“Mountain Dew was an actual magic elixir. Do you know Mountain Dew?”
He nods.
“There were kitchen fairies and mermaids who moved things around to make the grown-ups crazy.”
“Sounds happy,” he says.
“That part of it,” I agree.
“And your sister, what was she like?”
I take a breath. “Beautiful—not just pretty but really beautiful, with this amazing, bright light around her all the time. Everyone loved her, but none of them loved her as much as I did.”
He brings the hand he smoothed up to his mouth, kisses my knuckles. “You must miss her so very much.”
I nod and take my hand back on the pretext of wanting to eat. “Your turn. What did you love as a child?”
“Books,” he says with a laugh. “I loved to read more than anything. My father grew angry with me—‘Javier, you need to run! You need to play with the other boys. Go outside.’” He lifts a shoulder. “I only wanted to lie in the grass and think about other worlds, other places.”
“What did you read?”
“Whatever I could find—” He makes a psshting sound, sends his hand out in a gesture of circles through the air. “Adventure and mysteries and ghost stories. Whatever.”
“You still love reading, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
“I like to read. I just don’t like to work hard to read. I like books that take me away the same way television or the movies do.”
“Like what?”
I frown and then reach for my phone, where all the books are listed in my reader. Scrolling through it, I say, “Okay, in the past few months I’ve read two historical romances, a mystery by a woman I like because I can trust her not to get too dark, and a cooking memoir.”
“Romance? Are you seeking love, gatita?”
“No,” I say definitively. “Passion ruined my family’s lives. I make it a practice to avoid it.”
“Love is not always destructive,” he says quietly, and slides a finger up my shin. “Sometimes love creates.”
I’m unexpectedly caught by something in his voice, a promise I can barely see, shimmering faintly on the horizon, and that scares me enough to throw out a gauntlet. “Tell me a time that love didn’t destroy what it first created.” He is divorced, clearly not involved with anyone. “In your own life,” I add.
He nods, stretching out sideways in front of me, close enough to touch my knee. I could press my palms to his shoulder, his head, but I don’t. I keep my arms crossed, one hand cradling the wine.
“When I was seventeen, a girl came to our neighborhood. She had the shiniest hair I had ever seen, and pretty ankles, and I could not find my voice to talk to her, but one day we met at the library, in the very same row. She was looking for the very same book I was.”
I’m tempted to brush the hair on his temple away from his face, but I don’t. “What book?”
“Stephen King, The Shining,” he says, and smiles up at me. “You thought it would be Don Quixote, yes?”
I smile. “Maybe.”
“We spent so much time reading and talking about reading. And soon we read each other, you know, both of us virgins.”
A ping snaps my chest, bringing me a memory of myself at seventeen, the first time I made love, to a boy I worked with at Orange Julius. James. How I loved him!
Javier continues. “With her, I learned about how easy sex can be.”
Something in my expression must give me away, because he says, “Who taught you that lesson?”
“It’s funny. I was just thinking about him before you came. A boy at school.”
“See? Love found you.”
“It broke my heart, though.”
“Sure.” He lifts his shoulders. “Me too. But you don’t die. You just . . . begin again.” He settles his hand on my thigh.
I take a sip of wine, aware of the winding promise between us. It feels dangerous and rich. “How many times?”
“As many times as life offers.”
A sharp, hard pain stabs my heart. I shake my head. “I don’t fall in love.”
His lips quirk, almost a smile. His fingers brush my knee. “You are falling a little with me.”
I smile. “Nope.”
“I see.” His hand curves down the length of my calf, around my heel and then my instep. I wonder briefly if he thinks my ankles are pretty. “How many times have you fallen in love, Kit?”
“Only once.”
“How old were you?”
I make a noise, exasperated. “That question again. Seventeen.”
“Seventeen,” he repeats. “Seventeen is generous and earnest.”
A memory of James and me, making love over and over, laughing and eating in that empty apartment, flickers through me. His long thighs, his tongue on me, everywhere. “Yes,” I whisper.
Javier reaches for the buttons on his shirt, which I am wearing over my nakedness. He unfastens the first one, and I let him. “What was his name?”
“James.”
He unbuttons two more, and his hand sweeps inside, between my breasts, stroking a line. “You were badly wounded?”
I nod, forgetting it all as he opens another two buttons and slides the fabric aside to show my breasts. Immediately my skin is alive from head to toe, every centimeter of it greedy for him. “Perhaps you can let him go after so many years, hmm?”
I’m mesmerized by his heavy-lidded admiration as he moves his hand over my shoulders, down the valley between my breasts, his fingers light as he brushes the curves, the tips, my belly, then back up.
“Maybe,” I whisper, and then his mouth follows his hands, and I’m gone.
When the storm is at its height, we don swimsuits and head downstairs to the indoor pool. It’s very late, and the pool is empty, waiting there in blue splendor for us to dive in. We frolic like dolphins, diving and splashing, and then we both fall to swimming laps, easily and simply, back and forth. I want the water on my body and slip out of my suit, and he smiles and does the same. If anyone comes, there will be ample warning.
So we swim naked with the night blurry beyond rain-spattered windows. The wind whistles and howls, but inside is warm and safe.
When we finish, we wrap up in towels and head into the dry-heat sauna. “Heaven,” I say.
The heat opens my pores, my body, wafts in waves over my breasts and knees and nose. “I would love to have a pool like that, where I could swim whenever I wanted.”
“Mm. In my house in Madrid, I have a sauna and a steam shower.”
“Decadent.” I open one eye. He’s leaning back against the wall, his arms loose, hands resting on his thighs. His body is strong, well shaped, with that slight extra around the middle that I find so weirdly appealing. It makes me want to climb on him again. Instead, I close my eyes and say, “You must be a rich man.”
“Not poor,” he agrees. “But you too—you are a doctor.”
“I do all right. Housing is stratospheric in California, but the rest is fine.” I breathe in the hot air, coughing slightly. “I bought my mom a condo on the beach, and I have a little house. I can be at the beach in seven minutes on foot.”