But with Mateo, there was this strained politeness between us. I felt closer to him than anyone else here, but despite from the occasional times he’d grab my hand, there was always an acute physical distance between us. I knew that was probably a good thing. If I did the beso beso cheek kiss with him I’d probably head straight for his mouth.
While I walked over to Antonio’s cottage where my group was meeting, my mind kept going back to that thought. His mouth. I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, even though I knew it would be heaven. He had that perpetual smirk that only good kissers had, like he knew how to use his mouth in every way, everywhere. His sensual lips didn’t hurt either. His stubble would scratch you up perfectly, a bit of pain with the pleasure.
Plus he was hot, thirty-eight and an ex-athlete. That amounted to the type of experience that most men didn’t get.
Before I got started on what he’d think about the feeling of the tongue ring he’d admired so much, I cut myself off. This crush was getting out of control and I needed to just…
Fuck. I don’t know what I needed. I needed to go home and bring out my vibrator, that’s what I needed.
When I walked into Antonio’s cottage that he shared with Ed, an elementary school teacher from New York, I knew my crush on Mateo wasn’t the only thing out of control. The group—Antonio, Polly, Beatriz and Ricardo—were all listening to Faithless and dancing around the room like they were at a rave, bottles of beer spilling from their hands.
“What the hell?” I said loudly, closing the door behind me. They raised their beers at me but kept dancing. “Aren’t we supposed to be practicing for the play?”
“Oh don’t be such a wet blanket, Vera,” Polly said as her blonde pigtails and fake boobs bounced around her. “We know what we’re doing.”
Wet blanket? Since when was I ever considered the wet blanket?
Beatriz smiled at me, coyly. “We didn’t think you would show up,” she said, her English practically fluent now. “Since you were with Mateo.”
Hold up. Her comment practically floored me. I had half a mind to storm over to the iPod dock and pause the music and ask her just what the hell she meant by that.
I suppose it was all too obvious on my face.
Antonio stopped to take a sip of his beer, his chest heaving from the activity, his mustache covered in droplets of sweat. He grinned at me. “It is all good.”
I frowned. “Nothing is good. What are you guys talking about?”
“Hey, we’re all here to have fun,” Ricardo said in such an easy, cheesy way that I had to wonder who the hell he was fucking while he was here.
That’s not why your company spent money to send you here, I thought. It’s not why we’re all talking all day long until our throats are raw.
Perhaps I was being a wet blanket. Usually Vera Miles was a warm, comfortable blanket—the purveyor of wet dreams. Now I was annoyed and irritated and slightly embarrassed.
“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” I said staunchly.
Polly and Beatriz exchanged a look.
“It is fine, Vera,” Antonio tried to reassure me with his big grin. “No one cares. We’re all friends.” He went over to the iPod dock and turned it off. The silence sounded odd. “We should do some practice now, yes?”
No. I didn’t want to practice anymore. I wanted to talk about what they were all being so damn coy about.
“You know Mateo is married,” I told them, making sure to look them all in the eye. “We are just friends. That is possible between a man and a woman.”
“Okay,” Beatriz shrugged. “I couldn’t blame you though. He is a very charming man….very…exciting.” She said the last word like it was made of candy. Like she knew him on a level I had only suspected.
I had no choice but to ignore it. If I defended our relationship more, it would seem like I had something to hide. And I had nothing to hide except my feelings for him. They weren’t so important. They were something that I could keep locked deep inside and no one would ever have to see them—not him, not me, not anyone.
It was just a crush.
We managed to spend ten minutes going over our play once. I was just going through the motions, not even finding the humor in it. It was some stupid skit that Polly and Ricardo basically took over and wrote. It was slightly funny but overall just dumb, about an American mugger (played by me, of course) and the Spanish family traveling in America. I asked them to hand over their money, they heard something else, and that was that. In the end I got shot though, so at least I got to fake an epic death scene.
With beers in tow, my group headed off down toward the reception and up the rickety iron staircase to the large room where we had the party and every after dinner event since then. Everyone seemed to be a barrel of nerves, even the usually confident ones like Nerea and Eduardo.
We all sat down in the rows of fold-out chairs and waited for Jerry to call out our group’s names. First up was a group that Angel and Claudia were in, a spoof on Monty Python’s parrot sketch. Claudia did really well, even sporting a fake mustache that kept falling off, much to everyone’s delight. After that went two more groups and then my group was called.
By now I didn’t care how stupid we might look. Everyone was being supportive, even when things weren’t entertaining or funny. I went with my group to the front of the room. Mateo was in the front row, smiling at me. I gave him quick smile back, all too aware that my group was probably watching my interaction.
As we got ready and placed ourselves, Beatriz stuck a toque over my head for my part. Jerry had a basket full of props for us and by luck that could pass as a robber’s ski mask.
Of course when you pulled a toque down over your face, you couldn’t see anything. I had to act the whole skit blind, which was hilarious—to everyone else, especially when I was delivering muffled dialogue to the wall. I then fucked up on my cue to die, which had me stumbling a bit into the audience and falling on poor Angel. This was the second time this program that someone had fallen right into him, and the both of us went tumbling to the ground with a thump.
More laughter ensued and eventually mystery hands pulled me up off the floor and took the toque off my head. When I finally was able to see, I saw Angel being helped up by Antonio and I was in Mateo’s hands.
Everyone was laughing but in his eyes I saw genuine concern.
“Are you all right?” he asked, inspecting me closely. His hand went to my lower back and I nearly froze at the contact. I felt like everyone’s eyes were on me.
I told him I was fine and apologized to Angel before I went scampering to the back row to sit with my group. Luckily, no one said anything about the fact that I nearly took out the entire first row of the audience. Or anything other than that.
As the next group went up, I tried to gain control of my racing heart. I felt totally out of sorts and I was ready for this day to be over. I hated that there really was nothing going on between Mateo and I, yet I was spooked and acting like there was. It didn’t help that people were fucking commenting on it, like it was so damn obvious. There was nothing to be obvious about.
I buried my head in my hands. I needed to get a grip. I really would have thought my crush would have worn itself off after a week but it was only growing, like a bloodthirsty monster and now it was crawling out of my head and heart and taking swipes at other people, letting them know it existed.