I gulped the rest of the wine and left her apartment, heading back to reception to meet Cristina for my next one-on-one, my mind and heart and hormones all over the place. Lo and behold, Mateo was walking up the path toward me.
He was on the phone, smiling.
His shirt was off and slung over his shoulder, exposing his bare chest, abs and arms.
Holy fuck.
For a moment, I was sure that time had stopped. Or maybe ever single nerve, cell, vein, bone, muscle in my body just slowed as I took him all in.
From his thick-veined forearms to his sculpted shoulders, broad chest peppered with neatly-trimmed chest hair, to his six-pack abs, he had, by far, the best body I’d ever seen on a man. He kept himself in fine ass shape, looking more like a young athlete than anything else. Like, he and David Beckham had more in common than I thought, although David’s skin tone wasn’t as mesmerizing. Mateo’s color was amazing, just beautiful, this dark golden bronze tan that covered him everywhere. I wanted so badly to just touch him, to lick the sheen of sweat of his skin. I bet he tasted like victory.
And to think, this was the man that Claudia said wanted to taste me.
I really, really wanted to believe her.
Meanwhile, I was just standing there like I was melting into a puddle of myself. I clamped my mouth shut as he walked past and I heard him say into the phone, “No, mi tesorito, it was easy, I didn’t injure myself.” He was beaming, talking about the game, to his wife. To his tesorito. And he called their relationship complicated? This was complicated.
He winked at me in acknowledgement, his smile becoming broader. I tried to smile back but it wouldn’t come. I just stared at him, feeling stupid, foolish and strangely rejected. In a perfect world I may have been his favorite food, but it still wasn’t what he got served every day. I turned around and walked down the hill, my heart feeling like a pin cushion.
“Vera!” I heard him call out from behind. I stopped and nervously glanced over my shoulder. He was holding the phone’s receiver to his chest, grinning at me. “I need to ask you your question.”
“What?” I answered, hoping it was quick.
“Who is your favorite Spaniard here?”
Seriously?
And yet I couldn’t lie to him.
“You,” I said, more to myself than to him. Then I turned around and walked away as quickly as I could.
Chapter Eleven
The verbal attacks from Lauren, my conversation with Claudia and my encounter with shirtless Mateo did a total number on my head and my heart. The next four days passed by like a blender, shaking me up, changing my feelings from moment to moment. It didn’t help that a heat wave had suddenly gripped the region and the sweat diluted my thoughts.
The thing was, I didn’t do love. That wasn’t my thing. That was the reason why I didn’t date, I only got laid when I needed to blow some steam or have some fun. I didn’t have time to put up with complicated relationships or put my heart and soul out there for someone to step on. Love was scarier than deep space.
So that’s why I knew I couldn’t be in love. I was just in lust with Mateo, and that was usually fine, totally normal. But now, everything seemed so jumbled. I couldn’t keep my head on straight and every time I tried to pick a new strategy to get through this, such as “from now on, I will not be attracted to him” or “from now on, I will not speak to him”, something came along and shook things loose.
That something was usually Mateo. Avoiding him was really hard when you were forced to interact nearly every day and especially hard when he still sought you out for his daily question.
It was also hard because every time he asked me to go for a walk with him, to eat breakfast with him, to look through an English gossip magazine together with him, I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be around him as much as I could, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
Really, I was just fucked. And not in the right way.
Like when he asked me to try napping with him again after we finished lunch. The temperature was sweltering, even with the fans inside going full blast, and everyone looked like they’d been hit by a truck carrying a flatbed of sweat. I hadn’t been sleeping very well thanks to the heat and was extra tired. So, taking a nap felt like the smart thing to do even though it might have not been.
We walked outside onto the patio where he once again grabbed a few extra seat cushions and went over to the tree where we last had our siesta. Because of the heat, he was wearing his worn-in jeans, Keds and a fitted black t-shirt with faded vintage designs, pretty much his uniform for the last few days. I wasn’t complaining. I loved Mateo in his slick business suits but I also loved Mateo in his dressed down, rough style. I had a feeling that deep down, that was the style closer to him.
I loved Mateo in everything.
Except, I wasn’t in love with him.
Of course.
“Ready for another siesta?” he asked as he got down on the ground, propping one of the cushions up under his head.
I looked around me to see if anyone was watching. There were a few people at the tables—Polly and Eduardo, Sara, Manuel and Nerea. The slut-shamer and the Brony were nowhere to be seen.
“You going to join me?”
I stared down at him, at his long body lying beneath me. What I really wanted to do was straddle him and put my hands down those jeans. But I shoved those lewd thoughts in a box somewhere.
I got down to the ground and made myself comfortable. We were lying closer to each other than we had been the first time. I felt like if I moved my arm even the slightest little bit, my hand would brush against his. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a coincidence or not.
“Are you going to the party tonight?” he asked casually.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Tonight was the weekly party and this time we were supposed to get a flamenco dancing show, put on by Sara and Nerea, with Manuel playing classical guitar.
“You seem tired,” he explained. “But so am I. It usually doesn’t get this hot until August.”
“I bet you wish you lived on the coast,” I said. In Vancouver, it rarely got hot—or cold—because we were by the ocean.
“Yes,” he said. “But I have an apartment in Barcelona, so I try to go on the weekends.”
Wow. Now that would be cool. I bet it was a beautiful place too. My mind immediately began to envision a butter-colored Dali-esque exterior overlooking a wide expanse of golden beach. Mateo was there, standing by a balcony, the transparent curtains blowing past him. In my mind, he was wearing only boxer briefs, with a plush robe half-hanging off of him, the ocean breeze moving his hair.
“You should come see it one day,” he said, still a casual tone to his voice. It entered my dream and suddenly I was in the picture too.
I let out an uneasy laugh and the image vanished. “Yeah, I wish.”
Silence hummed between us. I could feel that Mateo wanted to say something more but I didn’t want him to say it.
“So,” I said, sliding over it. “In the last however many days, you’ve asked me who my favorite Spaniard is, my first pet as a child, my favorite childhood memory, what my thoughts are on global warming and why Justin Beiber exists.”
He raised his hand in the air and started ticking off his fingers. “And you’ve told me it was me, naturally, a hamster named Chubb-Chubb, a sailing trip on your parent’s friends boat when you were nine, you think the planet is angry and we are all fucked, and that Justin Beiber exists because he is the anti-Christ and no one would ever suspect the anti-Christ came from Canada. Correct?”