Margot
I was woken up, as I had been for the last two days, by the sounds and light flooding into the room. I was tormented by the thought of the days when the alarm clock would once again rule over all those sensations: the light, the touch of the cold sheets under my feet, the deliciously lazy feeling that all time is mine. But, also, everything was better there; the world was calmly awake, the water in the pool was dancing, twirling, twirling, twirling in swirls caused by the filter, the birds were calling happily over the leftovers of some breakfast momentarily forgotten on the restaurant terrace. I remember thinking it was going to be hard for me to get back into my routine.
I tried to reach out for the bedside table, but I felt a little disoriented when I didn’t feel my phone on it. Then David moved behind me, and I remembered.
I remembered that he kissed me the night before. I remembered that “Do you want it or not?” that turned me on so much. And the bites, the licks, the hands touching everything until we got to the bed. I remembered his cock in my hand, hard, thick, warm, and his fingers rubbing between my legs. I remembered the blood, the shame, and the dinner, trying to act like nothing had happened. I remembered his offer.
“You can sleep in my bed if you want.”
The sheets were stained, and, well, I don’t know if I just wanted an excuse, but not sleeping there seemed like the most logical thing to do. We fell asleep cuddled up in his bed, after talking for a couple of hours, about his friends from the village, his mother, mine, my year in America; any topic was good enough to distract us from what we had done. And after we fell asleep spooning, we woke up in the same position because the damn air-conditioning in that hotel could never be turned off, only moved up or down by a degree or two, and it created the kind of cold that makes you seek out the heat of another body.
“Good morning,” David’s voice mumbled into my back.
I turned to look at him. He always woke up a little dozy and very disheveled. He was cute, even with bags under his eyes, messy hair, and swollen lips. And I wanted to kiss him, as if instead of forgetting what happened, as we agreed, I had forgotten our agreement.
“Nice hair,” I teased.
“Well, you look like you just came out of the salon, girl.”
I don’t know if I was relieved or felt sorry for myself that what had happened last night didn’t seem to exist for him anymore.
“My back hurts,” he complained, rolling over onto his back with a moan.
“Because of the mattress?”
“No. I think it’s because I’m not used to sleeping with someone and I spent the night curled around you, like Gollum. It was cold.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll ask for an extra blanket from reception for you.” I smiled. “Anyway, luckily they’ll change my sheets today and I won’t bother you for the rest of the trip.”
I propped my head on my hand and my elbow on the pillow. He looked at me and smiled. For a few seconds, nothing was said in the room…at least not out loud, but our eyes spoke volumes.
“What?” I tried my luck.
“Oh, no. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Poke me so I’m the first one to break the promise.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said coyly.
“Of course you do, but here we go: for me, there would be no better bed from here to Madrid.”
I covered his mouth. He kissed my palm. It didn’t look like we were going to act like nothing happened, and…I was relieved.
But…what about Filippo, Margot? What about Filippo?
I got up and checked the time.
“We missed breakfast.”
“We can grab a couple of coffees from the bakery on the way to the highway,” he suggested, luxuriating in the sheets.
Everything was so easy with him. Okay, we were on vacation, but David always had an answer for everything, a solution, or the opposite, a fun flight forward. I took a look at the bed. He was lying there, with his arm under the back of his neck, shirtless, disheveled, between such white sheets…
“What are you looking at?”
“You look like you’re in a shroud. Uncover yourself a little, dude.” I pushed it as far as I could.
“Do you want to see something in particular?”
“Do you have qualms about me seeing something in particular?”
He threw the blanket and the sheets to one side with an expression of superiority, and I quickly understood why. Good morning to you too, dear David’s cock, that’s a very happy greeting. Fuck…I really wanted to get back in bed.
“I have to go to the supermarket.” I made a face, dragging my eyes away from his erection, which he had not hesitated to show me. “I forgot to pack tampons. I found a few in my toiletry bag, but I’m going to need more.”
“Of course. We can go now. Are you driving?”
“I am pretty good at braking.”
“I’m not going to keep slamming you into furniture while I shove my tongue down your throat.”
I scurried off to my bathroom.
He was the one who went into the supermarket. When he came out, he had a box of tampons for me and something else he shoved into his backpack very mysteriously. I considered the possibility that it could be a box of condoms to use with someone else as soon as he had the opportunity, and I got angry like a little girl for two reasons: one, I didn’t want any lucky tourist to squirm with pleasure with David on top (or below or next to or behind or in front), and two, because point number one was not at all consistent with what, with great wisdom and maturity, I had told him the night before. What was happening to me? I kept remembering what we did and fantasizing about a thousand different endings. No one had ever kissed me like him, and even though I knew it was wrong…I felt so alive…like when I was fifteen and still harbored the hope of being free.
The journey to Red Beach took about fifteen minutes, and when we arrived, we found there were way fewer people than we had expected.
“Did we just luck out?”
Pretty much. It was late, and because there was only a crappy snack bar, people had gone to eat lunch, leaving their spots mostly free. We threw our towels down on the sand, and David seemed so happy I didn’t even miss renting a chair.
“They’re all taken,” he said, looking over to where we could get them. “But if you want to later…”
“No. We’re fine here.”
And as I said it, I put my arm around his waist from behind, resting my chin on his shoulder.
He was wearing the black bathing suit again, short and pretty tight. I was wearing a bikini printed with drawings of lemons; the bottoms had a very cute ruffle that he seemed to like.
“You’re dressed perfectly to keep completing the to-do list, right?” he said as he put on sunscreen.
“The topless one, you mean?”
He nodded and turned his back to me so I would put sunscreen there. I enjoyed myself, I’ll admit it.
“As far as I’m concerned”—I took advantage of the fact he couldn’t see my face—“I can already scratch off the crazy night one, right?”
“Um…I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to be satisfied, don’t you think?” He looked at me over his shoulder with a wolfish smile.
“I wasn’t suffering.”
“In my opinion, it’s like scratching eating off the list because you got some cutlery.”
I gave him a pat to let him know he was all finished and focused on putting sunscreen on myself.
“Want me to do your back?” he offered.
“Yes.”
“Should I untie your bikini top?” He raised his eyebrows, joking.
I laughed. I looked around and then at him.
“Can you imagine?”
“Ooooh,” he teased. “So wild! How are you going to take off your bikini top like…at least, at least…two dozen other girls on this beach?”
“But I’m not one of those two dozen girls.” I pushed my hair off my face. “I grew up listening to a mother recite all the things that are considered vulgar for women to do, and it turns out that encompasses almost everything fun.”
“That’s your mother’s concept of what’s vulgar. What’s yours?”
“Showing my tits on a beach is not part of that concept, I know that much.”
I looked at David over my shoulder and smiled a little wickedly.
“Go on.” I moved my arm. “Untie it.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Seriously?”
“But I think the time has come to tell you that I don’t know if I see myself kissing another woman.”
The strap on my back disappeared between his fingers, and I bent down to grab the highest SPF sunscreen I had, a stick of it, to put on my boobs. David was looking at me in awe when I dropped the bikini top and concentrated on the task.
“If you keep looking…” I warned him, not looking up at him.
“I’ll piss the bed.”
“The pissing-in-the-bed thing is when you stare at fire for too long, I think.”
“Exactly…”
I looked at him. He was smiling at me and pulling the hair on his forehead apart with his fingers.
“It’s super creepy and gross that you’re ogling my tits,” I insisted.
“I’m not ogling,” he replied, his eyes clamped on mine. “But they’re beautiful. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get in the water.”
A family with children laughed and built sandcastles. Two boys were talking, very close, about something that made them laugh. A dog was barking, running up and down the shore and splashing the swimmers who were getting out and going in.
“Lights Up” by Harry Styles was playing in my headphones while I tried to focus on reading a book on the use of new technologies in internationalization, updating, and branding strategies. A few drops fell on my back.
“That book sucks, and you know it.” David lay down next to me and, with his still-wet fingers, drew a couple of figures on my skin, joining the drops that had fallen from his hair.
He had put on his sunglasses. Fuck. Those damn sunglasses. I closed the book and took the opportunity to pull them off when he lay on his back.
“Hey!” he complained. “Give them back. The sun is hot as hell.”
“Let’s keep the peace, David. You look too cute in these,” I warned him.
I lay on my side, and he did the same, propping his head up on his forearm.
“You’re half naked next to me. I deserve my sunglasses.”
“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll put my bikini top back on, and you forget the Ray-Bans; then we’ll be on equal footing.”
“No.” He snatched them from me and put them on. “We’re fine like this. You do your list, and I make up for it.”
“Now I can’t see where you’re looking.”
“At your tits. Don’t doubt it for one second.”
I wanted to sit on top of him, comb his wet hair with my fingers…maybe talk about the night before. If it had been any other guy, I wouldn’t have dared to even think about bringing it up, but it was him, and I always felt comfortable with him. Peaceful. Comfortable in my own skin.
I opened my mouth to say his name and leave a few ellipses in the air, hoping he would help me bring it up, but my phone started ringing.
“You’re fucking kidding me, dude,” I muttered. “There shouldn’t be any service here.”
“It’s probably Filippo. He probably changed his mind and is coming to get you in a helicopter.”
“Go to hell.”
I tried to sit up as elegantly as possible and reached for my phone from the pocket of David’s backpack.
“Oh, God,” I muttered when I saw who the call was from.
“Work?”
“Worse. My sister Candela. I’m going to go over there, okay?”
“Okay.” He nodded. “That way I won’t hear anything when you tell her about last night.”
I didn’t even answer. It was hard enough putting my feet on the soft, uneven sand and moving away without looking like an ex-soldier holding a grenade.
“What?” I answered.
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“I’m fine too. Yes, the break to think about myself and my priorities is going great, thanks for asking.”
“Fuuuuck, such an attitude, diva.”
“I’m sick of this shit!” I whined, looking over my shoulder at David settling down to read his book.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No,” I said emphatically. “What happened now?”
“Patricia got more photos from the detective. I sent them to you. You have to see them.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” I got scared.
I took the phone off my ear and looked for some shade under some rocks at the foot of the hillside where we had climbed down to the beach and sat down so I could open the email Candela had just sent me. And she was right. I couldn’t believe it. In the photos, two tall blond girlies were watching, hiding behind a recycling bin, peering out from behind a huge newspaper (standing in the middle of a crowded street…that’s what I call discretion in capital letters), using a baby stroller to sneak around “without being seen.” I looked at the sky, flipped my hair, and asked the universe for strength.
“But what does all this shit mean?” I asked her.
“Well, to start with, the detective wasn’t as bad as we thought. He spotted us following him.”
A camouflaged laugh came out of my nose.
“You wouldn’t believe the scene he caused with Patricia. He said he’d give her money back, but she had to swear never to contact him again. He felt harassed. Harassed. Apparently, your older sister told him at least once, ‘I was so lucky to find such an attractive detective.’ The gentleman thought Patricia was a nutjob who was obsessed with him.”
“Your sister has lost her mind. Tell me he’s not going to report her or anything.”
“No, no. In the end, he just refunded most of her money in exchange for the promise he would never see her again.”
“I hope that punishment was enough and she’s learned her lesson,” I answered, dead serious. “Harassment isn’t funny, Candela.”
“You don’t have to tell me. Your sister is the one being disgusting.”
I looked over at David. He was opening a can of beer. I wanted to be all the drops of water flying off him when he did it.
“She hired another guy,” Candela announced.
“What are you talking about?” I turned back to the sea again. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, but this one is an old bag. He must be two hundred years old. I think they found him in the Egyptian pyramids.”
I burst into laughter, covering my eyes.
“Is there anyone normal in this family?” I threw the question out into the air.
“I think Papa was normal.”
“I don’t think so. Why would he have married Mama then?”
“Um…I never looked at it that way. Well, what about you?”
“Me?”
I glanced back. Fucking sunglasses.
“Yes, you.”
Silence. I was debating whether sharing some information would make me feel better or worse.
“You guys have hooked up, right?”
I let out a whimper of incomprehension, and she sucked her teeth.
“Have you slept together?”
“No! Well…we were about to.”
“But?”
“I’d love to tell you that in a fierce struggle between my reasoning and what my clamshell wanted, common sense won…but no. Have you seen Carrie?”
“The new one or the old one? Doesn’t matter, I like the book better anyway.”
“Do you remember the scene at the dance, almost at the end?”
“When she ends up covered in pig blood? Wait!”
“Yes. The bed ended up looking like a prop from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“That must’ve been a mess, right?”
“Well, to tell the truth? No. More like a letdown because you don’t know how he touches, how he kisses, how—”
“Okay, okay, okay. Simmer down. What about now?”
“Now? Well…” I looked over my shoulder. “We’re going to pretend like nothing happened.”
“Wait, when did this happen?”
“Last night.”
“And you’re going to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even believe that yourself.” She laughed.
I pushed my hair out of my face, overwhelmed.
“I love Filippo,” I declared.
“Okay.”
“This isn’t fair.”
Candela didn’t say anything.
“I want to get him back.”
“Okay,” my sister repeated.
“Do you think he’s slept with anyone? I mean…he was very angry with me, he’s on vacation with his friends, and…”
“Hit the brakes. I have no idea what Filippo is doing; what I’m interested in is what you’re doing. If he had slept with someone, what would that change for you?”
“Well…señora, it changes the map of the situation a little…”
“You wouldn’t want to get him back?”
“I want to get him back,” I repeated. “In September, when we see each other, we have to see what went wrong and try to fix it…but I want to be with him.”
“What about David?”
“David is a friend.”
“You don’t fuck friends.”
“Well, you don’t fuck friends, but David probably does.”
“Would you go out with David?” she asked. “Could you have a relationship with him?”
“No. No way. That dude is a hot mess.” I felt bad and looked at him. Poor guy. He didn’t deserve that. He was just going through a complicated time. Like me. “Well, I mean, a mess isn’t really fair, but the thing is, no, I couldn’t be with anyone like him.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? Because…no. It hasn’t even crossed my mind.”
“You’re playing with fire.” She sighed. “Margot…that guy makes you laugh.”
“Fuck laughing. Dani Rovira makes me laugh too, and I wouldn’t leave it all behind for him.”
“Come on, girl, you know what I’m saying.”
I stared at some boats in the distance that were heading toward the beach. Out there where the sea seemed to blur into the horizon, the water rippled with golds and turquoises.
“Margot? You still there?”
“I’m here, Candela. I’m…I’m on an incredible beach with red sand and crystal clear water and my tits out…”
“Your tits out? You?”
“Tits out. Me. The same me who’s going to hang up the phone and stop overanalyzing. Do you hear me, Candela? Because I’m going to hang up the phone and live. But live like I’m going to die the second I land in Madrid. And I’ll live everything I want to in secret. If I feel like blowing him, I’ll leave it raw. If I feel like taking it up the ass, welcome to the back door. And you know what? No one will know. Just like no one knows what the fuck Filippo is doing. When was the last time I was selfish? Hey? Because I ran away from my wedding, I know; how fucking embarrassing for the cat mother’s family, but that’s it! I’m going to enjoy myself, and that’s that. Let’s go.”
I hung up the phone and stared at it like it had just fallen out of a flying saucer. Next to me, a family was looking at me a little stunned. I guess because of my tone. I prayed they didn’t speak Spanish, but I didn’t have time to find out. As far as the phone, that started buzzing in my hand with a WhatsApp notification from Patricia.
You’re online. Call me. I’m not okay.
I went over to where David was waiting and sunbathing.
“Everything okay? You took a while,” he asked when he felt my shadow move over him.
I chucked my phone on top of the towel and went back to the shore, where I threw myself into the sea without looking back.
The water cooled my sun-reddened skin, and my ideas hardened, like lava, when they touched the sea. Firmer, colder, immovable.
I was aware that an affair always hurts someone. I wanted to fix it with Filippo, and…I also wanted to keep getting to know the Margot who bloomed when David touched me. No. The Margot that emerged when she felt completely free, when no one was going to judge her. I wanted to know what it felt like to make decisions just for myself.
When I got back to where David was lying, I took the book out of his hands without a word and left it on my towel face down. I straddled his thighs, a little farther down than the area that I had been handling the night before, mind you. Breaking free is one thing, and a canoodling session on a public beach quite another. I thought he would sit up like a spring, but he stayed still, staring at me. My hair, tossed to one side, was swaying, drying in the sun. Drops fell from my nipples and dappled his chest, where I placed a hand as I bent down.
“Yes.” He nodded seriously.
“Yes, what?”
“To what you’re asking, yes.”
There was no kiss, but the way he trailed his thumb down my back said much more.
Problems.