It took a few seconds longer than I would have liked but eventually I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue, the knotted stem displayed proudly.
Eduardo pulled an impressed face.
“Showing off your ring?” I heard Mateo say. A deliciously fresh ocean smell filled my nose and Mateo came into view, walking behind Eduardo and peering at me in curiosity. I promptly stuck my tongue back in my mouth and watched as his mouth curved up in a wicked smile.
Angel nudged Eduardo. “Give her money.”
I tore my eyes off of Mateo as Eduardo groaned and fished out his wallet. He slapped ten euros down into my hand and winked at me. “It was worth it.” He and Angel turned and walked off to the bar, which now had a line of people at it, the two women from reception now back there and popping off bottle caps.
Mateo folded his muscled arms across his chest. Though he was still wearing his sleek blue dress pants from earlier, now he had a white linen shirt that was unbuttoned just enough to give a hint of groomed chest hair. Something about that made a lusty thrill run through me. Every guy I’d been with had been smooth and hair free as a baby. Mateo was one hundred percent the opposite of that, one hundred percent man.
One hundred percent taken, I quickly reminded myself before the screwdriver went to my head.
“You got a job?” he asked in a smooth voice.
“What?”
He nodded at the ten euro note in my hand.
“Oh,” I said, shoving it in my small purse. I smiled. “No, I’m just taking bets. Tying a cherry stem with just your tongue, it’s a classic.”
He grinned at me with his white, polished teeth. I noticed there was one on the bottom that was kind of crooked. I liked that. It gave him character—not that he needed any more. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, in a way that let me know he did. His eyes left my mouth and then traveled down my body. “You look very nice.”
There was nothing smarmy or inappropriately sexual about the remark but my body didn’t know that. A shiver went down my spine and my nipples hardened. I cursed myself for not wearing a bra, even though the flowery maxi dress I was wearing did a good job of keeping the girls up.
“Thank you,” I said, trying not to beam too much. I was about to say the same thing to him when Claudia appeared at our side, reeking like a cloud of cigarette smoke. Man, she had the worst timing.
With her she had Becca, who looked a bit older than me, pixie red hair, pale as snow skin with freckles, and Sammy, a tiny, plump Australian chick in a too-tight shift dress, topped with frizzing blonde hair and gap-toothed grin. Sammy had sat next to me at the computer terminal when I was waxing on to Jocelyn about the program so far (I had been too paranoid to mention Mateo) and she’d come across like a chatterbox, talking to everyone who came through. Now she seemed drunk, swaying on her high heeled pumps, but she was smiling and anyone who smiled was good in my books.
“Vera,” Claudia reprimanded, “I missed you at dinner. I sat with these two, do you know Becca and Sammy?”
I caught Mateo’s eye briefly as he gave me a sly nod and then moved over to the bar to go talk to Antonio. Damn it. I suppose being around four women was probably too much for him.
I turned my attention back to Claudia, said hi to Sammy again and nodded at Becca.
“I saw you earlier,” Sammy slurred in her Aussie accent. Since the bar hadn’t been open for long, I wondered what she had been drinking. “I was going to tell you I liked your boots, the ones you had earlier, but you seemed to be writing up a storm.”
“I was getting my friends caught up,” I said, even though I really only had one friend.
She pointed a finger at me. “You know what you should do. Becca here, she has a blog. She blogs about her travel adventures and such. You should have a blog. Did you know this is her third time doing the program?”
Now I was intrigued. I looked at her with raised brows. “Really?”
Becca nodded shyly. “Yeah, three years in a row,” she said in quiet Scottish accent.
“Then you must like it,” I said. Captain Obvious, reporting for duty here.
She blushed but didn’t say anything, which made me think there was more to her story. Unfortunately, this was the time that Jerry appeared, climbing on top of the coffee table again, with a microphone he just whipped out of nowhere. I made a mental note to talk to Becca later and affixed my attention on Jerry before he yelled at me.
“Greetings, Anglos and Spaniards,” he said, his crackled voice coming out through a speaker in the corner. Totally unnecessary considering how small the room was. “I hope you’ve all enjoyed your official first day at Casa de Las Palabras!”
People clapped at that, a few hollered. I had the impression that everyone had gotten drunk at dinner because that’s the only way I could imagine anyone tolerating Jerry’s embarrassing enthusiasm.
“So,” he said, “I wanted to kick off the week with a party just for you guys. There are no rules, except for speaking English. Have fun and make sure you tip the bartenders! Every other night after dinner, we will be participating in the extracurricular activities, so enjoy this night while you can! Ole!” He then jumped off the coffee table, took a bit of a stumble and went falling into Angel who was the one closest to him.
I groaned and shook my head, looking back at the girls. Sammy was pulling a flask out of her bling bling purse and passing it to Claudia. So, that’s how they were doing it.
Claudia took a sneaky sip back and then, after an inquisitive glance to Sammy, passed it on to me.
I took a gulp of the burning, stinging liquid.
And that was that.
When my alarm went off at seven am the next morning, I could have sworn I had died at some point during my sleep and gone straight to hell. It was impossible for anyone to feel this horrible. My stomach burned with firewater, my hair smelled like an ashtray and the room was spinning slowly, in beat with the pounding in my head.
I moaned and tried to roll over but my head was in a vice and every time I moved, it tightened until I could feel my pulse in my temple. If I was back home, I would have taken some Gravol, drank a litre of Gatorade, taken a few B vitamins and prayed for sleep to take me away again.
But I wasn’t at home. I was in Spain. I was at a program that I was technically working for and there was no such thing as sleeping off a hangover. I had to get up. I had to get on with the day.
I had to try really, really hard not to vomit everywhere.
I practically crawled into the shower and sat on the tiles, letting the warm water hit my face, trying to knock some sense into me.
Dear god, what the hell happened last night?
Everything came back, sifting into my brain like shards of glass.
After Claudia, Sammy, Becca and I finished the flask of grappa—aka firewater, aka burning liquid of death—our party of four got moved upstairs. The dangerously narrow iron staircase led up to a large room where we’d be having all of our “extracurricular activities.” I don’t know who designed the building and thought putting the bar downstairs would be a bright idea, but there you go. From the amount of people who tripped on the small steps, we quickly nicknamed it the staircase of doom.
Once up there, it turned into a full-on dance party. Mustached Antonio started doing the hustle. Sammy was trying to grind up on Ricardo who was trying to grind up on Claudia. A massive conga line formed and I got stuck between Dave and Eduardo. Yolanda started making out with an Anglo guy I hadn’t met with. I was telling crude jokes with Dave and the English girl Polly. At some point during the night, I thought it would be funny to do Jaegerbombs with Beatriz.