Chapter 8
DUENDE
NATE
Three days ago I was sitting in Valentina's studio watching her add finishing touches to the sky installation. Paint-stained fingers worked with the kind of precision that reminded me of Nora when she wrote—complete absorption, like the rest of the world had fallen away.
When I'd asked Valentina for after hours access to the gallery to surprise Nora for her eighteenth birthday, Valentina didn't even hesitate to hand me the keys.
"You're nervous," Valentina said, her accent thick, without looking up from the constellation she was mapping on canvas. "About her being here, no?"
"Yeah." I ran my hand through my hair, a gesture that had become fucking automatic whenever I thought about Nora.
"It's complicated."
"Everything worth doing is complicated."
She stepped back, studying her work with the critical eye of someone who understood that art was about more than pretty pictures.
"Does she know about Luiza?"
"No. I haven't... I mean I'm going to. It's just every time I try to tell her, something comes up." I trailed off, swearing under my breath. I still couldn't string together a coherent sentence when it came to my feelings.
Valentina finally looked at me, her expression knowing.
"Nate, if this girl matters to you—"
"She does," I said, the words coming out quicker than I intended as if to remove any doubt. "She always has."
"Then you tell her the truth. All of it." She wiped her hands on a rag that had seen better days. "The gallery will be perfect for it. Art has a way of making people brave enough to be honest."
Now, standing in that same gallery watching Nora shut down on the brink of walking away from me, I realize Valentina was right about the honesty part. But she forgot to mention how fucking terrifying it would be.
The silence makes my skin crawl, but I can't stop watching her move between paintings. Twenty-one fucking years alive and I've never felt anything hit me in the gut like Nora when she's locked onto something beautiful.
We move from room to room inside the gallery.
Her fingers hover near a canvas, not touching, but I know she wants to. I see it in the way her hand shakes slightly, this physical ache to connect.
She transforms when she's like this.
What's that like?
To just let beauty consume you like that without reason?
To not fight it, to completely give in to it?
I drift after her like some ghost tied to her ankle.
"Look at this one." Her voice is a hook in my chest, yanking me to her.
I stand close enough to feel her warmth but not touch. She points at some red-gold canvas, a dancer spinning with her skirt exploding around her.
"Look at the way the artist captured movement," she whispers. "It's like you can hear the music if you look long enough."
I nod but I'm not seeing the dancer.
I'm counting the faint freckles on her cheek while watching her pulse hammer in her throat.
My own private gallery piece.
More complicated than any of this fancy art on the walls. These artists spent their lives trying to bottle feelings into images and fuck, I get it now. That desperate need to grab something so perfect it actually hurts to look at.
She's fucking beautiful but it's not even about that, it's how she sees beautiful things, it's how she comes alive near them, how she just lets herself feel shit.
It's how she can just appreciate something outside herself while I'm drowning in my own head, my own bullshit, my own—
"What do you think?" she asks, turning suddenly toward me.
What do I think?
I think watching someone love something is the best high you could ever feel and if I could steal the light in her eyes right now, I'd never need another fix again.
"Incredible," I say, and we both know damn well I'm not talking about the painting.
We go deeper into the gallery where the light gets colder, silvery. Abstract pieces hang like rips in reality. The ceiling curves up into this dome covered in tiny mirrors, throwing our reflections back in broken pieces.
Our private universe of fractured selves.
There's this glass sculpture in the center that's life-sized, a person breaking out of what looks like frozen water.
It's freakishly good.
You can see muscles straining in glass, this violent birth happening in slow motion for eternity.
She circles it.
I circle her.
And like everything between us, it becomes a dance.
The Spanish have a word—duende—for the mysterious power of art to move us.
But they need another word for what happens when you witness someone else's duende, when you fall in love not with the art itself but with the way someone else falls in love with it.
"The colors in this one are beautiful," she says, standing in front of a painting that is all different hues of blue and green.
A perfect blend of harmony.
She didn't even need to tell me why she loved this one.
I already knew, because blue was her favorite color. The thing about favorite colors is, they're not random.
They're confessions.
She'd once said blue reminded her of water, of freedom. I think what she meant was escape. The color of everything she wasn't but thought she could become if she just ran far enough.
Mine was green.
The color of her eyes.
She chose the color of movement, of never being pinned down.
Of possibilities that only exist in the distance.
I chose the color of something that was already there.
Already real.
Already mine, even if she didn't know it yet.
She was always looking toward horizons.
Blue sky, blue water, blue distance between her and whatever she was running from.
I was looking at what was right in front of me.
The green that didn't need to go anywhere to be perfect.
That didn't need to escape to be free.
Two people.
Two colors.
Two completely different ideas about what freedom means.
She thought it was about leaving.
I knew it was about staying.
It's my turn to break the silence before it breaks me.
"Truth or dare?"
"Truth." She turns to me when she says it.
"Why haven't you asked me yet?" I say, sliding my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching for her.
"Asked you about what?"
"Luiza."
Her shoulders tense, that subtle shift I've learned to read like a map of her discomfort.
"Because it's none of my business."
"Ask me."
My voice comes out harder than I mean it to, defensive edges creeping in despite my best efforts.
She spins to face me, and there's fire in her eyes—the kind that means she's about to say something that'll cut us both open.
"Nate, I'm not going to ask you about your relationship with Luiza and whether or not you've slept together. I mean she's nice, like super nice. And annoyingly beautiful. And I'm really happy for you both so you don't need to worry about—"
I start laughing at the absurdity of it all—six months of pretending to be someone's boyfriend to protect their relationship while my heart was three thousand miles away, aching for the girl standing in front of me.
"Valentina," I say, cutting through her spiral, "the girl who gave me the keys to this place is Luiza's girlfriend."
The change in her face is instant.
Color drains, then floods back. Her eyes go wide, lips parting in that way that means her entire worldview just shifted.
"Oh..." The word barely makes it out.
I step closer, drawn by that magnetic pull that's been dragging me toward her since we were kids. The air between us shifts, it’s supercharged with all the electricity we've been pretending not to feel.
"There's only ever been one person," I say, my voice dropping to something softer, more vulnerable than I usually allow. "Only one person who's held my attention since I was seven years old."
Her breath catches, and I watch her chest rise and fall in rapid succession.
"Only one person who makes me feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be just by existing in the same space."
I take another step closer, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her eyes.
"And she's standing right here in front of me, trying to pretend she doesn't feel it too."
"Nate..." Her voice is barely a whisper.
"I've spent the last eight months learning how to be human again," I continue, my hands finding her face, thumbs tracing the sharp line of her cheekbones. "And the whole time, the only thing I really wanted and prayed I'd get was another chance with you."
I make the space between us paper-thin, like two pages in a book threatening to stick together.
"So Len, truth or dare?"
"Truth."
"Would you let me kiss you right now?"
She smirks. “Truth or dare Nate?"
"Dare."
"I dare you to."
Before she can take it back, before she can think of reasons why this is too complicated, I kiss her.
It's everything.
Soft and desperate and months of missing each other poured into the space between our mouths. She tastes like coming home to something I thought I'd lost forever.
When we break apart, both breathing hard, her hands are fisted in my shirt.
Her cheeks flush pink and something about that makes me happy. That I'm still the one that does that to her.
"Happy birthday Leni."
"Thank you for bringing me here," she says softly, turning from the painting to face me. In the gallery light, her skin looks luminous, ethereal.
"Thank you," I say, kissing her once more because now I can't seem to get enough. "For saying fuck it."
Her hand comes up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. I wonder if she can feel how fast it's beating, how just her touch makes my entire nervous system light up like fucking Christmas.
"I'm glad I did," she whispers.
And then I'm kissing her again, she responds immediately, her body melting against mine as her hands tangle in my hair. When we finally break apart, both of us breathing hard, I rest my forehead against hers.
"We should go," I say, my voice rough with want.
"Yeah," she agrees, but neither of us moves for a long moment, caught in the gravity of what's happening between us.