He smiled softly and let out a small laugh of disbelief. He ran a finger all over my face, tracing my features as if he was memorizing me for a sculpture. He stopped at my lips and then kissed them, passion still burning between us.
“Now that is a real siesta,” he said quietly, as if we weren’t all alone in that field.
I giggled and grinned up at him and wrapped my arms around his back, feeling the smoothness of his skin, the strength of his muscles, the heat of the sun. “I think I prefer this siesta a bit more.”
A cloud moved past the sun and then it was bright again.
His smile turned sad and he sighed. “I can’t let you leave, Vera.”
All of a sudden his weight felt like the weight of the world, of our world, was on me. “I don’t think we can lie here forever. I have a session with Frog—I mean, Juan Carlos.”
He brushed his fingers down my cheek, so softly they felt like butterfly wings. “I can’t let you leave Spain. I can’t…I can’t let you leave me.” He took in a deep breath and swallowed thickly, his lips pressed hard together.
My heart felt like it was being crushed. “I wish I could stay…”
“Then stay,” he said. “Find a way.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “That is impossible.”
“You keep saying we are impossible,” he said. “But you don’t have enough faith. You have faith in the stars, but not in us.”
“But we are impossible. You’re…goddamn it, I don’t even want to say it anymore.”
“I’m married, I know this. But—”
“No,” I cried out softly, my hands curling into fists. “I don’t even want to talk about it. It is killing me, Mateo. I can’t even entertain the idea because nothing will come of it. I can’t stay here. I have no money. I’m not allowed to stay in your country for as long as I want. I have to go home. You have to go back to your family. To your daughter. To your wife. To your universe.”
He frowned, confused. “I told you I was creating a new one. And I want you in it. To be the center.”
There was so much conviction in his eyes, so much belief in his own words, that it sliced me thin like paper cuts.
“What do you propose we do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking with desperation. “I don’t. But…you could stay and then we could figure something out.”
“Mateo,” I said slowly, feeling so scared and hopeless. I didn’t want to leave him but I couldn’t imagine being his mistress either. How did everything get even more complicated than it was before? Hadn’t Mateo said that the good relationships were uncomplicated? We were certainly fucked in that aspect, too.
But Mateo was passion. He was now full of the life we both sought after all these years.
He placed his forehead against mine, nose against nose, and closed his eyes. “You bring light to my life. When you leave, there will only be a black hole inside of me. You’ll take my heart with you.” His breath deepened and he looked into my eyes. “Vera, I am in love with you.”
Now I felt like I was drifting in space. I couldn’t do anything but float on his words.
He brushed my hair off my face. “I love you.” He then kissed my forehead, long and warm and sweet. I wanted to overdose on this moment as my chest grew wings.
But I couldn’t. I found my breath again, my voice. “You can’t,” I croaked. “You don’t know me.”
He smiled. “I know you.”
“There hasn’t been enough time.”
“I don’t care about time,” he said confidently. “When I know something, I know it. Now I know what love is. And I love you. And I cannot imagine going back to the life I had before, because that was no life at all. That was just existing. That was just chasing down the next day so I could feel it pass under me.” He placed his large hand over my heart. “You made me stop chasing the days. You made me hold onto them.”
“And now we both have to let it go,” I told him with as much conviction as I could muster, even though I was breaking my own heart for saying so.
His expression was pained and I was overwhelmed by how unfair this was. Why couldn’t he have been single? Why couldn’t I have been older, or he younger, or why couldn’t I have met him in another point in time? It could have been so damn good.
It was so damn good.
I closed my eyes and felt the tears coming again.
“Hush,” he said softly. “Don’t cry or I will cry.”
I tried not to. I tried to hold it in. But a month’s worth of second-guessing and anguish had built up. The floodwaters had risen again. I began to bawl. Mateo rolled off of me and then wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. His kissed my head then rested his chin on top of it so I was free to sob into his neck and chest.
He held me there, never saying anything, just letting me cry. We lay there in that sunbaked field until my tears were dry. Both of us knew that even though we had our problems, we also had an annoyed Anglo and Spaniard to deal with back at the resort.
It was hard to leave that field. It was hard to put my clothes back on and get ready to move on with the day because to move on with the day meant to move on to the next day and the next, until I was gone. Now, I was just like Mateo, holding on to each one, so afraid to let go.
But we had to. We both knew we had to.
He grabbed my hand, and together we walked away from the field, back to the road, and up to the resort. A small part of me thought maybe what had happened back there didn’t have to be it, that we would hold on to the day, to each other, a little longer. But as soon as we saw everyone else, he dropped my hand.
We were back to being separate. Our feelings back to being hidden.
Now we were a secret.
And we were running out of time.
Chapter Sixteen
The rest of the day went by as usual even though it felt as if my whole life had changed. I coasted through the afternoon sessions, not listening, not seeing. I kept replaying that image in my head, over and over again, the one of us on the grass together, him on top of me, the impossibly blue sky behind him. If I imagined hard enough, I could still feel the heat between my legs, the feeling of him being inside me. It had felt right to have him in me, to have his body and skin in my hands like we were molded from the same clay.
Just before dinner he found me again, out on the lawn where I was sitting cross-legged in a daze and staring at nothing, trying to process all the emotions that had eluded me all these years.
Without saying anything, he held out his hand and lifted me to my feet. His hand around mine wasn’t enough anymore. I had been given all of him, free for the taking, and nothing less would do. But as much as I wanted to kiss him, hold him, take his clothes off and ride him, I couldn’t. Not now, not here. If the field was one universe for us, this was another.
“I thought perhaps you would like to have dinner with me,” he said with a smile. His eyes were shining bright, happy, and I wondered if he was putting on his best face or if he was coming to terms with the futility of us and just making the best of the time we had left.
I wanted to do the same but it involved pulling my heart out of the gutter.
“I don’t think I can imagine dinner without you,” I told him.
His eyes softened a bit, the corners of his lips falling. He nodded and dropped my hand, and then put his at the small of my back, guiding me toward the hall.
Now it really seemed that the seating allocations were gone. There were all Anglos at some tables and all Spaniards at another. Jerry was pouring himself a huge glass of wine with Wayne, not seeming to care at all.