Six Days Till Nochebuena
On the second day of being snowed in, Callie came downstairs in search of coffee and her box of cereal, and instead found Ángel dancing in the tiniest shorts she’d ever seen. He didn’t notice her, but she leaned against the open frame and felt her grumpy morning pout unfurl into a smile.
The shorts in question barely covered his thighs. The tank top, because it could only be called a tank top, read FLUSHING’S FURIA and had a soccer ball set aflame. He was a ’90s workout video, sauntering out of her teenage Mario Lopez wrestling fantasies. All he was missing was the headband.
She knew the song he mouthed along to. A classic from Los Enanitos Verdes that her cousin had put her on to. It was, as the kids said, a bop.
“Buenos días,” she said, and couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out.
He whirled around, holding the spatula like a mic. “¡Calista! ¿Te desperté?”
She chuckled and forced herself to look at anything. His knees—no, not his knees. They were sexy knees. Who knew knees could be anything but bony sockets that held your legs together?
“Oh, you didn’t wake me,” she assured him.
The good thing about their translation escapades was that neither of them tried to address the ill-attempted kiss or how she’d revealed more than she normally would.
“Nice shirt,” she said. She was certain if he stretched, she’d be able to see his nipples. Jean-Claude Van Damme wore bigger shirts in his heyday.
Ángel lined a pan with bacon, and her stomach made an embarrassing sound. He flashed his irresistible grin. “Es de mi hermano. Dejó una bolsa de ropa extra.”
“Your brother’s clothes?” She worried her inner lip.
“Es muy flaquito.” He laughed.
“I can see that.” She could see many things, and it had nothing to do with Ángel’s skinny brother. The sight of him was making the wires of her mind fray and spark. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t run away, and she didn’t try to kiss strangers. Her previous breakups had been mutual, cordial, and far less dramatic. Perhaps all her feelings—Angelo, Ruby, Janie, the book, and now Ángel—were impacted, and that’s why her skin felt too tight. Like she was unsettled.
Or she was overthinking it, and she had to face that the random chance of winding up with Ángel had left her uncertain. No, not uncertain.
Horny.
Callie tried to remember the last time she’d had sex, five months before. She and Angelo had taken advantage of the hotel during a book festival in Las Vegas. And she hadn’t even come.
She needed to snap out of it. Ángel wasn’t there for her ogling. He was smart and capable and strong and kind.
He opened the back door and revealed a makeshift refrigerator where their perishables were stacked in the mountain of snow accumulated on the deck. He grabbed four eggs, then shut the door and reached for the salt on a high shelf. And there it was—his exposed pectoral, the dark chocolate drop of his nipple hard in the slight chill of the kitchen.
Fuck. Now that she was aware, it was impossible to deny that yes, she had a desperate crush on Ángel. She organized a mental list of why it was a bad idea. First of all, he was stuck with her against his will. Second of all, she was an emotional train wreck. Third—she’d just dumped her boyfriend. Fourth, and most importantly, was that he’d recoiled from her the night before.
And sure, she had a book to edit. That was important too.
It was the dread of her deadline and her editor, more than anything, that brought her out of her reverie, and she accepted the mug of piping hot black coffee Ángel offered.
“You don’t have to feed me,” she told him.
“Claro que no. Pero quiero.” His lashes were unfairly long.
She drank to quench her thirst but burned her tongue instead. Though having him admit that he wanted to feed her exacerbated a different thirst. She would kindly accept his meals, even if it confused her. She was a Jenga tower of emotions with too many blocks stacked on top. The slightest breath or tap could send her crashing, and she couldn’t have that. She just had to make it to the new year. The eternal symbol of a fresh start.
Ángel set a sriracha-drizzled bowl of hash browns, runny eggs, and bacon right at her desk. She thanked him and he nodded, lingering like he wanted to tell her something. Instead, he turned on his feet and stalked to his side of the cabin. She blinked slowly at the way the nylon fabric of his shorts did little to hide the curvature of his ass.
She ate her breakfast bowl in unladylike bites, and she wasn’t even self-conscious when she heard him laugh softly.
Slowly, they regained their delicate equilibrium. She pored over her pages and kept coming back to the question her editor had left: Why should we love this man?
And she wanted to answer, “Because that’s how I wrote him! Because he’s the hero. Because he overcame amnesia to crawl his way back to her!”
But she knew none of those were complete answers.
With her first book, she knew the answer. It was a novel about high school sweethearts separated by war, and when he returned, they were both changed. They made each other better.
Callie grunted her frustration and set the pages down. Her coffee mug was empty. She was getting up to refill it when she glanced at Ángel. The sight of him nearly knocked her senseless. He was sprawled on the couch with a blanket draped over his midsection. Strong legs propped up on an arm of the couch. His index finger twirled one of his unruly curls. The other hand held her book, Eleven Eleven.
Or Once Once in Spanish.
“What are you doing?” she asked, standing right in front of him.
He rested the open book against his chest. “Leyendo.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can see that you’re reading. It’s weird.”
He smirked. “Nunca he leído algo cuando la autora está frente a mí.”
“Well, I don’t make it a habit of watching people read my book. My family hasn’t even read my book.”
He arched his brows. He had the most perfect “shock” face. Like everything was surprising, everything had wonder. He had earned the “shock” lines across his forehead.
“Entonces, hay una primera vez para todo.” He resumed his reading.
There clearly was a first time for everything. The last few days proved that. When she returned to the living room with her fresh coffee, she made it a point not to look at him. He was a car crash, and she was a lonely driver on the BQE rubbernecking at him.
She almost made it.
But she was only human.
And she looked.
One look was all it took.
“Are you—crying?” she asked.
He sat up and quickly wiped at his eyes. “No. Tengo alergia.”
Something pleasant and warm spread through her. She brought her coffee to where he sat. He moved and made room for her.
“Chillón,” she teased.
He barked a laugh because at least she knew how to call someone a crybaby. Then he schooled his face into something serious. But his eyes were puffy and a little red, scrutinizing her. He pointed at her desk, then at the book. “¿Así creas?”
It was strange to her that “creas,” when conjugated in certain ways, meant believe and create. To Callie, writing was both. It was how she believed. It was how she created.
“There’s usually less snow,” she said. “When I wrote this book, I was thinking of a story my grandmother told me about her first boyfriend who never came back from war. I kept thinking about what would have happened if he had come back, and what if it took place during a war my generation knew, like Kuwait or Iraq instead of Peru.”
He nodded, his eyes flicking toward her lips. She told herself it was because he was trying to understand her. Trying to read her lips. Her heart gave a hard thud with palpable want.
“¿Y el segundo libro?” he asked.
“That’s the big question.” She explained the problem she was having with her editor and did her best to describe the plot. A woman agreeing to a loveless marriage, then her boyfriend returns from the dead after a plane crash. Her editor didn’t like either man.
“We love the hero because he came back from the dead. Not literally. He had amnesia.”
Ángel tapped his chin. He said something she understood as “But what did he do to keep her?”
And she didn’t have an answer. It didn’t help that she felt like her emotions and her words were trapped in a bottle. She didn’t want to feel hurt, and she didn’t have her mother tongue. Now when she needed both, she had nothing.
Yet somehow, Ángel managed to evoke several feelings from her, and make up their own form of communication.
“Los dos suenan como hijueputas.” He shrugged. “Perdón, pero no debería casarse con ninguno de ellos.”
She stared at him. “They’re not motherfuckers. They’re just—”
Why was she defending a character that didn’t exist? Because one was supposed to be her leading man. And, if she was honest with herself, because he was based on Angelo. Subconsciously, she’d written him the same way. The character just showed up and expected his presence to be enough. She’d met Angelo through friends, and they went on a nice date, and they repeated that for nearly three years. Along the way, her life changed. She got used to nice when she wanted more. But she’d never let herself ask for more. And he—he did something else entirely.
But what did he do to keep her?
She felt Ángel’s words move in her mind, tugging on a feeling she’d had for a long time. Restless. Fine. Good, but not great. At some point she wasn’t sure if she was thinking about her book or her ex.
But she knew. Deep down, Callie knew what was wrong with her novel.
“¿Calista? ¿Dije algo?”
“You’re brilliant.” Emotion filled her up. Anger and joy and frustration. She knew what she needed to do. It was the moment when lightning had struck in their woods. The moment when she’d realized they were snowed in. The moment all their candles had been ignited. It was the dawning.
She gathered the manuscript. It had every note, every line edit, every new word she’d agonized over the last several months. The entire thing was heavy in her hands as she carried it to the center of the cabin.
“¿Calista?”
She took the five steps to the fireplace, and she dropped the book in the flames.
“Pucha,” he said, which was more an onomatopoeia than a word. He ran his fingers through his hair and watched her with concern.
She took a deep breath. There was a backup in her email and her hard drive, but she needed to burn the words. She had to start over from the very beginning. Her heart kicked up at the thought of calling Janie and explaining. At the thought of disappointing her team. But that same freedom she’d felt when she’d burned her phone only intensified. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but Callie knew she was on the right track.
She reached out for Ángel, and he took the hand she offered. She said, “Thank you.”
He seemed to understand something intrinsic about her had shifted. It was the moment a bud begins to flower, or when a shaft of sunlight illuminates a dark room.
He kissed her knuckles. His lips were warm on her cool skin. She held her breath as he ran his fingers up her forearms. His hands were rough and calloused, but she didn’t mind them. She liked how rough and solid he was. How unexpected.
This time, when he looked at her mouth, she knew he wasn’t trying to read her lips.
This time, he kissed her.
As the pages for a year’s worth of work curled and burned in the fire, she parted her lips to welcome him. His tongue searched for hers, and she answered. Kissing had always felt like such a strange act to Callie. It was putting your mouth on someone else’s, yes. But it was opening yourself up for more. It was a soul-deep kind of hunger.
She was the first to break the kiss. He touched the furrow on her brow, and she understood he was confused at her confusion.
“I thought you didn’t want me.”
He threw his head back, scrunching his face because he didn’t have the words. “Tomamos demasiado vino. No quería que te arrepintieras.”
“Oh,” she said. There had been a lot of wine. He didn’t want her to have regrets.
She wouldn’t have regretted it, though. She didn’t regret it now.
Ángel kissed her again. He grabbed her waist and pulled her against his chest. She felt just how much he did want her.
“Oh,” she whispered, breathless as he reached down and traced a finger along the thick erection bursting out of his skimpy little running shorts.
He chuckled at her surprise and guided her to the couch. He sat back and she climbed atop him, never parting their lips for more than a few seconds at a time. She clung to his neck. His calloused fingers explored under her shirt and drew a line along her spine, pressing on her lower back to seek the friction of their lower extremities, rubbing and rubbing.
She felt the first spark of her orgasm as he raised his hips and lined up his cock with the heat soaking through her sweatpants.
She hadn’t come from dry humping since junior year of high school when she and her crush had played seven minutes in heaven in their swimsuits. But with Ángel touching her, kissing the sides of her neck, tugging her earlobes between his teeth, and rocking himself against her, she was buoyed by a feeling she hadn’t felt in forever.
The spark.
The spark she wrote about but had forgotten to feel herself. The spark she’d longed for when she’d settled for fine.
As the feeling pooled in her belly, she fisted her fingers in his hair and kissed him like he was the only man she’d ever want to kiss from then on.
Sensation broke through her. He pressed soft kisses over her cheeks, her throat, as she came down from her climax.
She covered her smile behind her hands, embarrassed at the noises she’d made. “I'm sorry.”
He hurried to appease her. “Nunca te disculpes por eso. Eres—divina.”
He kissed her slow and long, like he was memorizing the way she felt and tasted. She toyed with the flimsy ties of his shorts and tugged on them. They both watched his cock spring between them.
He was perfect, with pale veins and a rosy wet tip. He watched her trace her finger along the head, under the ridge of his frenulum. He let out a string of curses and shut his eyes. She cursed, too, when she took hold of his base and could barely make her fingertips meet.
He swallowed, panting as he spoke. “Tengo que decirte algo.”
She froze. What did he need to tell her? Her writer brain filled in dozens of horrible scenarios—STDs, married, secret baby daddy to ten children, tentacle appendage.
The seconds were never-ending.
Instead, he said, “No he hecho esto en cinco años.”
She processed her language meat grinder and settled on “anos.” Anuses. Five anuses. No, años. The little mustache over the n was very important. Años meant years.
Five years.
She kissed his cheek. His forehead. His throat. “We can stop.”
Please, don’t stop, she thought.
He shook his head frantically. “No. No sabes cuánto te deseo. Pero no estoy acostumbrado a traer protección.”
“Protection!” He also said he desired her, which she hadn’t forgotten. She was simply marinating in the feeling.
“Un momentito,” she said.
She ran upstairs and opened her suitcase. She’d already missed two pills from her birth control and was not about to add knocked up to her list of things that could go wrong that year. For all the mistakes Past Calista had made, keeping a sleeve of condoms in her suitcase was not one of them.
Instead of rushing downstairs, she stripped off her sweatpants and threw them over the railing.
Ángel seemed to catch on to the idea as she peeled off her shirt. Before it hit the floor, he’d climbed the loft stairs and picked her up by her thighs.
She squealed at the sensation of falling on the mattress. She held the condom up and he seized it. His hands trembled and his hips gave a little thrust. Like he was already fucking the air in preparation to be inside her. His desperation made her want him more.
Callie watched him roll the condom down his shaft. He fisted the base. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a penis that big, and she pressed her thighs together in anticipation.
He got on his knees and nuzzled his face between her legs, smoothing patient hands up and down her thighs until she opened for him. She felt his mouth on the mound of her pelvis, kissing his way down until he parted her labia with his tongue. Long strokes wound her up, hitching her breath until all she could think of was that she needed him. Needed him with an urgency that surprised her.
“Please,” she whispered.
He gave her clit one final stroke before returning to her. She kissed him, wrapping her hands behind his neck. She liked holding him that way. Holding him close as he lined his cock up at her entrance and nudged in. Watching his lips part in pleasure as he inched inside her. She felt her inner walls squeeze, and gasped sharply at the sensation.
He stopped, lowering to take her breast into his mouth. Every one of his movements was passionate in how measured and deliciously slowly he took his time.
It was Callie who writhed against him impatiently. Running her nails down his back, tugging on his hair. She needed more of him. All of him.
“Please,” she whimpered. “More.”
He stared into her eyes and seized her lips with his own. He pulled out, then entered her again. This time a little harder. He did that again, and again until he was seated deep inside and the pleasure of it made her skin crackle with expectation. It had never felt that good before, that wet.
Ángel fucked her slowly at first. Exploring her. Caressing her breasts. Kissing the gasps from her mouth. She reveled in the feel of him. It was all too much, too good to be anything but her own imagination.
But when he whispered, “Mírame,” she did as he asked. She opened her eyes and knew it was very real. His hand dropped to her throat, and she stayed his fingers. Showed him exactly how she liked the pressure there. How she wanted to keep kissing him as he held her with his calloused palms and fucked her hard and fast, so close she was sure they’d fuse into a single being if they were together any longer.
When he came, he rutted through his pleasure until her climax pooled deep in her belly and her inner walls contracted around his pulsing cock. He rested his forehead between her breasts and kissed her as she toyed with his hair.
She protested as Ángel left her to take care of the condom and get them water. And when he returned to her side, she protested as he patiently waited for her to hydrate. The naked sight of him, hard and leaning against the headboard, was incentive to drink every last drop.
Later that night, as she drifted, she sank into her post-sex high. This time, when she thought of Angelo, there was no haze of anger, no bitterness, no anything. She still had a lot to work through, but for now, she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She wanted sweetness and warmth. She wanted Ángel.