Chapter 23 That Stupid Tension
That Stupid Tension
Coco
Blanca and I agree: Marín’s acting weird. Ever since he got here, since we met up at the campsite gate after we checked out, he’s been weird. He’s avoiding eye contact, and he’s quieter than usual. He’s avoiding me. I’m positive.
“Maybe he’s spiraling about what happened last night,” Blanca whispers, cigarette in hand, while we wait for everyone else to fill a cart at the supermarket we stopped at on the way to our next destination: a beach with parking for campers in Villaricos.
The idea is to eat there and then keep going.
“You think he’s upset about last night?” I ask conspiratorially, in an almost inaudible whisper.
“He told his best friend he would’ve fucked her the other day. That’s kinda hardcore. Let’s give him a few hours to shake it off. He probably just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
Just like Aroa. Aroa woke up weird too. Another one who’s trying to avoid me. She grunted at me at breakfast when I asked her if she left the camper when we had all been in bed for a little while.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I didn’t know I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom.”
Okay then. This is fine.
We stick nine more bottles of white wine into the cart.
We want enough to last until at least Saturday, so Gus goes back and grabs five more.
Fourteen bottles total for five people and three nights.
Maybe that’s a little overboard. Maybe drinking doesn’t make us feel that great.
The last thing this group needs is to have fewer inhibitions, given what we’ve already seen.
But the whole time we’re shopping, we’re back to being a group of friends. We’re peaceful, some of us are quiet, but that’s no biggie, even if sometimes a silence settles over us that seems, in Marín’s words, loaded with things left unsaid.
Once we’ve crammed all the groceries into the RV, Gus wants to ride with us.
“You don’t wanna ride with me anymore?” Marín jokes.
“I’ve just never been in one of these monsters.”
“You slept in this monster,” Loren points out.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t moving. I want…to try it out. Can I ride shotgun?”
“Are you going to be chill?”
“I swear.”
“Ay, no,” I grumble. “Don’t make me go in the back,” I beg. “I get so carsick it’s like I’m on that ride: the paella one.”
“Do you remember when we made you ride that?”
“When? When I vomited cotton candy all over the ticket booth?”
It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I can still feel the bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
“So you go in the car with Marín then,” Blanca pipes up, as if it’s nothing. That little fucker…
“No.”
We all stare at Aroa, surprised.
“What?” Marín asks with a furrowed brow.
“Gus can go in the back. I’ll ride with Marín.”
It’s not a big enough scene for anyone to complain about her rigging it.
Not even Marín, who watches her walk past him on her way to the car like another head sprouted from her neck.
These two are at a weird crossroads that could end in a passionate kiss on the beach or a fight they’ll never come back from.
I swallow. I wanted to go in the car with Marín.
It would’ve been a good chance to find out if he really is freaked out about last night.
But no. Fuck me. Aroa can go. They can fix whatever seems to have been making them so tense since dinner last night. It’ll be better for the whole group.
* * *
Gus buckles in next to Blanca, all giddy with excitement.
Well…saying he buckles in is pretty optimistic for his skills.
His hands are so good at certain things, but they’re pretty clumsy at others.
Blanca ends up having to do it for him, and Loren and I get the giggles up-front because for a moment it looks like Blanca has a child with a beard and she’s getting him all strapped into his car seat.
“Ready?” Loren says, taking off the hand brake.
“Dude, this is so cool!”
It’s one of the things that make people love Gus.
Sometimes, when he’s relaxed, there’s no audience, and he doesn’t have to play a role and he’s comfortable, he’s himself, nothing else.
And this Gus, the one he hides inside, is way better.
Human beings normally do the opposite: We hide the darkest parts of our personality.
We hide our obsessions, our insecurities, our visceral hates, and even those bad intentions that we try so hard to suppress, but they’re still there.
Gus flaunts all that proudly, but the hidden side is the excited little boy who asks for advice, who feels small, who finds the world enthralling.
That passion is what drives him, but he’d rather make the rest of the world think he runs on disdain.
Blanca smiles at him. He returns the smile.
I watch them in the rearview mirror, talking about something and laughing wickedly, and I breathe a little easier.
Only a little because right now Aroa and Marín are in the car behind us, and I have no way of even getting a glimpse at what they’re doing, seeing if they’re talking or arguing or looking at each other the way I thought I caught them looking at each other the other night.
Loren notices my sigh and glances over at me.
He puts “Safe” by Daya on the stereo and raises his eyebrows, silently asking me what’s going on.
“Marín and Aroa in a car,” I whisper.
“Nothing’s going to happen in there. They’ll probably just clear up the situation a little. It’ll be good for everyone.”
“You think?”
“Of course.” He smiles at me. “Coco, Marín isn’t in love with her anymore. A man in love doesn’t act like that with his ex.”
“But the other day,” I whisper, making sure Gus can’t hear me.
When I look back, he’s standing up. Fucking restless ass. He switches seats and concentrates on taking a picture out the window. Blanca is leaning on the table, with her seat belt on, looking at her phone, probably checking her work email.
“Blanquiiiiii.” I get her attention.
She puts her hand up without looking at me, her chin resting on the other. “I’m stopping!”
“Disconnect!” I demand.
“It’s August, Blanca, for God’s sake,” Loren insists.
“There’s always stuff to do,” she splutters. “Clients don’t stop needing us just because it’s summer. One more email and I’m stopping.”
I look at Loren, and we both smile. This is her happy place.
Her head is always full of work, but she couldn’t live any other way.
She likes having responsibility; she likes her nights working, her crazy mornings chugging coffee, whipping one blouse off for another in her office after a night of just catching a few winks on her sofa.
She likes seeing the intense surge of her work ambitions coursing through her veins. I bet she even gets turned on by work.
“The other day, what?” Loren brings me back and winks.
“It’s just that, the other night, didn’t you see how Marín and Aroa were looking at each other? They looked like two little Disney characters in love.”
Loren laughs softly and shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Coco.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why they broke up?”
“Of course.”
“Something so big they can’t talk about it with the rest of the group and bad enough to break them up even though everything was going fine, or at least it seemed like it was… Don’t you think it must be irreversible in some way?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That it’s possible that they love each other a lot, but you can’t get the one who got away back.”
Loren’s words are still echoing in my head even when we get to Villaricos and park the camper.
Marín and Aroa get out of the car just like they would have when they were a couple, except he doesn’t sling his arm around her shoulders, like he always used to.
They’re just two people who drove together.
There’s no passion but no drama either. Maybe they did talk.
Maybe everything will get better now. Maybe it’ll be the same with us.
* * *
For a few minutes all we can talk about is how busy it is.
There are at least twenty other RVs, campers, and vans parked next to us, but it’s our fault for not arriving earlier, and we’re still in the first row next to the beach.
The parking lot is so close to it that some of the sand has started to conquer the tarmac.
The sea feels so much like it’s ours alone that it robs us of our ability to speak.
It suddenly solves all our brainteasers; the white noise deafens the cries of all obstacles.
The sea has always been there. It was there when we were born, and it will be there when we die; whatever we experience on its shores, I think as I gaze out, only feeds it. And it is beautiful.
I don’t know when exactly my life became so connected to the ocean.
The dreams, the desires, and even everything I haven’t lived but want to.
Everything is right there when my feet are buried in the sand, by the sea.
Maybe it was the summer vacations with my family, always in an apartment with tons of bedrooms that we filled with noise.
Maybe it’s something that hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t think I yearn for it just because I wasn’t born near it.
I carry the rocking water in my skin even though the first time I saw it I was old enough to have a vivid memory.
Someone grabs my arm, and when I turn to look, I’m not surprised to see Blanca. I smile at her, and she returns the gesture.
“Are you happy?” I ask her.
“I think tonight will be one of the most magical nights of my life.”
* * *
It doesn’t take us long to strike up a conversation with our “neighbors.” They tell us there’s some new rule saying we’re not allowed to camp here, which means we can’t open our awning or put chairs or a table under it, but we are allowed to “stay overnight.”