really, it was the first time in a really long time that I was happy.”

“And?”

“And—his ex-girlfriend started threatening me. My sister heard about it, and she got into a fight with the girl. Josie broke her nose.”

“Oh.” There’s amusement in his voice.

“It wasn’t funny. She was one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen, and—”

He chuckles, bending to kiss my shoulder.

“James was furious with my sister, and they got into an actual fistfight too, and that was that. We broke up. He quit Orange Julius, and when school started, he was back together with his old girlfriend, and he never spoke to me again.”

“He was a pig, that one.”

“No, I think that was you, wasn’t it?” I turn, teasing him.

He laughs, sliding his hand around my ribs. “But I was never so cruel.”

“No,” I say quietly. I suddenly and urgently wish I could stay right in this room forever. I pat his stomach. “I like your tummy.”

He laughs. “In the winter, there is more of it. You wouldn’t like it so much then.”

“I think I would still like it.”

He sighs sadly, pats it. “That fat little boy is always ready to take over. I might be a fat old man someday.”

I place my hand on that belly, soft over the muscle beneath. “Still.”

“You can find out how it looks in the winter if you wish.”

I look away.

He touches my chin and slides down so that our faces are close. I can see the way individual lashes grow and the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. “So your heart was broken, and you cannot bear to let anyone in now.”

“It wasn’t just that. It was everything—the earthquake and my dad and Dylan. All of it.”

“I know.” He leans in to kiss me, gently, and pulls back. “I need you to listen for one minute without saying anything in return.”

Something flutters in my chest.

“You think I am only flirting when I say that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but I am not. It is not extravagance. It is not a way to get you in my bed . . . though I see that it may have been a good tactic.”

“I need to remind you that this is my bed, señor.”

“Well, either way.” He touches my mouth. “When I saw you, I recognized you, like I’ve been waiting, all this time, for you to show up. And there you were.”

My heart aches. “We live on different continents.”

“Yes.” He bends and kisses me, longer this time, and I find myself kissing him back. “But I think you also have found feelings for me.”

I take a breath, and for once in my life, I am honest. “Yes, I have. I might actually have been falling in love a little bit.”

“Have been?”

“I’m leaving in a few days.”

“Mm. That is true.” He kisses my throat, and flutters move elsewhere. “Unless I convince you that you should stay longer.”

Burying my hands in his hair, I pull him closer. “You can try, I suppose.”

I find myself memorizing the feel of him. His shoulder blades and the tip of his ear, his voice in my ear, murmuring in Spanish, the feel of his thighs between mine, the taste of him on my mouth.

For remembering later.





Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mari

I drive to Sapphire House, which draws me like a siren. I’ve never been there at night yet, and the view is astonishing, even more magical than I imagined. Standing on the bluff, looking over the glittering spread of the city, I think of the day Simon brought me here for the first time.

My husband, back when he adored me and bought me a legendary house. A hole tears in my heart as I think of it.

I let myself into the dark, empty rooms. I turn on lights as I go, trying to bring in warmth, but it’s just so very empty. I’m never alone at night. My family is always with me.

Is this how it will be, going forward? The possibility is agonizing. I had no idea how much I needed and wanted a family or how good I would be at it.

In the kitchen, I set the kettle to boil and lean against the counter, waiting. The light in here is green and unpleasant, and one of the things I want to install is better, warmer lighting. Did Helen not mind it? I think of her here with Paris and Toby, alone in the giant house for decades and decades and decades. Why did she stay? Why not sell the house and find some more appealing bungalow somewhere? There’d have been plenty of money. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it, and now I wonder why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. Was she hiding something? Doing penance?

Carrying my mug of tea to the lounge, I let myself out the French doors and sit on the deck. The sound and smell of the sea ease the tension in my neck.

What a disaster. Had I really believed that I’d get away with it forever?

Yes. I mean, why not?

And yet now that it’s all out in the open, I’m relieved. Everything in my life is turned upside down, but I can finally tell my real story. The people I love can know me—on both sides of the line. The people who knew Josie, and by that I guess I mean Kit, and the people who love Mari. Sipping my tea, watching the half moon skim the surface of the water, I try to imagine how Nan will take it. Gweneth.

Mom.

I’ve carried a torch of hatred for my mother for so long now that it’s hard to even see beyond the straw woman I’ve made of her. With moonlight and sea wrapping me in the same light as childhood, I remember another side of her, the one who so tenderly took Dylan in, who gave that lost boy a home. It’s startling to realize that she was younger than I am now when all that was happening. I was born when she was only twenty-one, so she wasn’t even thirty when Dylan washed into our world. The sexy young trophy wife of a much older man.

Leaning back against the wall, I wonder what that must have been like. My father was almost fifteen years older than her, and at first totally obsessed with her.

When had he started taking lovers? When did she find out?

It makes me sad.

Out of nowhere comes a memory of when I was only four or five. My mother and I sat together on the vast patio of the restaurant and watched the ocean. She sang to me, a ballad about a mermaid who warned sailors of a shipwreck. A knot in my chest aches as the vision unspools—the waves crashing, the quiet moon, her voice and her arms around me.

Mama.

The day of the earthquake, we were in downtown Santa Cruz. She bought me ice cream, not because I liked it but because she did. I was stunned and sad, my uterus cramping after the violent cleansing it had just undergone, and she was uncharacteristically silent. “Are you okay?” she asked at last.

I shook my head, fighting tears. “I’m so sad.”

She reached over and took my hand. “I know, sweetie. I am too. One day, when the time is right, you’ll have babies, and I’ll be a grandmother who spoils them rotten.”

The pounding ache in my chest spread through my body, pulsing hard in my throat with an almost unbearable pressure. “But this one—”

“I know, sweetheart. But you’re barely fifteen.”

And that was when the earthquake started. It wasn’t like we’d never experienced one before, but you could hear this one coming, rumbling beneath the surface of the ground, coming toward us. The first wave hit the building with a slamming bang, knocking cutlery and glassware and baked goods from the counter onto the floor. Almost at the same second, the plate glass window next to us shattered, and my mother grabbed my arm and yanked me violently out of my chair to haul me toward the door. Before we got there, the ceiling started falling down, crashing around us, and a big chunk smashed into my head, knocking me down. My mom’s hand was ripped out of mine, and I screamed for her, feeling like I would faint, like my heart would stop beating.

She bent down and hauled my arm around her neck. “Hold on!” She dragged me to my feet, and we staggered outside, but even there, it was loud, and people were screaming, and things were breaking, falling, groaning all around us.