Chapter 2 #2
“I know. I had a ton of work. I’m going with Noa on part of her summer tour, and there are a thousand loose ends to tie up,” he apologizes as he sweeps the hair off his forehead.
They haven’t made eye contact once, which hasn’t gone over my head, but I’m too busy making a mental note of the name of the singer he’s touring with so I can stalk her online later and decide whether to be jealous.
As if knowing how much he loved Aroa, the most beautiful girl in the world, weren’t bad enough.
“I’m gonna grab a drink. Anyone want one?” Marín asks both of us, but he’s only looking at me.
“I’m all set.”
“A beer would be great, man.”
Marín slides away with a smile and says hi to at least five people whose faces I don’t even recognize on his way to the bar six feet away.
“So what’s up, Coco?”
“Not much,” I reply, shrugging.
“You still work in that art gallery for crusty old people with too much dough?”
This is one of the things that bug me most about Angel; a few years ago, he started feeling like his “cool” factor was sharply declining, and his way of trying get it back is by being cynical and mocking what other people do.
I know that my work isn’t what young people are dying to do…
I mean, if I just say I work in an art gallery and whomever I’m talking to imagines one of those hipster Malasana spots where they sell pieces by emerging artists, I guess it’s cool enough.
But then I’d be lying by omission. It’s not that kind of place.
Last week I sold a Miró. A Miró. I spent months working on the deal.
It was a piece from a private collection, but the two parties finally came to an agreement and the gallery and I each took our cut.
These days, after the financial crisis, it’s hard for a gallery to survive on selling just the paintings on the walls. We act as dealers too.
So I decide to counterattack his comment snidely. “Are you still drinking the chocolate milk your mother brings to your bedside every morning?”
“Hey, man, don’t get all aggy. You know how much I love you.” Angel slings his arm around me and tries to kiss my temple, but I wriggle out of it as fast as I can.
“Quit it… You’re so damn touchy-feely.”
Angelito and I have a cordial relationship, as long as we don’t spend too much time together. I resent how hard he tries to seem cool and constantly invades people’s personal space, especially women’s.
“I hear Blanca’s send-off is gonna be amazing.”
I turn to face him again. “Loren and I planned it. Would you expect anything less?”
“What’s the plan?”
“The key to keeping a secret under wraps, Angelito, is not blabbing about it.”
My fanny pack buzzes with a message, and I tap my phone on again. I’m surprised to see it’s from Marín.
Marín:
Make up an excuse and say goodbye. I ordered a cab.
A smile spreads across my face. Now I have an excuse to escape and to leave with the person I really want to.
“Angel, excuse me for a sec, I have to tell Loren something.”
I pat him on the forearm a couple of times as a goodbye and wend my way through the crowd to Loren. I spot him by his hair. It’s unmistakable.
“I’m outta here,” I say into his ear.
“Already?” he shouts indignantly.
“Marín called a cab.”
“Fucking lame-os,” he grumbles. “I mean, hopefully today you at least get to touch his cock.”
“Loren, for the love of God, one of these days someone’s going to hear you say that.”
“Coco, the way you moon over him, it’d be a shocker if no one noticed you’re butt-crazy in love with your ‘best friend.’”
His air quotes piss me off, so I give him a slap.
“We have an intense week coming up. Don’t use it all up today, firecracker.”
He pouts but leans forward so I can kiss his forehead as usual. Then he kisses mine. Once I’ve been “blessed” by his goodbye kiss, I turn to the stage and wave my arms like crazy, and when Aroa looks up, I blow her a kiss.
* * *
Marín is leaning on the wall around this mansion’s garden.
I have no idea who owns it, but that’s how it always is when Aroa says, “Hey, I got an invite to a party. Why don’t you come along?
” You never know who the host is, but you’re never left wanting for a pool or a cocktail bar.
And, of course, this has only gotten worse since she started DJing soirees on top of doing a little sporadic modeling work, babysitting children two afternoons a week, and having an amalgam of other confusing jobs that somehow meld together seamlessly alongside casting calls for her budding career as an actress.
Marín’s face is glowing in the light of his screen.
He’s wearing an indecipherable expression.
It’s something to do with work, I’m sure.
Marín is very focused when it comes to work.
I take advantage of how absorbed he is to give him a long look.
God, he’s so handsome. His eyes are light, lively, and always so shiny; his thick eyelashes, his perfect, slightly long nose.
His jawline… His jawline drives me crazy.
I’d have a church wedding just to his chin. And have we discussed his dimples?
He’s wearing his “uniform” of jeans with a white T-shirt, which could also be black jeans with a black T-shirt or those slim highwaters (which expose his ankles) with a white T-shirt or white dress shirt, if the occasion calls for it.
In winter he has a warmer equivalent, but always along the same lines.
He’s a hipster to the extreme. His only extravagance is filling his wardrobe with exactly the same garments.
Anyone who doesn’t know him would think he never changes clothes, but I once counted six pairs of black jeans in his closet.
I take a deep breath and walk toward him with a kind of resignation.
I don’t know when I fell in love with Marín.
Or maybe I do. Yes, I think it was that afternoon when he cracked open two bottles of Coke, passed me one, pushed his hair back from his forehead, and made a toast, leaning against the window frame in the living room of our apartment.
The sun was shining, making a bright-orange halo around his hair, and I knew the tingling in the pit of my stomach had to be love.
I’d been feeling things that didn’t add up for a few months, but I always said it couldn’t be.
My secret. I fell in love with Marín. And I’m the one who introduced him to Aroa.
Their breakup, which came out of nowhere and they never explained, didn’t make me feel any better. You don’t mess with the ex your friend wants to get back together with.
“Marín.” I get his attention.
He looks up from his phone and smiles. My stomach flips, as always. Does he suspect at all how much I love him, how much I want to be spooning him in bed and hearing him say we’ll grow old together?
“Is staying at parties for five minutes your new technique for seeming cool?” I blurt out.
“Only if the party is terrible.” He slips his phone into his pocket. “I shouldn’t even have come at all.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Do you have to work?”
“No.” He shakes his head vigorously, glancing over at the street, in case the headlights belong to the car picking us up. “But my aunt is dropping Gema off early.”
“Is Gema coming to spend the weekend?” I ask giddily.
“Yes. And tomorrow we’re going shopping. She says she wants to find her own style. She doesn’t want to go around dressed like everyone else in her class. Is she the best teenager in the world or what?”
“She is.” I pat his arm. “She has a good role model.”
He grimaces, I guess thinking about his mother…
“She has a brother who’s the shit,” I clarify.
“Well, that’s true.” He pretends to swell with pride.
The cab’s headlights seem to snake through the shrubs on the path, and we both jump and hurry over to the cobblestone street. But at that exact second, a few musical notes make us stop dead.
“No!” we both shout, looking at each other.
Our song. One that Marín was excited to show me when it was a single before it even started playing on the radio.
One that became a hymn in our house, where we almost installed fan belts in the living room so we could reproduce the music video, where the singers leap into flight with a hypnotic naturalness.
“Lost in Your Light” by Dua Lipa with Miguel.
“It always plays when we’re leaving,” I groan.
“This is a better spot than the dance floor.” He winks and strides over to the driver’s window, where he knocks a few times. “Excuse me.”
I hear the driver say his full name, and he nods.
“That’s me, but… Can you do me a huge favor? They’re playing our song. And you have no idea what a good dancer this little lady is. Can you wait until it’s over but leave your headlights on?”
The driver smiles, and Marín reaches for my hand. “Come on.”
“No fucking way!” I laugh.
“What do you mean, no fucking way? Do me a solid. This guy wants to go home, Coco. Don’t waste time!”
“Look at that face! You’re the one who’s wasting time!”
“Don’t do it for me,” the driver says, sticking his head out of the window.
“We’re going to miss the best part of our routine… When you do the ‘honey’ part,” Marín grumbles, still holding out his hand insistently.
I give up. I never really had a chance. I take his outstretched hand, and he drags me in front of the car. We get there just in time for that “honey” that makes him laugh so much, and he twirls me around dramatically a few times.
We dance. Of course.
As always, we forget we have an audience.
We’re dancing on our own, like we do at home when everything’s normal.
We dance, and I fall in love with him a little more with every step, if that’s possible.
We spin, we laugh, I shimmy, he flips me around, I sing to him, he sings to me, we make fools of ourselves dancing like total idiots, but it’s not actually that bad because Marín doesn’t know how to dance badly.
He has rhythm in that fucking devilish body of his, and as much as he tries to look stupid, he does it in such a sexy way.
And that night, in that garden, he brings out the big guns.
* * *
When we clamber into the back of the cab, we’re panting and even the driver is smiling.
“Traditions should never be broken, right?” Marín says to him.
“Of course.”
He flops back into the seat, buckles his seat belt, and pulls his phone out of his pocket.
“Stop working already,” I say, whacking the screen.
“It’s not work. It’s…” He furrows his brow.
“What’s going on?”
“Aroa,” he mutters.
“She texted you?”
“Yeah. She said she saw me in the crowd and she was in the mood for a kiss.”
I raise my eyebrows as jealousy nibbles at my side.
“I didn’t know you were in that phase.” I look out the window. “I thought the whole thing was much more…cold.”
“It is. Sometimes I get the feeling that she forgets we’re not together anymore.”
I raise one eyebrow. He always uses the phrase “We’re not together anymore.” Never “I broke up with her” or “She broke up with me.” No reasons, no culprits. They seem to have decided it was better this way.
I’m not going to be the one to delve further into it.
Marín turns toward me, putting his phone back in his pocket. “What can you tell me about Blanca’s bachelorette party? Or are your lips still sealed?”
“You said you couldn’t come, and I’m not authorized to give information to ‘third parties.’ If I tell you, everyone’ll end up knowing. We’ve kept the secret for months now. I’m not going to fuck it up days before the ‘event.’”
“You think I can’t keep a secret?” He thumbs his chest. “Plus, you’re leaving in three days. I wouldn’t even have time to put my foot in it.”
I roll my eyes, and he pinches my side, making me jump. “Stop. I don’t negotiate with torture.”
“If you tell me, I’ll let you sleep in my room.”
“We rented an RV and we’re going on a tour of the most ridiculous camping spots we’ve ever found.”
Yes, I’m a pushover, but the thing is my room is like an oven.
“Fuck…” He flashes his teeth in a smile. “None of you has any self-control.”
“None at all.”
“You’re all the fucking best.” He gives me a sidelong glance and puts his hand over mine, which is resting on the empty seat between us.
The darkness in the car, which is hurtling down a practically empty highway, lets me blush undiscovered. The millions of stunning butterflies that just started fluttering around my stomach are just for me.
Marín doesn’t move his hand until, a few minutes later, he sucks his teeth, reaches for his fucking phone again, and answers a call.
“Hi, Aroa.”
I don’t know if it’s the three beers I practically chugged when I got to the party or the disappointment of realizing that there’s always the enormous, deformed thing called friendship between Marín and me.
It won’t even let me fantasize, but my mind fills with predictions… and none of them are particularly good.
Because the truth is, for a long time I’ve had the sinking feeling that he’s not done with Aroa, that she’s been pretty squirrelly about her obsession with Marín, and…
let’s be real here…that the epic bullshit about still being in love with Gus is going to catch up with me, not to mention the fact that Loren is sick of being the only one I go to with all my shit.
My only option is to confide in Blanca. You can always count on Blanca.
She’s chill. She doesn’t have mood swings.
She’s been a little weird lately, but that’s probably just because of nerves about the wedding.
At the end of the day, we’re all nervous about this wedding, right?