Exhaling, I drag my hand along my jaw. “Listen, I’m a shitty boyfriend. I’m the last person you should be pining away for.”
“Who said anything about pining?” she asks. “I guess … I guess I just want to keep you in my life. One way or another. In whatever capacity you desire. We’re friends, you and me. Right? You’d call me a friend?”
Pulling in a lungful of sex and perfume-scented air, I hold her stare, finding it nearly impossible to say no to her sweet request.
“I’m not trying to fall in love with you, Corporal,” she says. “I’m not trying to be your girlfriend. I just want to be … something … to you. I don’t even know what.”
Pressing my lips together, I mull over my options. “I don’t understand what you want, Maritza.”
“You fascinate me. You’re complicated and quiet and strong and determined and intelligent and—”
“How can you know all those things when you’ve known me a week?”
Her eyes roll and her head tilts back. “I don’t know. I just … I feel them. I can’t explain it. I just know that if you walk out of here tonight and I never hear from you or see you again … I’m not going to like that. And if you don’t feel the same? Fine. I’ll accept that. But I had to put it out there while I had the chance.”
We’re still very much naked and I’m still very much ready to devour her again, but this changes things.
Lifting my hand to her pointed chin, I run my thumb along her lower lip. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
And I don’t want to hurt her.
I respect her too much to do that.
“I’m not going to fall in love with you,” she says, though I don’t entirely believe her. “I told you that. I just want to hear from you, that’s all. And when you come home, if you want to see me, we can make that happen.”
I exhale. It’s so fucking hard to say no to her when she’s looking at me like this—like she thinks I’m some kind of wonderful.
“How about this,” she says, “so that you know I’m not trying to fall in love with you, I’ll write ‘P.S. I hate you’ at the end of each and every letter.”
I make a face. “A little extreme, don’t you think?”
“Come on. Just go with it. It can be our thing,” she says, with a chuckle before booping my nose.
“Who says I want to have a thing with you?” I tease. Kind of.
She gives my chest a playful jab. “This could be fun.”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“I wish I could, Corporal.” Her full mouth pulls wide, framing her perfect smile as she tilts her head. “But I don’t think I can.”
Thirteen
Maritza
* * *
He left before the sun came up but those still small hours lying in my bed, our bodies melded, I’ll never forget as long as I live. He kissed the inside of my palm, his touch gentle and his gaze soft. I wasn’t sure if it was a silent apology or a surrender of his ironclad heart.
Whatever our time together meant, I just know I’m never going to forget my week of Saturdays with Corporal Isaiah Torres—and I’d like to think the same for him.
Curled up in an arm chair in the living room sipping a coffee, I clutch the piece of paper with his address in my hands, torn from the same sheet of paper I used to write mine earlier this morning, before I watched him fold it into halves and tuck it in his wallet.
He kissed me goodbye after I walked him to the door—laughing through his nose as he told me not to read into it, that he was kissing me for purely selfish reasons that I’d never understand. I promised him it was not romantic, though in retrospect, it kind of was …
I swear when I closed the front door and watched through the window as he made his way back to his car, there was a cannon-sized hole in the middle of my chest.
He’s not my boyfriend.
And I’d hardly call us good, close friends.
But he’s special.
Our week was special.
I finish my coffee and hit the shower, reluctantly washing him off of me. My body is filled with aches and I trace the parts of me his mouth and tongue caressed mere hours before. By the time I’m finished, the delicious soreness between my thighs is all that remains, a fleeting memento of our final night together.
An hour later, I trek across my grandmother’s back yard and head into her kitchen where she and her best friend, Constance, are eating the breakfast Gram’s chef prepared.
“Morning, sunshine,” Grandma says, pointing her spoon at me.
My stomach rumbles when I spot the layout of exotic fruits and Greek yogurts and artisan bagels, and I help myself to a plate before joining the two of them.
“Morning,” I say. Each minute that passes is a reminder that I’m firmly planted back in reality whether or not I want to be.
As I sit here, spooning cinnamon granola into a dish of vanilla Greek-style yogurt, somewhere Isaiah’s boarding a bus to get to a plane that’s going to take him to a dangerous place for the better part of a year.
“Constance and I have lunch reservations at Mr. Chow,” Grandma says. “One o’clock today. Would you like to join us? Her grandson, Myles, is going to be there.”
The two of them exchange looks and ward off sheepish grins.
They’ve been trying to hook me up with Myles for years, and while I admit he’s cute, he just isn’t my type. He’s one of those film-school types who takes everything entirely too seriously. People like that just can’t sit back and enjoy things. They have to pick them apart until there’s nothing left but a few threads and crumbs, and that’s just not my thing.
“He’s been asking about you,” Constance says. “I’m not supposed to tell you that though.”
She giggles, lifting her finger to her lips.
“Oh, Maritza, you should come!” Grandma says, an oversized smile taking up half of her face. As much as I’d love to keep her happiness afloat, I can’t.
And for several reasons.
The biggest of which is the fact that I’m scheduled to work today.
“Have to be at work in an hour,” I say, taking a spoonful of yogurt. “Thanks for the invite though.”
“It’s fine, sweetheart,” Constance says. “Poor planning on our part. We shouldn’t have sprung it on you last minute. I’ll talk to Myles today and see what his schedule’s like these next few weeks. Maybe the two of you could have another little date?”
Ugh.
Please don’t.
I smile out of politeness. Constance is sweet as pie and cute as a button and she means well, but the first time I got roped into going on a date with Myles, I vowed to myself it would be the last time.
We don’t speak the same language, and by that, I mean he uses words like “cinematic universe” and “framing” and “bridge shot” and “aspect ratio” and “revisionistic” and the only language I speak is plain English.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that he made me see some artistic French movie with subtitles. Longest night of my life.