“But I’m wearing loafers. No astronaut would ever wear loafers.”
“I’m wearing sandals,” I tell him. “If you’re worried about looking authentic, you’ll be light-years ahead of me.”
“You can’t wear sandals in space,” he practically shouts. Meanwhile, I look at the camera and see that Tizz is filming all of this. I nudge Ben and point to the camera and wave. “Do it for the fans, Ben.”
I hear him curse under his breath before he forces a smile and says, “Okay … Fun times ahead.” He looks like he’s in actual pain while he puts on his white space suit. The helper leads us to the green screen and says, “In the first shot, we’ll want you to lie down and hold hands with each other. That’ll be your jumping out of the shuttle picture.”
“No one actually jumps out of a space shuttle,” Ben tells the kid. “First, you’re harnessed to a tether that’s connected to the ship and then you gingerly step out into space. There is no jumping.”
“Dude, whatever.” The kid is obviously not impressed by this knowledge.
Ben and I assume the position we’ve been ordered to take, the whole while my co-host complaining, “We don’t even have space helmets on. We’d die within seconds of being exposed to deep space.”
“One, two, three…” the kid yells before our picture is taken. For the next shot, we’re given sunglasses and are told to stand arm in arm. “This is your moon shot.”
Drake calls out, “Hold up! Wouldn’t it be fun if we had a picture of you carrying Serafina across the moon?”
“Why would that be fun?” Ben asks.
“Let’s just try it.”
Ben picks me up and holds me like I’m a plutonium bomb or something. I know Drake is trying to get Ben to loosen up, so we actually look like we’re enjoying ourselves and aren’t, in fact, hosts of a germaphobe convention.
“Ben,” I lean over and whisper in his ear.
“Yes …” he looks paralyzed by fear.
“Remember this morning in our hotel room?”
His eyes sort of glaze over and he nods imperceptibly.
“Remember how I nibbled on your neck?”
I hear him gulp.
“I want to do that right now. In fact, you’re so damn sexy in that space suit, I want to rip it right off of you and pick up where we left off.”
Somewhere along the line, I’m no longer trying to relax him by taking his mind off of what we’re doing. I really mean it.
“Serafina …” Ben growls as he brings his face down to mine.
“Yes?”
He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he kisses me like he’s attaching himself to the only source of oxygen in deep space. We are fused, body and soul, and it is the most amazingly wonderful feeling ever. Ben kisses like he was meant for me. When I feel the tip of his tongue part my lips, I open to him fully. I have no idea how long we make out. A minute? Five? Three hours?
All I know is I have never been more turned on kissing a man as I am at this moment. I’m so focused on Ben that I lose all track of what it is that we’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t until I hear Drake call out, “That’s a wrap!” that I realize our first kiss has just been filmed for national television.
Ben sets me down, looking as shell-shocked as I feel. That kiss had enough force to throw the entire planet off its axis. And that’s when I notice them. The families patiently waiting in line, the moms and dads covering their young children’s eyes while they themselves glare and shake their heads.
“Oh, dear,” Ben mutters. “Sorry about that, folks. It’s for a space movie. You can uncover your children’s eyes now.”
“Yup,” I tell the crowd in a high-pitched voice. “All done.”
“For now,” Ben says, giving me a sexy grin.
Thirty
Ben
It’s five p.m. and we’re currently at The Fondue Factory with Maria and Lorenzo for a painfully early dinner. As soon as we got back to the hotel, they hopped in the backseat of the car and gave me the address. I tried to get out of it — in the name of allowing Serafina time alone with her grandparents. But here I sit, having the sweltering first course of cheese fondue. Seriously, who eats fondue when it’s ninety-five degrees out? Also, am I the only one worried about the repercussions here?
Serafina and her abuela are engrossed in a long conversation about her brother, Zay, who I gather has some sort of pituitary issue based on what they’re saying. Apparently, he has his first girlfriend at the age of thirty-two? And they’re both thrilled for him. But there are more pressing matters at hand here, ladies. We have an old man who’s in serious lactose-intolerance denial eating hot cheese by the spoonful. He just keeps going back for more. Cheese-dipped bacon, apples slices, bread cubes, cherry tomatoes. Lorenzo is sucking them down like an anteater who just found the world’s last termite colony.
Serafina and I are going to have to sleep in the car tonight. In fact, I’d venture to guess that most of the guests in the hotel are going to have to clear out after this meal hits his intestines.
“You didn’t try the bacon yet, Ben,” Maria says, forking a piece of it onto my plate. “It’s so good.”
“Thanks,” I manage with a nod. I stab it and dip it in the communal pot, then scald my lips before saying, “Mmm … delicious.”
She gives me a satisfied nod. “So, you two have a problem. You want to express your love, but you can’t while sleeping on the living room floor. I mean, what’s that gonna do to your backs?”
“That was just a dream, Abuela,” Serafina says in a warning tone.
“But dreams can come true. That’s why I’m going to help you by sharing the secret to Renzo’s and my happy marriage. We’ve been together for sixty-one years already,” she tells me.
“Sixty-one?” Just how old are these people?
Maria must be a mind-reader because she says, “We’re not that old. We started dating when we were fifteen and got married at seventeen.” She puts a couple more pieces of bacon and some bread on my plate and gestures for me to get eating. “Now, marriage isn’t easy, especially at the beginning. Sometimes, when Renzo would leave the house, I used to hope for him to get hit by a bus and SMACK! Over.”
Lorenzo says, “That’s true. She used to tell me that on my way out the door in the morning. She’d yell, ‘I hope you get hit by a bus.’”
The two of them stare into each other’s eyes and laugh like the crazy people I’m starting to suspect they are. But then Renzo reaches over and places his hand on top of Maria’s and gives it a squeeze. “Dios mio, I love you. We had the best time making up, didn’t we?”
Maria chuckles. “Remember how I used to tell you that I hoped a piano would fall on you?”
They laugh like lunatics while Serafina and I look on. When they’re done sharing the delightful memory of Maria’s bloodlust, she turns back to us with a serious expression. “We learned to talk openly about our feelings. I accepted his faults, and I stopped wishing he would die,” Maria says wisely. “Couples are never going to agree on everything. From watching you two on TV, I’ve learned how Ben here is very narrow-minded when it comes to astrology, and I’m guessing ghosts, and religion too.”