5.
Music’s playing from my speakers, some light atmospheric jazz from my Spotify playlist. She’s wearing my clothes, shorts and one of my tees with nothing underneath.
“Why do you have a hat on the edge of your TV?” she asks.
It’s right in her field of vision, the Havana hat hanging off the edge of the flatscreen.
“I put it there once and liked the look of it. Now that’s where it lives.”
“It doesn’t distract you when you watch it?”
“I never watch it,” I say. “It’s like a prop. I didn’t buy it. I didn’t pick out any of this stuff. I only watch TV on my Mac upstairs anyway.”
“You travel lightly through life,” she says.
“I’ve had to,” I say. “It’s how I ended up here.”
She shifts slightly, repositioning her neck. I lift my hand, her hair sliding through my fingers.
“You want any more pizza?”
“No, thanks.”
She sits up and I go over to the counter to consolidate the pizza and put it in the fridge.
I put a cork on the wine and then put the glasses in the sink for later. She watches me, this amused expression on her lips like she’s just delighted I exist. I know exactly how she feels.
“We should probably figure out how we’re going to spend the time I have left here,” she says.
“How much time do you have left here?” I ask.
“Well, let’s see, I’ve already been here ten days, so, like three weeks? A little less, actually.”
Nowhere near enough time. I feel an ache in my gut that has nothing to do with the pizza.
“We should make the most of it,” I say. “What have you been wanting to do here that you haven’t already?”
“I just crossed one item off my list,” she says, sighing deeply. “Every girl who’s traveling solo is hoping to fall in love while she’s on holiday. It’s a cliche, but it’s true.”
“You weren’t part of my plan at all,” I say. “Not that I’m not grateful.”
“Why is that?” she asks. “How is a guy like you still single?”
“A guy who left his home and everyone he knows to go live on the other side of the world? It’s not that hard to believe.”
“You’re handsome, you’re smart, you’re clearly experienced and you have this independent streak that’s not about ego or showing off. You must have had plenty of girls before me.”
She says this like she’s reading items off a list, ticking them off one by one.
“A few,” I say. “Not many lately.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a little complicated,” I say.
“Really?” she says. “Even now, after you’ve been inside me, you still can’t tell me this big personal secret?”
“It’s not a secret exactly,” I say. “It’s just something I don’t want to get into. This is a happy time, a glorious time filled with lovemaking and pizza and lying around on the couch just feeling glad to be alive.”
“Sure, that’s all good,” Thalia says, shifting to look at me properly. “I want that too. But if we can’t trust each other, what are we doing? We’re just hanging out and fucking and then moving on with our lives. Whatever this is, I don’t want to look back on this and realize I never knew you.”
I tap my fingers against the wine bottle. She deserves to know more, and it’ll probably help for me to talk about it too. Moving to a country where you don’t know the language is a great way to keep yourself isolated, and I guess that’s what I’ve been doing.
“Okay,” I say, going over to join her on the couch. She drapes her leg across mine after I’ve sat down, and I like the way it makes me feel grounded, centered somehow.
“The truth is, I haven’t been with anyone since before I got here,” I say.
“And it’s not like I haven’t had the opportunity.
I just haven’t wanted to.” No, that’s only half true.
“I wasn’t ready. I moved to Thailand just after my breakup and I thought I’d come to heal.
Maybe I did. Maybe I still am. It’s complicated, I guess. ”
She puts her hand on my arm, her touch warm and reassuring.
“Tell me about her.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” I say. “It wasn’t so much a her as a them.”
“Oh,” she says. “You like non-binary?”
“No,” I say. “Nothing like that. They were both totally female.”
“Hold on,” she says, sitting up a little straighter. “You were in a throuple? Like an actual throuple?”
“I was,” I say with as much casualness as I can.
“Oh my god!” she exclaims, slapping me in the arm. “How did you pull that off?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “Well, I wasn’t trying to get two girlfriends at once. It just happened.”
“How? How did it happen?” she asks. “Did you meet two girls at a party and show them your haremlit? Hey girls, how’d you like to be in a haremlit novel?”
I laugh.
“It wasn’t anything like that,” I say. “I was mostly writing scripts for TV back then anyway. The haremlit was just a hobby.”
“So how? Tell me everything.”
It’s weird because I realize I haven’t told this story to anyone.
Even when we were together, my parents never pressed me for details.
My friends did, but I preferred to keep it close to the chest. This is the first time I’m actually sharing the details of my unconventional, ultimately failed relationship, and I’m doing it at the start of this new, ultimately temporary one. How do I even begin?
I look down at the wine bottle and peel a little strip of the label off with my thumbnail.
“I met Ava first,” I say. “We were work friends. More like a work couple, really. She was the production coordinator on the series I was writing for. We were just buddies. We’d hang out, get lunch together, dinner too.
Sometimes breakfast. When you’re on a TV show, that becomes your life so you form strong bonds with the people you’re close to. ”
“Did she pursue you? Or did you go after her?”
“It wasn’t like that exactly,” I say.
“So, then she pursued you, you just didn’t realize it because you’re not always the best at picking up signals—“
“Hey, I picked up on yours, didn’t I?”
“Belatedly,” she says. “After I did everything but stalk you. Anyway, continue.”
She draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them, settling in like she’s getting comfortable for a long story. I appreciate this about her.
“The reason I never pursued Ava was because she already had a girlfriend who she talked about constantly and seemed really in love with. She kept telling me I should find someone, that I was a catch and I just didn’t recognize it.”
“True, all true.”
“Well, thank you,” I say. “But you can see why I didn’t think she was an option. As far as I knew, she already had what she was looking for.”
“What was she like?”
Oh, man. This is where it really starts to get painful. Because remembering how great she was just reminds me of how much I lost. I take a breath and pick at the label again. A small thing to do with my hands.
“She’s the kind of person who treats you like a best friend first,” I say.
“Warm and generous don’t really describe it.
I could tell her anything and she would understand immediately, almost before I said anything.
Olivia was completely different. Very shy, a little bit edgier, but once she opened up she was the most loyal person you could ever hope for. ”
Right up until the end, that is.
“We used to go out for drinks in West Hollywood real late and Olivia would show up, and we would stay up all night just talking and drinking. They were this beautiful couple and I was in love with Ava and thinking I had no shot with her.”
“But she secretly felt the same about you, right? She must have.”
“Yeah, but I had no idea,” I say. “Until one night we went back to their place. I was drunk and I thought anything was going to happen. Then it did, and I thought, this is it. I screwed everything up and ruined the friendship. Instead it ended up becoming the best relationship I’ve ever had.”
Thalia’s giving me this look, a little suspicious but playfully so. She’s got her chin tucked and she’s watching me over the top of her knees.
“Hold on,” she says. “Are you really telling me you had two girlfriends? Like, not a hook up, but the three of you in a relationship?”
I nod.
“No way! For how long?”
“Close to two years,” I say. “I’m not bragging about it, believe me. If I was just making it up, I’d change the story so that it would end with me dumping them instead of the way that it really happened.”
“They dumped you? Why?”
I shrug.
“Michael, come on,” she says. “You can tell me.”
“No, I can’t, because I don’t know.”
“They dumped you with no explanation?”
“It was vague. They said that I was becoming distant. I don’t know. Maybe I was. I kept pressing for some reason—just tell me what I did—but they just said that I didn’t get it.” I set the bottle down on the coffee table. “Anyway. Is that enough?”
She rubs my shoulder and then presses her ear to my chest to feel my heartbeat. I rest my chin lightly on top of her head.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says. “Whatever you did, you deserve some explanation. It wasn’t fair of them to just cut you off like that.”
“I’ve had more than a year to get over it,” I say. “I still haven’t. But meeting you is the first real step I’ve taken.”
She rubs my chest in little circles, her fingers pressing gently as they run across my pec. Neither of us says anything for a moment. Then, from somewhere up near the ceiling in the corner of the room, something makes a sound like a rusty hinge being opened and closed very fast. Thalia flinches.
“What was that?”
“Gecko,” I say. “They get in through the gaps around the window frames. Completely harmless. They eat the mosquitoes, which earns them permanent residency status as far as I’m concerned.”
She cranes her neck to look for it but they’re impossible to spot unless they move.
“That’s the sound they make?”
“Wait for it,” I say.
It goes off again, a quick staccato bark, four or five times in a row. She makes a face.
“Thais count the calls,” I say. “The more times it calls in a row, the luckier you’re supposed to be. Seven is the best.”
“How many was that?”
“Four,” I say. “Decent. Not great.”
She laughs and settles back against my chest. Outside, the pool light throws that familiar blue-green against the underside of the awning.
“We need to be careful about this,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”
“I’m saying this to myself, so don’t take it to mean I don’t like you,” she says. “The truth is that I’m worried I like you too much already.”
“I know how you feel,” I say. “You’re leaving soon.”
“And you’re staying,” she answers. “So we both need to be careful about getting too attached. And I’m saying this as a girl.”
I don’t say anything because I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t just make things worse. Her ear is still against my chest. I wonder what she can hear in there.
“What do you want to do tomorrow?” she asks.
“Explore,” I say, reaching over to tug on the waistband of her basketball shorts, which are actually mine, to admire that little tuft of hair between her legs.
“That could work for me,” she says. “And after that?”
“How about a waterfall?”
“Ooh, sounds perfect,” she sighs, sounding totally content. “And then?”
“Then after that we could go see monkeys.”
“There are monkeys here? Like not in cages, but walking around?”
“Sure. You just have to be careful. Those little fuckers will steal your water bottle. They can be a little unpredictable. That’s why it helps to carry a big stick.”
“You’re not going to hit them with it, are you?”
“No,” I say. “You don’t swing the stick at them, you just carry it with you to let them know you have it. It’s purely for self-defense.”
“Okay, because if there’s going to be a monkey fight, I’m out. I wouldn’t want someone bigger than me coming into my home and swinging a stick at me when all I wanted to do was steal their water.”
“Well, you can give up your water bottle without a fight,” I say with a smile
“Maybe I will,” she says. “Or maybe the monkeys will be cute and polite and pose for pictures in exchange for fruit.”
“Maybe they’ll make you their queen,” I say, poking and prodding her thigh and making monkey noises. “Ooo-ooo-oooh! Monkey queen! Monkey queen!”
She throws her head back and mimes a wild monkey queen chant.
“Arrr! I am the monkey queen!”
I chuckle. Then we just sit there holding each other.
“Let’s promise it will be like this the whole time,” she says, extending her pinky. “Whatever we’re feeling, we never let things get heavy or dark. We’re happy together. We make each other happy, right?”
“Right, agreed,” I say, wrapping my pinky around hers. “No stress, no dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Good vibes only.”
She holds the hook for a second before letting go, like she’s checking the tensile strength of the thing.
I’m starting to feel it already, the good vibes, the promise of our time together and all that’s laid out in front of us. I can’t wait to show her around.