I spent the rest of the day on the beach he left me on, crying. I didn’t even know why I was crying. I mean, I did. Because I knew that everything we had said was true, even though it was a horrible truth and, even worse, contradictory and incongruent. Yes, I did feel more than I said I felt. Yes, I did want to run back to the refuge of the familiar and I was probably blinded by Filippo’s pedigree. In a way, I respected him more than David, and that wasn’t fair. I was dying of fear and rage, and the only thing that soothed it was throwing myself into the ocean and sobbing. It’s a miracle no one stole all the stuff I left on my chair.
When I got back to the hotel on the shuttle that did a loop every couple of hours to the same spot it had dropped us on the way there, I was starving, tired, covered in sand, and completely fucking messed up. I pictured the empty room, and I knew that when I opened the door and didn’t find him or his stuff, the trip would be as good as over for me too. A lot of things were over. I still held on to the hope that he wouldn’t have left, even though I wasn’t prepared to find him there or to face everything our discussion really meant. It was…it was like when you wish for something as hard as you can but you don’t prepare yourself for it because if you don’t get it, it’ll somehow hurt less that way.
But of course, as you can imagine, I should have prepared myself to open the door and find him there in front of me, with no painkillers. There he was. Sitting on an armchair, with his suitcase zipped up next to him. He had just taken a shower and was dressed and his hair was combed. He looked like he was about to leave for the airport, so I assumed he was waiting for a taxi or something like that and passed by him without a word. I barely even looked at him. I didn’t want to watch him leave the room, the island, my life.
I stripped in the bathroom, leaving all my clothes crumpled on the floor, and I got in the shower, where I waited under the water for him to leave. I took a long time. I cried again. I thought between the sobs and the water I wouldn’t hear the door closing when he left and it would be better that way. A girl has to protect her heart.
When I got out of the shower, I pulled on the nightgown I had left hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I dried my hair with a towel. I combed it out and walked out barefoot. Maybe Sonia was still in the office and I could ask her to move my ticket home up to the next day.
David had his forearms resting on his knees, and he looked up at me, still sitting in the same chair where I had found him when I came in. The ever-present bags under his eyes were bigger than ever. His mouth was swollen from anxiously biting his lips so much. He stood up, and I stopped dead in the middle of the room.
I turned so he wouldn’t see me cry, like an ashamed little girl, and he wrapped me in his arms from behind, slowly, like deep down he was expecting me to pull away. I felt his uneven beard bristling against my shoulder and his breath when he stroked my neck with his nose.
“I’m sorry,” he moaned with a trembling voice. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to bite my hand to stem my tears and muffle my sobs, but his arms were holding me tight.
“This is so shitty, Margot. So shitty.” He pressed his forehead against my damp hair. “This isn’t what we planned. Forgive me.”
I didn’t answer.
“I don’t think you’re a poor little rich girl,” he insisted.
“You do think so, and you’re probably right.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
I put my left hand over his on my belly.
“I don’t even know what I said to you on the beach.” He sighed, overwhelmed.
“Let’s forget it, David. We fucked it all up.”
“I should’ve told you. I wanted to wake you up and ask you to hold me, but I was scared.”
“Why?”
“I guess for the same reason you didn’t tell me about Filippo.”
I turned around, and we both had understanding expressions while he put his arms around my waist.
“We should have talked,” I said.
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
“I was jealous,” I admitted.
“Okay. I was angry.”
“At yourself, at me, or at her?”
“Mostly at myself, that I’m going to go crawling back to her with my tail between my legs.”
“Don’t think like that.” I looked him in the eyes and pushed some hair back from his temples. “If that’s what you want to do, think more like you’re returning victorious. In the end, she followed wherever you wanted. Rabid with jealousy.”
“And you. And me,” he said wiping my tears away with his thumb. “We were both rabid with jealousy too.”
“You?”
He nodded.
“You were scared I might fall in love with you,” I said, my throat dry.
“Yes. And that I might fall in love with you. And the truth is, Margot, I think if we don’t leave it here, that’s what’ll end up happening.”
He stroked my cheeks.
“And I’m terrified of falling in love with someone like you,” he insisted, tilting toward my mouth.
“Why?”
“Because if I’m a disappointment to Idoia, my love…imagine what I’ll be to you.”
“Let me decide that.”
“No,” he said, looking at my lips. “That can’t happen.”
“David, we can’t claim we experience these things and then forget them…”
“Yes, we can.” He smiled sadly. “We can leave it here. We can keep going with what we planned and…not fuck up our lives. Otherwise, I’ll hurt you and you’ll hurt me.”
I stroked his lips.
“You deserve a perfect story, a princess story, and I don’t believe in magic. We’d love each other sweetly for how long? A few years? At most. Then, little by little, you’d realize that I’m just a dream deferred. And you’d hate me for not accomplishing anything. And I’d hate you for being too good for me.”
“Isn’t Idoia?”
He half-smiled, but he didn’t answer.
“Once upon a time, the saddest eyes ever in a bar…” he said, “who recognized each other through a crowd of people.”
“And they went to Greece.” I smiled sadly.
“And they fell in love with what could have been…” he went on.
“…until the sea swallowed them up…”
“There’s a flight at nine thirty tonight.” He wet his lips. “Do you want me to buy the ticket?”
“The sea is still hungry.”
I guess there’s nothing love likes more than impossible stories. And there’s nothing more impossible than the things nobody believes in. Even ghosts, they say, are able to keep their existence a secret because people don’t believe. And David was right: we were impossible. Two strangers, really, who had only seen the good in each other, who had scooped each other up from the street and cured each other’s wounds, but…even if you cure the wound, the scar will never be yours.
When he kissed me, I understood that he was scared I would fall in love with him. I was scared too. You never find the warmth of home in something new, even if the home is on fire and about to crumble around you. That is why we should learn that home is where the heart is.
I don’t even remember how we got naked and into bed. I don’t remember wanting to screw, and I don’t remember thinking he wanted to. I guess what we did had less to do with sex and more to do with need.
David dug his fingers hard into my waist as he entered me, and I saw his muscles and tendons tighten as he thrusted between my thighs. His face contracted with pleasure. I wanted to tell him he had constellations in his eyes and then beg him to hurt me, tell him I didn’t care if all we got was two years. But I kept quiet. I kept quiet, either out of embarrassment or so I wouldn’t miss a single detail of his face while he fucked me. While he made love to me. While he told me, quietly, slowly, that he wanted to stay with me always.
David dug his fingers into my ass as he lay on top of me and sped up his thrusting. I wish he left a cluster of purple fingerprints on my skin because, even if they changed color, they would remind me for a few more days of the painful sensation and the pleasure it provoked in me. I asked him not to stop, and he asked me not to forget him. I asked him to never stop touching me like that, and he asked me to never stop putting my hands on his skin.
David dug his fingers hard into my chest, into my neck, into my hips, into the pillow, the mattress, the handful of hair he grabbed at the end, when I came so hard it made me float and I needed him to hold me down to the ground and remind me that my skin was only mine and not his, even though that’s how I felt now.
When he peeled off the used condom and went into the bathroom, I buried my face in the pillow and, when I heard him turn on the faucet, drowned out a scream with the feathers. I already loved him, and even though he didn’t believe in us, I didn’t know if it would be too late to save me from it without paying with too deep a scar.
“Do you hate anything about Filippo?”
I rubbed my cheek against his chest, grazing the sparse hair between his pecs with my fingertips.
“Of course. And I’m sure he hates stuff about me too.”
“But like what?”
“You mean what does he hate about me or me about him?” I clarified.
“I don’t care about him. What do you hate?”
“Well…his need to plan everything, for one. He can’t function on the fly. He doesn’t know how to improvise. He’s rigid to the point of exasperation. And I don’t like that he’s so proud, and he’s the kind of guy who makes declarations when he talks. He’s super emphatic.” I looked at David to check his expression.
I couldn’t deduce anything from his features.
“What else?” he pressed.
“Well…I don’t think there’s anything else.”
“Nothing else?” He raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“I mean, that’s not nothing.”
“He doesn’t chew with his mouth open or have stinky feet or leave his underwear on the floor all the time?”
“No.” I smiled. “Do you?”
“Gorgeous, I smell like heaven,” he announced smugly. “That’s not it. It’s just that I hate hundreds of things about Idoia.”
“Like what?”
“I loathe one of her perfumes, the winter one… It makes me queasy and burns my stomach.”
“That’s silly.” I laughed. “It’s so easy to tell her. It’s a perfume. Filippo hates my mother… That’s more complicated. I can’t just stop ‘putting it on’ and that’s that.”
“Well. I hate other stuff. I hate that fucking her is like acting in a porno where everything is preplanned and perfect.”
“Ughh…perfect porn. Sounds awful,” I teased.
“She’s so condescending, it’s a pain in the ass. And when she shows off her moral superiority, I wish I could tell her to go to hell. She doesn’t like my friends, she never wants to make plans with them, and it makes me feel terrible because they could run a thousand circles around her posse of trendy pals. I hate that she takes drugs sometimes because, besides the obvious, she gets really violent and sometimes she goes crazy while we’re fucking and…she really messes me up. It turns me off that she looks down on me and she constantly repeats that her ex was a big, strong, rough dude and I’m so ‘little’…”
“You’re not that little. That girl’s mental ruler must be broken.”
“She makes me feel tiny.”
I sat up, grabbed his face, and kissed him violently. He smiled into the kiss.
“Does it turn you on that I hate all that stuff?”
“No. I just wanted to shut you up. What do you like about yourself, David?”
“What?”
“You heard me. What do you like about yourself?”
“Uh…” He blinked. “Well, I never thought about it. What about you? What do you like about yourself?”
“My perseverance. My patience. I’m empathetic and a good boss. And affectionate. And I haven’t lost all the childish naivete that allows me to be genuinely surprised. I’m good at walking in high heels. I’m proud of not being like my mother, and I like how enthusiastic I am about taking on new projects. And I’m good with languages and…with people.” David kissed me, and I took advantage of his closeness to insist, “Come on, your turn now.”
He raised his eyebrows, and his doubtful expression transformed into a timid smile.
“I’m sensitive…and understanding. I can usually make people smile when they’re with me.”
“What else?”
“I’m good with flowers. And I have patience. Good with kids. I’m a confident person and a guy who doesn’t need to dim anyone else’s light to turn his on.”
“Very good.” I straddled him. “And?”
“You tell me.” He smiled. “What else?”
“You’re a pro at choosing songs for every moment. And you have a beautiful laugh. And you have these tiny dots in your eyes, little golden streaks, that make it feel like you’re looking into a galaxy. You have a lot of hair, and it’s really silky. And when you’re about to come, you arch in this really sexy way…”
“And I have stamina.”
“And you’re very generous when it comes to pleasure. And smiles. And saying nice things.”
“I’m a hedonist in love with beauty. What are we gonna do about it?” He smiled. “What about you? Tell me more things about you.”
“I’m not a bad singer, and my niece and nephews adore me. I think I have good taste. And I smell good.”
“You smell amazing. And you’re very sexy, even though you don’t know it.” He sat up a little straighter, so his mouth reached mine. “When you’re on top, you move in this incredible way… When you laugh really hard, it sounds like there are bells tinkling in your throat.”
David smiled, and I returned the gesture.
“And I give good head.”
“You give very good head.” He nodded. “But not as good as your kissing. You kiss like they always kiss in the final shot of a black-and-white movie. And you make the people around you comfortable. So much that…I don’t want to leave.”
The smile faded from my mouth.
“It’s a pity we can’t love each other,” I said. “Because we love each other really beautifully.”
“Yeah. You and I would make poetry.”
I snuggled into his chest and sighed. What a shame. What a shame magic doesn’t exist if you don’t believe in it…and that you need two people to believe in love.
“David…” I finally said. “Don’t let anyone make you believe that what you’re not is more important than what you are.”
“Even better…don’t go too far away. It’d be good to have you around to remind me every once in a while.”