“What is this?” Candela’s eyes, which were always slightly protruding, looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.
“Nothing…”
“Please tell me you’re not going with him.”
“I’m not going with him.”
“Tell me again and swear on your life because I’m considering having you committed.”
“I’m. Not. Going. With. Him.” I repeated slowly.
“Hey! What are you doing in there? Secrets, secrets are no fun!” Patricia yelled from the other side of the door.
“Swear to me,” Candela whispered. “Swear to me you’re going to Greece alone.”
“I swear. I’m going to Greece alone.”
“So then what’s this?” She shook the iPad.
My mouth opened and closed soundlessly. I rested my forehead against the door. I couldn’t say anything that would explain it away.
“Margot…”
“I thought about it, okay? He makes me feel so free, so capable…so I briefly considered the possibility of going with him. It’s not a crime,” I whispered so Patricia wouldn’t hear.
“I’m going to break this door down, seriously. And if you think I can’t that’s because neither of you have ever done Pilates in your life.”
“I’m coming!” I shouted.
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Candela promised.
“I’m not going to talk about this now or later,” I said, pressing my back against the door. “I thought about it. I did something stupid by reserving the flight, and I didn’t even tell him because I felt ridiculous. So please do me the favor of not humiliating me anymore and leave me alone.”
I opened the door. Patricia was wielding a piece of bread in her hand, and she showed it to me with indignance written all over her face.
“Bread! I’m eating bread! White bread! And it’s after seven!”
“For fuck’s sake.”
I have a lot to thank Patricia for. For example, she told me I shouldn’t draw eyeliner inside my eye, and she once admitted that long hair looked terrible on me. She also brought bands, movies, and clothes into my life that were iconic in my teenage years. But, without a doubt, all those big-sisterly feats were nothing compared to the spectacle she put on at my mother’s house that night. She really took one for the team. She told her that me going to Greece alone was the best decision I could have made. And that, besides how glamorous a retreat on deserted beaches in paradise would be (deserted my ass, it was the end of June, and it’s not exactly an unknown destination), it was also the smartest thing to do.
“Scandals don’t last forever. By the time she gets back, everyone will have forgotten about her running through the gardens of the hotel in a wedding dress.”
If anyone was surprised that my mother would raise hell because I was going on vacation alone, well…they’re probably lucky not to have a mother who is a strange mix between cat and human and who is more concerned about what her friends will think (even though she actually can’t stand them) than what her daughters decide to do with their lives to be happy.
“I don’t get it! You said the best thing to do would be to get away for a few days!” I exclaimed indignantly while my mother gripped her glass insolently.
“I meant you should go to your grandparents’ manor house, not go traveling alone out there.”
“I wouldn’t really enjoy myself though, would I?”
“Do you deserve to?”
Of course I deserved to, but…even I didn’t know that yet. Sometimes our sin meter gets broken when we’re judging ourselves.
I kept quiet, of course, because I had learned to weather my mother’s semialcoholic hysteria. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to get into another fight or more of a mess. And because at that point, it was worth swallowing my bile along with the words I wanted to say, to nod and go home where, well, sometimes my anger swallowed me alive, but I didn’t have to give explanations to anyone.
I didn’t even want to talk to David when I got home that night. Or to Candela, who offered me ice cream (which was completely forbidden in my mother’s house) while I told her how it went and we roasted Lady Meow (as an excuse to bring up the David thing again, of course). I just wanted to shut myself in my room, not see anyone, not talk to anyone, and sleep. I took off my Max Mara dress, left it crumpled in a ball in a corner, and climbed into bed in underwear and a bra without taking off my makeup. I didn’t even take my phone out of my bag. Only a mother can make you feel so disappointed in yourself.
David believed the story that the reason I didn’t answer the message he sent before he went to sleep was because I fell asleep on the couch after a feast at my mother’s house. Of course, he didn’t know my mother, so he didn’t think it was weird when I told him I had eaten too much. Plus, he was pretty excited about our plans for tonight. Maybe he had heard from Idoia or some exciting plans for the summer had come up, but he refused to answer any of my questions until we met up that night; he was being very mysterious.
I was going to wait for him at the door of the florist, but it seemed very rude not to go in and say hi to Amparito and Asuncion. I found them balancing the register.
“Good evening,” I said shyly. “Sorry, I came to collect David and I felt bad not saying…hi!” I lifted my hand stupidly.
“Look how lovely this child is,” one said to the other, as if I weren’t there.
“Come in, come in, don’t loiter in the doorway like that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I can see you’re busy and…”
“Don’t be silly. David’ll be right out. Wait until you see how spruced up he is tonight.”
“Can you shut up?” I heard him bellow from the back room. “You screwed up my surprise, you biddies!”
“I don’t know how you keep him here, with all the terrible things he says to you.” I laughed.
“Ah, well, only because he can lift the flowerpots two at a time.” One of them made an excuse for him.
“And he’s cute too,” the other added.
“He really is. I would’ve been head over heels for him if I were twenty years younger…” Asuncion nodded.
“Love has no age.”
The beaded curtain that separated the more private storeroom parted as his fingers pushed through it. And he was there. Fuck, he was definitely there. Spotless Converse, tight black ankle-cropped pants, a patterned shirt, and…a new haircut. He still had the messy spirit of before, with a few long locks here and there, but with a little more order, mostly combed to one side. He looked…he looked really hot.
“Jesus Christ. You clean up well.” I smiled at him, making a gesture of approval that allowed me to simultaneously disguise the fact that I liked what I saw a little too much.
“Well, I’m just getting started.”
He stood in front of me and offered me his arm. He was good, really good. OMG.
“What do you want us to do, walk arm in arm?”
“Like two old ladies,” he said with a fake seductive air. “My queen.”
I burst out laughing. So did he.
“You two are always giggling,” one of his bosses commented slyly.
“Don’t get jealous. I love you the most, Asuncion, from the bottom of my heart.”
“Get out of here before I take my shoe off.”
He blew them a kiss and forced me to take his arm, and we left.
“You didn’t have to get so dolled up.” I smiled.
“Yes, I did. I’m practicing.” He winked. “And just wait and see because there are more surprises.”
We walked along the cobblestoned streets, hopping over broken cobbles and cigarette butts in our new shoes, arm in arm, until we got to Malasaña, where we meandered through its arteries, veins, and capillaries. We passed by a man walking a dog that looked like him, a little girl with a pacifier that made it look like she had a mustache, and a hipster in a super cool hat…and we gabbed about all of it, everything surprised us, everything was wonderful. With David, the world was full of treasures to dig up.
David stopped suddenly, and I tried to tug his arm so we could keep walking.
“Come on! I’m hungry!” I complained. “What’s it gonna be today? Hot dogs, pizza, calamari sandwiches?”
“What if we go nuts today and sit down somewhere, with tables and everything?”
My eyes widened, and my mouth fell open. I realized we had stopped at the door of a restaurant called 80 Grados.
“You made a reservation here?”
“Yes, little lady.”
“Hey!” I nudged him with my shoulder. “This keeps getting better!”
We sat at a small table, miniscule really, crammed in right between two others, but it wasn’t David’s fault he had chosen a restaurant that seemed to be very hot right now. We ordered tinto de verano to drink and a few small plates to share. The waiter insisted we order more, and we picked a few randomly, giggling hysterically, pointing at dishes on the menu without even knowing what we were ordering. Another great thing about David is that I never went hungry with him.
Tintos were dangerous…cold, sweet, smooth… We ordered two more because they came in tiny glasses.
“This is nice,” I said, looking around while we were waiting for our food.
“Pretty noisy, no?”
“True, maybe you better not bring her here.”
“I’ll bring her in the beginning, when I have to play hard to get. That way it’ll seem like I’m not really interested in what she has to say.”
“Is that how it is?” I teased, but was slightly offended.
“What? No! But you’re my sensei. Everything that comes out of your mouth is pure wisdom.”
I pretended to punch him, and he told me to get out my phone.
“Let’s take a picture?” he suggested.
“Why not with yours?”
“Because it has such low resolution it would look more like an abstract interpretation of us in a restaurant.”
I nodded and pulled out my phone. “I need to ask the business if they have any extra phones from the renewal we did a few months ago.”
“Sounds like charity.”
“Would it wound your little masculine ego?” I asked, taking another sip of my tinto.
“Bah, no way. My little ego, as you call it, is rock solid. When a man is happy with the size of his penis, he doesn’t worry about that stuff.”
I almost snorted wine out of my nose, but I caught it just in time.
“Come on, picture.”
“Wait, come here,” he said.
“Come where?”
“Here. We both have to be in it, right?”
“Well then you get up,” I whined.
“Come here, silly.”
I tutted and stood up. As I clambered over, slowly so I wouldn’t stick my ass in any of our neighbors’ faces, David grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his lap.
“What are you doing?” I asked, bewildered.
“A photo. Come on. So they can see how affectionate we are with each other.”
“Wait! This is for your Instagram?”
“Of course!” He laughed. “I’m following your list point by point.”
I furrowed my brow and studied his expression. “Are you messing with me?”
“Of course not, woman. Come on, pose.”
He grabbed my phone and flipped it around to the front camera, and we showed up on the screen. We smiled. He took a few pictures. I turned back to him again.
“What do you smell like?”
“Like a macho man,” he said, and he pretended to growl.
“Idiot.” I cackled. “What are you wearing, I mean.”
“Cologne.”
“You got a new one?”
“Maybe.” He made a face like he was playing hard to get.
“Well, I guess you are listening to me.”
“Of course.”
“There’s something fishy going on here…” I looked at my camera roll again, and suddenly my qualms reappeared. “Hey, if this is for your Instagram, I don’t want you to show my face. It wouldn’t be that crazy of a coincidence if someone I know saw it and it got back to Filippo.”
“Yeah, true. That would be pretty hard to explain. Well…um…how should we do it?”
I sat on his lap. His knee was digging into the bones of my ass. I moved and let my legs dangle between his. The table next to us was watching everything happening at ours intently. They seemed to be on a pretty boring date.
“What if I sit like this, like I’m hugging you?”
“Ah! Great idea! Let’s see?”
I hid in his neck, and I felt him moving his arm, looking for the best angle.
“It’s good, but move a little that way, you can see the table behind us and they’re eating salmorejo soup; it’s not very sexy.”
I laughed, and he shivered from my breath on his neck.
“Sorry.”
We rearranged ourselves, and I clung to him again. I buried my nose in his skin, and he rubbed me affectionately. He smelled really good. Fresh, clean, masculine. I felt both his arms around me, and I lifted my head.
“Did you get it? Lemme see!”
He showed me the screen of my phone. It had turned out really, I mean, really well. We looked like a couple whispering sweet nothings, and…it must have looked that way to the waiter too when he arrived with a few plates.
“Should I wrap it up for you to take home, lovebirds?”
I jumped up like a spring. “We’re not a couple. We’re just… We were…”
“Yeah, yeah.” The waiter laughed. “I’ll leave the croquettes here for you, okay? Careful, they’re hot…like it’s getting in here.”
I felt a wave of heat on my cheeks. David pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t burst out laughing.
“David!” I whimpered when he left. “Don’t put me in these predicaments in public!”
“He was being a dick.” He nearly pissed himself laughing.
I took a croquette, put another on his plate, and then split mine open so it would cool down a little. And as I watched the steam pour out, it suddenly occurred to me that…
“Hey! I know what you’re trying to do!”
“Me?” He pointed at his chest, pretending to be offended.
“Yes, you! You haven’t called me buddy all night, you bring me to a restaurant, you cut your hair, you changed your cologne, you put on a button-up shirt, you’re going to post a photo with a girl who’s not Idoia, doing something you probably never did with her, having a good time and dressed to the nines…”
“I already told you I’m doing my assignments. You made a list, and I’m simply following your advice to the letter, my sensei.”
“Yeah, okay, but what are your intentions?”
“I don’t have any.”
“None? Ha! I’ll tell you your intentions: you want me to go to Greece knowing that you’ve checked off your whole list…so that I have to check off my list too.”
He put his hands up like he had been found out.
“That’s so devious! So you want me to feel guilty if I don’t finish your list from hell!” I insisted.
“I’m wearing a button-up shirt. Whose list is from hell?”
“Yours!” I laughed.
“Asun took a photo of me working, surrounded by flowers, to post with a retro filter. Wanna see it?”
“Stop!”
He shoved a croquette in his mouth and waggled his eyebrows.
“You look really pretty today,” he said with his mouth full. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” I shrugged.
“Yeah, you did. You curled your hair, didn’t you?”
“I just…” I flattened it down. “I didn’t straighten it today. My mother always says straight hair is more elegant, and…I mean, I don’t know, I got tired of having to waste fifteen minutes using a hair straightener every day. But don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject; there’s just not much more to say. It’s not that weird that I want to make sure you’re gonna try to let loose, go a little crazy, and have a good time in a place where there won’t be anyone you know to hold you back.”
I stared at him as I chewed. He raised his eyebrows.
“Or not?”
“Why are you worried about what I do? You barely know me,” I retorted, suddenly serious.
“Because I like you.” He took a deep breath, his chest puffing out. “I just mean…we get along, I’m starting to feel affectionate toward you. I like how you are when we’re together, and something tells me you like me too, but…you’re not normally like this.”
I grabbed my drink and downed it. David waved at the waiter and pointed to my empty glass to order another.
“Go a little crazy, Margot.” He smiled. “Listen to yourself.”
“I never said—”
“No, but at some point in the last two weeks, you said that we could give each other good advice, that we could help each other. I’m holding up my end of the bargain, and you are too, but…now that you’re going—”
“David,” I cut him off.
“What’d I say?” He made a face. “I said something; I fucked it up. You’ve gotten all weird.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that…the other day I did something…”
“Touching yourself is normal. Being curious about your own body and experimenting. It’s called masturbation,” he quipped.
“David…”
“What?” He laughed, grabbing another croquette from the plate.
“I bought you a ticket.”
He put his fork and knife down slowly, one at a time. His tongue moved around his mouth while his chest filled with air…and he was slow to meet my gaze.
“What?” he repeated.
“I bought you a ticket.”
“A ticket to where?” And he was suddenly so serious that I was scared to keep talking.
I hung my head and put my hands in my lap.
“Forget it.”
“You bought a ticket for me to…go with you?”
“Yes, but I know that was completely out of line, okay? I just…I don’t know. I don’t even know why I told you.”
“But…what did you do with the ticket?”
“It’s pending confirmation.” I shrugged.
The waiter brought over my drink, and I seized it as soon as it landed on the table.
“Margot, look at me.”
“I don’t want to. I’m dying, I’m so fucking embarrassed. I’m such a blabbermouth.” I took a gulp. Then another.
I put the glass down. I looked around us, as if everyone knew how stupid I had just been and they were silently laughing at me. I grabbed my bag, stuck my hand into it, and dug around for my wallet.
“Don’t even think about it,” David intoned, half-standing to stop me with his hand.
“I’d like to leave.”
“Don’t even think about it. Please look at me.”
I glanced at his face. He didn’t seem angry. Or scared. Just a little overwhelmed, treading very carefully.
“I went a little nuts, okay?” I said to him.
“No. You’re going a little nuts now. Put your bag down and look at me.”
His lips were curved into a smile, and as always, I felt like I could relax with him.
“You bought me a ticket to Athens.”
“I wasn’t thinking. If I had thought about it, I would have realized that you need connecting tickets to the islands too.”
“That would be on a boat, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. But I already have the tickets.”
“Your assistant is very diligent.”
“How do you know…? Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“You said you had an assistant. I’m just putting two and two together. So you bought me a ticket to go with you to Greece.”
“Can you stop repeating it?”
“No.” He grabbed his glass and studied its contents. “I just want you to tell me why you did it.”
“I mean…” I sucked in air. “I don’t really want to keep talking about this, to be honest.”
“Please…”
I threw my hands up in despair and hyperventilated. The neighboring table was living for this.
“I’m comfortable with you. I feel…I guess I feel a little indebted to you for making me feel good these last two weeks. It would have been hard without you. And I think…well, that you make me feel free and understood, and I’m not so scared when I’m with you, and I never do anything rash, so…”
“You know I can’t pay you back for this ticket, right?”
“I never wanted you to pay me back.”
We stared at each other.
“So you really want me to go?”
“I wanted. I had a moment…” I looked at the ceiling and pulled a face. “In a trial, a forensic psychiatrist would determine it was temporary insanity.”
“Wow,” he said, with a joking face. “A trial.”
“Yes. Over time it will become known as the iconic case Sánchez v. Ortega”
“Margot Ortega? I didn’t even know your last name.”
“See, that’s how crazy I am. You didn’t even know my last name, and I bought you a plane ticket.”
“You’re such a weirdo.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m a dull girl. Boring.”
“Yeah, yeah…mediocre, eh?”
“Chi.” I nodded.
“Have you ever listened to Carlos Sadness?”
“What are you talking about now?” I was baffled.
“Have you ever heard ‘Te Quiero un Poco’?”
“No.”
“I’ll play it for you later. On my iPod. Because I’m the kind of guy who still has an iPod.”
“You’re the weirdo.”
“I can’t pay you back for the ticket,” he said again.
“This is a nightmare.” I covered my face. “The croquettes are making me feel sick.”
“Hey, Margot…how long would a forensic psychiatrist determine temporary insanity lasts for?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, my face still in my hands.
“Do you think it’d be good for another two weeks?”
I peeked through my fingers at him. “What are you saying?”
“Do you want me to go? I want to go.”
“But…?”
“I want to be by your side while you feel free, you’re not scared, and you go crazy. I want you to come back to Madrid knowing what you want and how you want it, and I won’t settle for anything less. I don’t want you to be lonely on your vacation. I don’t want you to have a bad time, thinking about whether Filippo this or Filippo that. I want you to drink Greek liquor, jump off something high into the ocean, dance, lose your voice from laughing and singing, stroll along the beach with a bottle of wine in your hand, your new dresses greeting the dawn filled with sand and…”
I stood up and covered his mouth.
“Enough,” I whispered slowly.
He raised a hand, asking permission to speak, and I pulled my palm off his lips. I sat down gingerly.
“There are rules.”
“Of course there are,” I repeated. “Nobody can know.”
“Nobody.” He nodded.
“You can take photos, but you can never show my face.”
“Okay. We’ll share costs. Hostels and all that…”
“Hostels? Oh, sweetie…” I laughed. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Well, you have to let me treat you to things. I’ll rent a motorcycle and…”
“Okay, okay.”
“And if you change your mind, even in the middle of the trip, I’ll come back. And if you get home and think better of it, you just have to send me a message and say: ‘I was out of my mind, David.’ But you better not be hoping I’ll be the one to impose sanity on the plans because…I’m no good at that, angel.”
I smiled. “This is fucking crazy.”
“Yes.” He nodded, looking like a little kid. “Nuts.”
“We don’t even know each other.”
“Not well enough.” He nodded.
“It could go terribly.”
“Terribly.” He stopped a waiter who was passing by our table just then. “Could you bring us the wine list? We need to make a toast.”
At two o’clock in the morning, the breeze woke up and tiptoed around Madrid, over all the wild people who were out on a random Wednesday at the end of June on one of the hottest nights of the year. It went around cooling necks, mussing hair, and dragging empty beer cans in its wake. It found David and me sitting on a bench in the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, with a beer we bought on the street, sharing headphones. Carlos Sadness was playing, and David and I looked at each other, as if the lyrics of the song were actually a conversation.
“Twirl, twirl, sad girl. Twirl faster.”
And that sentence David uttered when we said goodbye was forevermore engraved in the song, and I could never listen to it without twirling, twirling, twirling faster.