The Rain in Spain (6 page)

Her scalp tingled, her hair caught beneath her shoulder, or some other more amorphous pain that crawled over her until her skin felt too tight. She couldn’t stand to see him try so hard for her when everything she needed, or wanted, disappointed him.

She couldn’t resist a glance at his face. His eyes locked on hers in an instant, as if he could push his words deeper into her that way. “We used to talk so much, Magdalena. Until I thought I could drown in your words. I loved it.”

She tucked her head under his chin, the tip of it pressing into her crown. The heat of his skin radiated against her mouth. Her mouth brushed him, so lightly it tickled the delicate skin of her lips, when she whispered into his chest. “I’m afraid to talk to you.”

“Why?” The word rumbled in his bones.

“Because.” She wanted to answer like a toddler and stop, but knew he would wait her out. He was far more patient than her. Yet another way she didn’t, couldn’t, be right for him. “We’re too good at talking, you and I. The truth always comes out. And I didn’t want this,
us
, to end.” Every muscle in his body stiffened against her. She flinched as if he’d pushed her off the bed. He knew. Knew as well as she did that their marriage was in trouble because of her, and the only reason they hadn’t discussed it before now was because she’d slowly stopped talking to him. About anything. “Javi—”

“Don’t say it.” His sudden reversal shook her.

“Wait.” She pulled her mouth away from his, twisting her face to the side.

“No.” He kissed her fiercely, stopping her words. “No. Don’t say anything.”

“Javi.” She spoke in between his kisses. “Stop.” He dragged his lips across her cheek and pressed his face into the side of her neck, holding still. He’d let go of her wrists and wrapped his arms under her shoulders, locking her against him.

His forehead against her collarbone hurt, but the pain focused her. Gave her an anchor to which she could attach her fear and her determination to speak at last. Javi’s breath was harsh in her ear, hot against her skin.

“Please don’t.” Her shoulder was wet. “I know what you’re going to say. Just wait.”

She’d been waiting since the day they met, it sometimes felt, for him to wake up. “We can’t.”

“We can. Just don’t . . . quit. I know you regret this.”

She shook her head, confused. “Wait. What?”

“God, Magda.” The nickname he almost never used, because calling her Magdalena was something only he did. “Do you think I didn’t leave you in Amritsar and know that you were going to wake up the next day wondering how the fuck you’d ended up married to some guy you met on the beach in Goa?”

“No.”

He didn’t hear her. “I know I talked you into it. Fucked you into it, because when we touch, we can’t think straight.” The heavy pulse of pressure between her legs at his graphic words spoke to their truth. She rolled her hips instinctively, and he pressed against her in turn. “I know as soon as I left, you regretted it.”

“No.” But she was shocked into inarticulateness and her stutter sounded false, even to her own ears.

“Don’t lie. You’re not good at it.” He lifted his head just enough to wipe his face against her pillowcase. She pretended not to notice. “Your face when you landed in Chicago—your face every time you land in Chicago—says it all. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, coming home to me.”

He was so fucking wrong she wanted to laugh. But she’d be doing it while crying herself because this didn’t fix anything at all, really. The only thing it let her do was make sure he knew that the fault was all hers.

She didn’t imagine that being blameless meant he would hurt any less.

“God, Javi. You’re so wrong. About everything.” The time for either of them to hide their faces was over. She wedged the heels of her palms on either side of his jaw and pushed his face up off her shoulder. If she turned the lights on, she knew his eyelids would be swollen, his nose red. But she could only say this in the dark. “I don’t regret anything.
Anything
”—she let her fierce love for him, failure at it though she was, ring in her voice.—“except not being what you thought you wanted.” His mouth opened, but it was her turn to quiet him, fingers pressed to his lips. “I’m scared when I get off a plane at O’Hare because I’m afraid, every time, that you’re gonna meet me at the airport with my shit packed in boxes because you’re just done with me.”

He pulled his head back further, as if trying to take her in more completely. “I would never. I want you there. Whenever you can be there, I want you.” His voice had lightened, though he still hesitated. “But that’s not all, is it?”

She shook her head. Wondered if he could see glimmers of light in her wet eyes now. “No, that’s not all.”

His silence made an open space for her between the two of them.

“You know how we argue about your lists?” she asked at last.

His breath hitched. “I know you think they’re stupid. Boring.”

Was there no end of the damage she’d done to this man? The ache under her sternum throbbed with regret. “They’re not stupid. They’re you.”

“But.” It wasn’t a question. He knew there was a
but
.

The pressure behind her eyes built and her chest struggled to rise under what felt like a twenty-pound lead weight. “I feel like I was the next item on your list.”
And the items that follow our marriage on that list scare me
. But she couldn’t say that. So she feinted and cut her eyes to the side. “And I hate lists. I hate knowing exactly what we’re going to see tomorrow. You hate wandering. That’s what I do. For a living. What if we are too different?” She waited for him to deny it.

He brushed his lips over her eyebrow. “We
are
different.”

She stiffened under him. He continued as if she hadn’t turned to a board in his arms. “I also like sugar in my coffee and you hate it. You’ll put the most disgusting pieces of offal in your mouth and chew, and I’d eat McDonald’s in every city in the world.” His cheek curved in the dark. “We’re different, but if a difference is important, we can change. I have changed, for you.”

“I know.” Her whisper in the dark was almost as loud as her heartbeat. She’d been remembering that all day. “But I haven’t changed at all. How could anyone love that?”

“I could. I do.” He rolled to his side and rested his head on his own biceps, face inches from hers. “Do I wish some things were different? Of course. I wish you would treat our house like it belonged to you and not like you’ve moved in with a roommate. I wish you’d make more of an effort to talk to me or message me when you’re gone.” He reached out with one hand and pushed her hair back behind her ear. “But I don’t want you to change who you are. I get lost in my research sometimes too, you know. I used to go under for weeks at a time, lose track of my life entirely. But keeping tabs on you, hearing what you’re doing, wondering what new thing you’ve discovered, that keeps me connected to you. Even if you’re far away.” She tried to hold still but shivered as he traced the curve of her cheek with a fingertip. “And I worry too, you know, that you’ll get tired of coming back to me.” He tucked his head down, avoiding her gaze now.

“Never.” The block on her chest was dissolving, had melted with his words, so different from what she’d expected. From the words she’d been so very afraid to hear. She closed her eyes. “I thought you would grow to hate me.”

“Never.” He echoed her, lips ghosting over her face.

The promise and his featherlight touches unlocked the words she’d been holding in for so long now. “Why haven’t you taken me home to meet your family?”

He lifted his head. “Is that what this is about?”

“No. Sort of.” She tried not to stutter, but couldn’t help it. “I-I don’t know how to do family, Javi. And I’ve lost mine because of it. Now I’m keeping you from your family too, because I’m bad at that. Staying close to people when I’m far away from them. It feels like you’re losing them because of me.”

Javi rolled over and pulled her on top of his chest, his belly shaking under her as he laughed. “I call my mom every Sunday. You know that. Is it awkward that I haven’t been home to visit in a year? Yes. But I told her that you’re like, like . . . a butterfly. I have to hold still for now, so you know it’s safe to land.”

“A
mariposa
.” She’d learned that one, the delicate syllables finishing on a puff of air and a sigh.

The silhouette of Javi’s cheek curved. “I did think about describing you as a wild ass I was trying to tame with carrots, but I figured we’d have this conversation someday and I wanted to suck up in advance.”

She buried her face in the crease between his arm and his chest and breathed deep. God, she loved him so hard.

He stroked a hand down over her tangled hair, smoothing it from the crown of her head to her shoulders.

“I can be that for you, Magdalena. I can be the person who anchors you with family. We will go see my
mamá
, who will feed you and lecture you and tell you that when you are at home you should make tamales and freeze them for me so I can eat them when you are gone and think of you.”

Her laugh hitched in her throat, sounding more like a sob.

But it was easier somehow, now, to dig for those last tiny, bitter words she’d buried so deep and bring them to the tip of her tongue. She’d been right about this at least. They were too good at talking for the truth not to come out.

“About that list . . .”

“Yeah?”

She spread her fingers against his chest. Maybe she would feel it, if he flinched.

“Do you want to have kids some day?”

No flinching, no hesitation. “Yes.” The word she’d feared was so tiny, and it didn’t
feel
like it hurt. “Does that frighten you?”

A siren’s bleat, never the same anywhere she traveled, revved louder as the emergency vehicle neared and then faded away. She waited until the noise was long gone.

“Yes. I’m not ready.”

“Okay.”

“What if I’m never ready?” She hadn’t meant to ask that. Had figured they’d burned through enough relationship goodwill for one night and tomorrow’s problems were sufficient unto the day. But the floodgates were opened and she couldn’t help herself.

“Then I would be sad. But I wouldn’t stop loving you.” Javi ran his hand down her back and snugged it beneath her ass, tugging her closer to him until the rough scrub of his pubic hair and the semi-hard length of his cock pressed against her inner thigh. “I’m sorry I’ve let you worry like this, by yourself. I should’ve pushed you harder. But I wanted to give you space. To let you come to me.”

She’d learned enough about herself tonight to know the answer to that one.

“I think I have too much space sometimes. You can hold me tighter.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead like a blessing. “I love you.”

He lifted his face to hers, repeated the words back to her. “I love you.” She rolled to her side and then her back, tugging at Javi until he let himself be pulled on top of her. Her arms were steel bars across his back as she lifted her hips and wrapped her legs around him, needing this man so much she’d feared it would break her. Tears spilled hot over her temples, wetting her hair, and she closed her eyes as he surged into her, knowing only the feel of him hard between her thighs and heavy in her heart. “I love you.”

And he was there, with her, in the sticky honey of the moment, muscles tensing, fingers digging into shoulders, into hips, the clean salt of his sweat in her mouth as she pressed her teeth to his arm. The cliff was at her feet, the edge crumbling beneath her toes. She flung herself over and the fall was long, long and sweet, and she hoped Javi would catch her.

He never let her down. Forever steadfast.

Heart thumping still, a beat that pulsed in her fingertips, in the thin skin of her lips, Magda let the world take form around her again. Javi settled against her side and she let herself relax into the feel of his slick skin over hard muscle against her softness. This man would always want to lie tangled up with her whenever he had her close.

His voice roused her. The words came slowly, but she heard the weight behind them and listened closely.

“I’ve missed so much in my life. It’s why I was in Goa. Traveling like I never did when I was a kid. But I hated it. Nothing
needed
doing. A bunch of bums hanging out on beaches and talking about the tourists ruining it all.
I
was a tourist. Assholes.” She laughed silently against his chest, hearing the rue in his voice. Idleness would never suit Javi. “I thought I’d missed so much. Turned out I didn’t like any of that shit anyways. But you do. And I don’t want you to have to miss anything. It’s why I plan so much, even though I know it drives you crazy. But they’re just plans.”

She picked her way through the words like a soldier in a minefield. Getting it right had never been so important.

“I want you to be able to make plans with me.” She tested his skin with her tongue. Salt and musk and home. “Even if it’s just to go see your mom and learn how to make her tamales. For now.” She stretched her arm across his chest, draped her thigh across his hips. The urge to roll away would always be there. Too much of her life had been spent alone, surrounded by strangers. She would try to remember to hold him while she could. “You know, I never feel alone when I’m away from you, because I always know that you’re waiting for me to come home.”

“I am. I promise.”

She believed him. Which made it easy to be brave. “And when I’m gone, I can try harder to make you feel less far away.”

“Okay.” The relief in his voice swept over her like a riptide, pulling her out to sea in his arms, knowing she’d find her way to shore again, calm in the face of a struggle that might sometimes seem long. It would be worth it. “And I promise to push you harder if I think you’re worried about something, okay?”

Easiest promise ever. “Yes.” The pressure in her sinuses eased, and she swallowed, weak with the ebb of tension and adrenalin after the longest day.

Javi would have his plans. She would disregard a plan in a heartbeat to follow an interesting story. They would meet, somewhere in the middle, whenever they could, and fill the time in between with stories shared from far away. And maybe someday they would find a way to make plans that were bigger than just the two of them.