“Maybe so.” As if there are more than a scattering of days ahead of us.
At the hotel, we ride the elevator up, and he leans in to kiss me. “Will you let me cook for you?”
“Yes.”
I get off on my floor to shower and change, and he continues on. In the hallway leading to my door, I’m alone for the first time all day, and suddenly everything feels like a dream.
I slam back into my body all at once, and it feels sad and exhausting, and all my problems are piled up, waiting for me. The question of why my sister faked her own death, where she is, the strangely clear recognition now that I’m at a distance that I’m no longer happy in the ER. I wonder how Hobo is doing without me. I wonder if I should call my mom again, but it was only this morning that we talked.
It feels like so much longer.
I climb in the luxurious shower, washing away seawater and blood and rain from my body and my hair. The shampoo smells of tangerines. I close my eyes and work up the suds, enjoying the fragrance—
I’m back on the ferry, pressed against the railing as Javier kisses me, and I’m transported, his lush mouth, his exquisite skill, his way of holding my head so gently—
I snap my eyes open. Is this a good idea? Really?
Through the glass of the shower, I see my blurry reflection in the steamy mirror. I think of my admission that I haven’t had much happiness, and it suddenly seems ridiculous. What am I waiting for?
Maybe for once in my life I might like to get a glimmering of what that feels like. It seems that he might know how to access it, where to find it. If I can grasp a day or two of happiness, why not?
A soft voice of warning tries to tell me he’s dangerous to my equilibrium. I shush it, eager for once to enjoy something a little reckless. It’s only for a few days. Nothing too deep can take root in such a short time, surely.
So I dry my hair and leave it in loose curls and wear simple clothes that he can take off when it’s time, and I go upstairs.
He’s several floors above me, on a floor with fewer apartments. I stand before his door and pause for a moment, touching my stomach. Music plays quietly, and I hear the clank of a pan or dish. A scent of browning onions fills the air.
What am I doing? He is a lot more . . . everything . . . than I ordinarily let myself get mixed up in. I don’t date suitable men. Not the surgeon who pursued me for more than six months before he finally realized I really meant it. Not the fit colonel who came in with a snapped wrist and charmed me with his chocolaty eyes.
The men I sleep with—and let’s be clear that I am standing in this hallway with sex on my mind—are like the surfer from last summer, or the bartender at the restaurant I like to have dinner in a few times a month, or even the robust coworker of my mother’s, dark-skinned and charming and getting a bit long in the tooth for his dream of breaking into the music business.
If I compare Javier to Chris, the surfer, they’re not even the same species. Javier is a grown-up, a man so comfortable with himself that he makes moving in the world look easy. Every inch of my skin wants his hands. My ears want that sonorous voice. My mouth wants his lips.
And my belly, it reminds me, wants food. I raise my hand and knock. He opens the door and, with a flourish of a tea towel, invites me in.
“I was afraid you might change your mind,” he says.
I think of how long I stood in front of the door. “You promised me food. I very rarely turn that down.”
He brushes my hair over my shoulder, touches the side of my neck. “Is it the food you came for?”
I look up at him. Shake my head.
A smile edges his mouth, and with one hand, he brushes my cheek. “Good. Please sit down. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”
I wander more deeply into the apartment. This one is at least double the size of mine, with a separate bedroom and a proper, glitzy kitchen made all of aqua glass and stainless steel. The styles are different from what I’m used to. The taste of Aucklanders. His unit sits on the corner, and a balcony stretches from one set of glass doors in the living room around the corner to the bedroom, all overlooking the city center and the harbor beyond. “I love this building. It’s so . . . extravagant, isn’t it? I feel pampered.”
“You can see the building on postcards and coffee cups.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He brings me a generous glass of white wine. “A local vintage. See if you like it.”
“Thanks.” I sip gingerly, aware that I’m teetering on the shores of a lake made of exhaustion and sexual tension and jet lag, but the wine is like a breeze, sharp and clean, not too sweet. “Fantastic.”
“Good.” He heads back to the kitchen. He’s changed clothes from earlier, and his hair is damp at the ends. He wears a pair of jeans with a Henley in heathered blue. The fabric lies easily over his skin, tastefully clinging to his torso.
“What are you cooking?”
“So simple, tortilla española. Do you know it?”
I shake my head.
His sleeves are tugged up on his forearms, and the cup towel is over his shoulder as he tilts a wide skillet and shakes the potatoes and onions within. The potatoes are slightly crisped on the outside, the onions translucent, and my stomach growls as he salts the mix, then scoops it into a bowl with raw whipped eggs. “This is everywhere in Madrid, like sandwiches in the States.”
“Are there a lot of sandwiches? I don’t know that I ever noticed.”
He makes a noise. “So many sandwiches! Every place has sandwiches! Turkey sandwiches, hamburgers, grilled cheese, and submarines.”
I laugh. “Just subs. The submarine would be the boat that goes underwater.”
“Yes.” His grin is quick, crinkles the sun lines on his face. “Subs. I like them. With ham and salami and all those vegetables.”
“Me too. I like hamburgers too. Cheeseburgers, especially, the sloppier the better.”
“Cheeseburgers are excellent.” He scrapes the pan and adds a fresh layer of oil, adroitly turning the pan side to side to spread it evenly. He holds his hand a few inches above the burner to test the heat and then settles the pan back down, pours in the egg and potato mix. “This is where the danger is,” he says with some seriousness. “We must be very patient, let the eggs cook slowly.”
We both watch the eggs, watch the edges and then the middle dry slightly, and when the texture arrives at some particular level, he picks up the pan and, with a deft gesture, flips the flat omelet into the air and catches it to brown on the other side. Leaning on the counter, he gives me one raised brow and a sideways smile. “Are you impressed?”
I laugh at my words coming back to me. “Yes. I am very impressed.”
When the eggs finish, we sit side by side on the couch—“There is a table, but look where it is, against the wall, so cramped”—looking out to the view of the harbor. The eggs are perfect, the potatoes and the onions and all of it blending into a homey, satisfying meal.
We both fall to eating like hungry puppies. “So good,” I manage. “I need to add this to my short list of things to cook after work.” I take a sip of wine. “Except that I never seem to remember to buy eggs.”
His plate is empty. “Do you want some more?”
“Yes. If it isn’t too piggy.”
He laughs and fills my plate again, sitting with me. We watch the lights across the harbor. The music has shifted to soft Spanish guitar, a sound that almost has a color, a pale, early green that winds around the room, sprouting flowers. I think of him on the stage, bending in to sing a love song.
“Surely,” he says after a moment, “there are market deliveries for a busy woman such as yourself. I myself would starve without them.”
I shrug. “I just always tell myself I’m going to shop, and then I pop in and buy cat food and milk and forget everything else.”
I’ve made short work even of the second plate, and I don’t know if it’s just anticipation or genuine hunger, but I dab my lips carefully. He takes my plate and sets it atop his on the coffee table and now moves closer, brushing my hair away from my neck.
“Tell me about your cat.”
“His name is Hobo,” I say, closing my eyes as his mouth falls on the bend between neck and shoulder.
“I like cats,” he says quietly.
“He’s black. A feral I rescued.” I turn toward him, settling my hands on his face so that I can kiss him properly. His jaw is exquisitely smooth, much smoother than it was on the ferry. I stroke the clean skin. “You shaved.”
“Yes,” he murmurs, and kisses me back. As it was on the ferry, we kiss for a long time, and I marvel that only kissing can fill so much need.
Then he stands and offers his hand, and I follow him to the bedroom. I take off my shirt and help him with his, and then my bra is gone, and our skin slides together as we kiss again and again, with increasing heat, my breath hurried and ragged as he slides his hands beneath the soft waist of my pants and helps me get out of them. I reach for his jeans, but he says, “Allow me.”
And then we’re on the bed, naked, and I’m so hungry I almost want to bite him. So I do bite him, his shoulder. The size of his body excites me. His tongue excites me. His mouth, his teeth nipping me, his hands gripping me so hard. It’s a very physical, almost rough joining, and I’m glad of it, glad of the slamming energy, glad of the feeling of him in me, his urgency, and my own powerful grip. I wrap my legs hard around him, and we move, and move, and move. My voice is guttural, our skin slick, and we tumble over and lie there together in the dark, panting.