Margot
I wasn’t even home yet when I got the first of many messages.
What are you doing this week?
Under other circumstances, I would have run a mile, but I knew David didn’t want anything like that from me. We both wanted to get our partners back, and we felt like we could help each other. In my case, David was an inspiration. It reminded me of when I was in boarding school and I was assigned a seat next to a student who was flunking out. His grades improved, and I learned to let my hair down a little within the regal and rigid atmosphere that reigned over the school. My grades in music and art improved, and it was thanks to him that…well, I can neither confirm nor deny that he was my first kiss.
But it was different this time. I wasn’t going there. It was…in a way, it was exciting. Or more like exhilarating. David was a strange but interesting person. He aroused my curiosity, which had been lying dormant for some time.
When I texted back that I didn’t have any plans until I left for Greece, he asked if I wanted to grab a drink the next evening. I suddenly understood why I was opening up to a complete stranger, because suddenly I could talk about what had happened to me and I was finding it easy to express myself: he was paying attention to me. To me. To my feelings, to what had happened, to the why behind what I had done or what I said. What I had to say seemed important to David, and we weren’t even work colleagues. That made me feel good.
We made a plan for me to scoop him from the florist and go get a drink somewhere quiet, where we could talk: David wanted me to give him advice on how he should go about getting his life together. I didn’t put too much thought into it. I had nothing better to do, and he got me out from under the duvet, out of the spiral of crying and scrolling through old photos.
I spotted him in the back as soon as I got there. He was wearing a shirt that had been white at some point in its existence and jeans hidden under a black apron covered in stains. His hair was messy and tangled, and his eyes were fixed on the flowers he was arranging.
“Can we help you?” two ladies asked me.
“I’m here for David.” I smiled at them.
They looked at me. They looked at him. They looked at each other. They were in their seventies, and you couldn’t miss the fact that they were sisters. Judging by their expressions, they were surprised that anyone, or at least anyone who looked like me, would date him.
“What about the blond girl?” I heard one say to the other.
“Shut up, shut up. It’s for the best.”
“David! Someone’s here to collect you!”
“I’m just finishing the everlasting flower bouquet for the restaurant. I’ll be out in five minutes.”
“No,” one of them said firmly. “Come out now. You don’t leave young ladies waiting.”
“I didn’t know there were any young ladies in this florist,” he retorted mockingly.
He stuck his head out, saw me, and smiled. “Gimme one sec?”
“Of course.”
When he finished, the two sisters had already told me how the shop was a family business with more than seventy years of history, and they had given me a little posy to put in my bedroom, but when David came out, he decided it wasn’t good enough.
“Not those ones!” he had the nerve to complain. “Amparito! You gave her funeral flowers, for God’s sake.”
“Gladiolas aren’t funeral flowers, you animal!”
“Get them outta here. They give me bad vibes.” David ripped the flowers out of my hands, threw them on the counter, and grabbed stems from a few buckets overflowing with different blooms.
In the blink of an eye, he wrapped what he had picked in brown paper and tied a string around it. He put it in my hands and turned back to the two ladies to argue, like a goalie, about which flowers were best for graves, and I…I didn’t know whether to freak out, run away, or burst out laughing. In my hands, I was holding a small, tight, and almost trivial bouquet, a mixture of dark green, white, red, and purple. I never would have chosen a bouquet with those colors, but…it had turned out so beautifully! It seemed like something living, eccentric but exciting, like an impressionist painting, like a sunset, like…David?
“Oh forget it. I give up on you two,” he said with his eternal lopsided smile, and he came back to me with the air of a teacher. “Young lady, these are eucalyptus leaves, this white one here is called statice, and the ones that look like strawberries are gomphrenas, not to be confused with gonorrheas.”
“You were doing so well,” I said warningly.
“Bah…this lilac-colored one is salvia. When we get it in red, it’s sick. Plus, they all dry phenomenally. You have to cut the stems two fingers’ width from the end, diagonally, like this.”
“David,” I cut him off.
“Pure magic, queen, this bouquet is pure magic.” He waggled his fingers at me, sweeping them through the air, making it clear that he felt he held great power in his hands.
I had reserved a table at a restaurant I loved, but I didn’t tell him. First of all, because I was embarrassed, and second, because…with the way David looked I couldn’t let myself be seen there with him. He hadn’t even changed his shirt.
“Do you always walk around like this?” I asked him.
“Do you always walk around like your shit doesn’t stink?”
I turned back to look at him and gave him a pretend haughty look. I couldn’t help smiling.
“I mean, when you met up with Idoia, did you always look like such a slob?”
“I just got out of a florist. What do you want me to wear? A suit? I get covered in dirt, water, pollen!”
“You could bring a button-up and change into it when you leave.”
“A button-up shirt? Like for weddings?”
I stopped on the street. “Did you just say for weddings?”
“Listen, lady, who wears a button-up on a regular day just because?”
“Billions of dudes? Plus…that shirt has a hole in it.”
“They all have holes.” He shrugged. “The tags bug me, and I rip them out. It’s only a matter of time before they get a hole.”
I couldn’t believe it. I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.
“Anyway, I don’t need to walk around like I’m going to a job interview all the time.”
“I bet my left hand you go to job interviews like this too.”
“I’m cute. I don’t need much.”
I let out a giggle, and he started laughing too.
“No, seriously. I have no clue about fashion. No fucking clue. Idoia is very trendy. She works in the industry. She’s always…avant-garde, you know?”
My lip curled.
“Define avant-garde.”
“Full of personality.”
“Like she was in an editorial for a fashion magazine?”
“It’s all Greek to me,” he teased. “I mean she wears stuff I never would’ve thought could go together, but somehow it works on her. She’s a trendsetter.”
“Ah, like my sister.”
“What?”
“Nothing. So…you didn’t think you should’ve cleaned up your act a little for that? I know it’s superficial, but if she likes fashion so much, I would say one of the reasons she left you is your holey shirts.”
“Help me then.”
“I wouldn’t be much good for that.”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t want you to tell me how you would dress me because I already know I’m not going to wear a button-up, but I’m sure you have more of a clue than me.”
“No way. Filippo is the one who has style. Someone chooses my clothes for me.”
“What do you mean someone chooses your clothes?”
“Exactly what I said. I pay a girl to buy me clothes for whatever I have coming up. Then she organizes my closet into sections: work, free time, vacations, around the house…”
“I can’t believe it. You’re worse than me.” He started to laugh. “Come on, let’s go, I’m hungry.”
We headed into Malasaña. Colorful hair, vintage bags, beautiful shoes on broken cobblestones already sticky with spilled beer, even at this hour. David walked calmly, like someone very secure in his skin. He was rambling about a place that served delicious hot dogs, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about shopping. How could something so natural seem so complicated to both of us? It just flummoxed me. I got overwhelmed. I never knew what to wear or not wear and what looked good on me. Sometimes, in the lunchroom at the office, I still found myself accidentally staring at a clique of girls who looked elegant, sexy, and filled with personality with just a couple pieces of clothing. On the other hand, even though I spent a pretty interesting budget to dress like I should, I always seemed…bland. Well, not bland; elegant, but in a plain way, like a model from a photo in a clothing catalog who doesn’t move, who doesn’t feel comfortable, who would never go out dancing in those pants and won’t feel the pain from the heels on those shoes.
“Do you like spicy food?”
I looked at David, jutting my chin out to meet his mocking gaze. Whoa. He was taller than I remembered. I had gotten lost in my thoughts, and I didn’t realize we had gotten to the place he had been talking about: El Perro Salvaje.
“I mean…yes. I guess so.”
“What do you mean you guess? Come on. Can I get two Boxers and two IPAs, please?”
He took a twenty out of his pocket and gave it to the girl, who gave him back a few coins. We’d have to be miracle workers to stretch that bill in the restaurant where I had reserved a table. I took my phone out and surreptitiously sent Sonia a message:
Cancel the reservation, please. All the details are in my Google Calendar.
“What are you thinking about?”
I turned back to him and stowed my phone in my bag. He was leaning against the counter, drumming his fingers on it. Every once in a while, the girl behind the counter was peeking over at him. I couldn’t tell if it was because the noise was bugging her or because she thought he was cute.
“About why we find shopping so tricky.”
“I don’t think it’s tricky. It’s just not something I do a lot.”
“Well, that shirt gives me the ick.”
“You should see what I wear to sleep.”
I laughed.
“It must be because you have pretty-people complex.” I sighed. “My sister Patricia went through it at your age. You never make the most of it. In fact, you usually fight the hot.”
“What are you talking about, you nutjob? I’m a stunner.”
“That’s why your girlfriend dumped you,” I muttered.
The girl at the bar turned around like a shot. Wow. I guess she was interested after all.
“That one’s looking at you,” I whispered.
“Idoia,” he enunciated slowly, raising his eyebrows. “Idoia is the only one we’re interested in here.”
We ate the hot dogs sitting on a bench, in a plaza a little farther along. It was teeming with people. Every bar patio was hopping. The whole plaza was buzzing with conversation and laughter.
“So how am I going to figure out where my life is heading?” David asked, the corners of his mouth speckled with chili.
“I mean, I don’t know.”
“How did you know where yours was heading? Things seem to be going pretty well for you.”
“I had it easy. I went into the family business.”
“Wow. I’m jealous.”
“Jealous? Don’t be. Honestly, I never figured out what I wanted to do either. I just let myself be carried along. Except with Filippo, he was always a force of nature…”
“All right, lemme see a photo of this Filippo guy, come on. He can’t be that hot.”
“I mean what we had was…the clichéd love at first sight, but I’m not gonna lie; he’s really hot. Like a prince.”
“I’m gonna puke,” he teased.
“First, wipe your mouth. You missed some.”
I took my phone out of my bag and opened Instagram. Neither of us had very many followers because our profiles were set to private; thank my lucky stars, he hadn’t blocked me yet. I scrolled through his profile, but before I could pick a photo to show David, I froze.
There was a new post. One where he looked really good, holding two beers, laughing, in a black T-shirt. Two beers. Was the other one for a pretty, striking girl, like David’s ex-girlfriend, something I would never be? I struggled to swallow, but I made myself take a sip of my IPA.
“What’s up?” David elbowed me gently.
“It’s him. He just posted a photo.”
“Fuck.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and whistled. “Holy shit. Okay, you’re right. He’s a hot enough dude to freak out over. Next to him, I’m more dog than human.”
I didn’t answer. I was reading his caption, in Italian.
“What does it say?” David asked.
“‘A beer in Positano is the best life can do for me right now.’ Do you think he misses me?”
“No.”
I turned toward him, my eyes as wide as dinner plates.
“Thanks for your help,” I bellowed.
“He’s pissed off right now, Margot. You get that, right? You ran off on the day of your wedding. How would you feel?”
“Like shit.”
“Have you thought about what you would do if the situation were reversed?”
“I would be begging him to come back.”
David gave me an astonished look. “Seriously?”
“Of course. He’s the love of my life.”
“And you would grovel in front of a guy who left you at the altar?” His raised eyebrows made it very clear that the correct answer was no, but my mouth wanted to form a yes. David realized this and tried to stop it, like someone who thinks you’re not ready for the truth. “Look, Margot, this hunk of a human specimen doesn’t miss you…yet.”
“I guess you men are simpler than us when it comes to facing your feelings, right?”
“Yeah, we are. Give it time.”
“Do you think the other beer is for a girl?”
“He wants you to think that, I bet, but it’s probably for the buddy who’s taking the photo. That dude seems like he’d have a pretty flashy phone. He’s not going to let the first girl he meets take photos of him while he goes to get beers.”
I looked at him, perplexed. “You’re even weirder than me, and I never thought I’d say that to anyone.”
“You gonna finish that?”
I handed over my hot dog with a sigh.
“Hey,” he said with his mouth full. “Just because there’s a chance that he went to grab a bite with some girl one night doesn’t mean you can’t fix it with him.”
“What if he falls in love with ‘some girl’?”
“Then that means he didn’t love you very much.”
I looked at him, and he smiled. He had a piece of onion stuck in his teeth. I smiled back.