7 “Way more weird stuff to show each other.”
7
“Way more weird stuff to show each other.”
I had forgotten that back then, Tristan still smoked like a chimney. He was an inconsistent but intense smoker: if he didn’t have tobacco, he could go three or four days without going to the tobacco store. If he had a pack in his pocket and he was outside, he practically lit one off the other. I had also forgotten that I smoked too. Look, at twenty-eight, I hadn’t quite figured out how ridiculous it was to breathe in smoke from a stinky stick that you lit on fire.
That’s why I was so surprised to see him with a stogie between his lips and his left hand in the pocket of a jacket that wasn’t the one I saw him in this morning. This jacket… I’ll be blunt: this jacket has some flossy overtones. Does it have sheepskin lining? It has sheepskin lining. Would you defend it as an iconic piece and a fashion statement? I wouldn’t. Does it turn me on? Like the thirstiest girl in the world. It fits him like it’s been licked on by the god of sexiness himself.
I bitterly mourned the “death” of that jacket when, during lockdown, it suffered an accident on the clothesline. What a time we haven’t lived through yet.
He throws the cigarette to the ground with a half smile when he sees me on the corner, and I half smile back. He offers me a cigarette as he puts away his lighter.
“No thanks.”
“So weird.” He makes a face while he concentrates on putting the lighter into the soft pack of Marlboros and slips it into his pocket. “I had the feeling you were a smoker.”
“I used to smoke,” I confess succinctly.
“I want to quit.”
“You will. When nobody’s trying to make you. You’re one of those.”
He raises his eyebrows as he points me in the right direction.
“Oh yeah? What’s going on? Can you read minds on top of being able to predict the future?”
I let out a giggle. The proud Tristan. I don’t like this one as much, but it always made me a little horny.
“I could profile you better than the FBI right now. No margin for error.”
“Is that why you’re avoiding me? Because you looked inside me and you don’t like what you saw?”
My only answer is a mysterious smile and a fleeting glance. He’s a little tense. I’m not…but only because I’ve slept next to him so many nights that I could count the freckles on his back with my eyes closed.
“Do you like Madrid?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Well…I’m getting there. Sometimes I find it intimidating. It’s…huge.”
“I know it can feel that way. But we all end up going to the same places over and over.”
“Who? The beautiful people?” he teases.
“I don’t know what ‘beautiful people’ means to you, but I can almost guarantee that, if it exists, I wouldn’t be among their ranks.”
“Ooh…false humility. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m not a cool girl.”
“Ah, no…okay. You’re the deputy editor of the most famous fashion magazine in the world, right?”
“ Vogue is the most famous , ” I defend myself. “And I don’t fit the Vogue girl profile.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because…” I furrow my brow. “I mean…I don’t know. Because I’m not a cunt?”
He cracks up, and it spreads to me. It’s cold as balls, and we’re both clutching our coats around us.
“You finally decided to do it,” he notes without looking at me.
“Do what? Have dinner with you? Well, yes. It was mostly convenience. My friend was leaving, and I have an empty fridge.”
He smiles.
“You seem sweet,” I clarify as I return the smile.
“I don’t know if ‘sweet’ is the word.”
“So what is the word?”
“You know what word you girls use a shitload and I hate to the depths of my soul?”
“Yes.” I nod.
“There’s no way you know.” He focuses on studying me with serious but amused eyes, so intensely that he’s about to bash his shin on a metal bollard. He dodges it nimbly and laughs at himself. “Ow. That was close.”
“Cute,” I say.
He stops in the street and grabs my arm softly to make me stop too. Then he stares at me even more intensely. One eyebrow lifts.
“What?”
“You hate the word ‘cute.’ You think ‘You’re so cute’ is an awful compliment.”
“I’d rather be told I have a shitty face.”
I let out a cackle. He does too.
“Huh, I guess I’m finally going to have to admit there is some evidence that you know what’s going to happen.”
“Backward and forward.”
He nods slowly. He licks his lips, and my clit tingles. I want him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me more than anything in the world. And I don’t understand when I stopped paying attention to our kisses. To the good days. To the goodbyes. To seeing each other again. To the sex. To the…
Tristan takes a step back, still looking at me, before he turns around and pulls me along with him.
Tristan is staying in an Airbnb in downtown Madrid. It’s one of those nice, very traditional buildings, with a newly renovated facade and fresh white paint. But inside, the apartments are small and kind of ramshackle, like houses that are furnished just so they can be rented for a few days. There’s no attention to detail. Everything is pure practicality, but he doesn’t seem to mind it at all. He’s a man whose aesthetic awareness can be selective.
As we go in, he tosses his keys onto a plain white entrance table and hangs his jacket in a closet as nondescript as the table. He asks for my coat and bag so he can hang them too. Before I hand my bag over, I WhatsApp Ivan to tell him everything’s fine, don’t worry, we’re having a drink in another bar, and I’m not going to take him home. I don’t wait for a reply, because Tristan is standing there patiently, waiting to hang the bag on the rack.
He’d hate it if I said it, but he’s so cute.
Why do men have such a problem with the word “cute”? Just because you say someone’s cute doesn’t mean you don’t want to have wild sex with him or that you don’t respect him as a person. Beats me. After so many years of dealing with men, I still don’t get them.
The house is pretty much a perfect square made up of a kitchen, a living room, a separate bedroom, and a bathroom. The kitchen is small and has a bar connecting it to the living room, which is furnished with a sofa, a table with two chairs, an almost-empty bookshelf, and a rickety, bland piece of furniture with a TV balanced on top. Through a door left slightly ajar, I can see the bedroom; I can describe it perfectly, even though I haven’t been in it yet. It’s small, with a double bed, two bedside tables, and a built-in wardrobe next to the door of a cute but cramped bathroom. It makes me smile remembering how we almost killed ourselves trying to fuck in his shower. I’ve probably changed the beginning of this story so much that however this works, that scene will never happen.
“Do you think it’s funny?” he asks, coming over to me on his way into the kitchen.
“No.”
“You’re smiling.”
“Would it be better if I was crying?”
That makes him let out a little chuckle that disappears as soon as I hear it. I never thought of Tristan as one of those men who can be seduced through laughter. The stomach and the mouth…you already know.
He asks me to sit on one of the stools at the bar, in the part that opens into the living room. Then he puts two glasses and a bottle of wine on the wood surface, which I take in my hands, along with the corkscrew.
“You do the honors. I won’t take long.”
But he will, because Tristan is slow. Slow in almost everything. He isn’t at work. And he’s not when it comes to the hyperfocus needed to take on difficult tasks. But when it comes to how he moves, in anything except walking, Tristan is so slow. So dicing the steak into tiny cubes by hand, chopping the red onion and capers, and stirring it all together will take him an hour. I don’t mind. I’m not in any rush. I’m spending time with the person I love, who’s going to leave me in a few years…and right now, he doesn’t know any of that. Not that I love him or that he’s going to leave me or that he’ll love me so much it’ll drive him crazy.
“Wanna put on some music?” he asks.
“Sure.”
“Just connect to that.” He waves at a Marshall speaker, and I crack up.
“I’m more analog than an abacus, babe. I’m not going to be able to figure it out.”
He sucks his teeth, takes his phone out of his jeans (ay, his jeans), and hands it to me unlocked. I always liked that about him: he’s open. He’s not one of those guys who guard their phone like its pharaoh’s gold.
“Open Spotify, and put on whatever you want.”
It takes me a little while. Everything I think of doesn’t exist yet; plus I don’t want to fall into the mistake of putting on some corny playlist of ambient jazz that will make us feel like we’re shopping for tablecloths in a Zara Home. It takes me a while, but I end up with something pretty appropriate for the situation: Home , the album by Rudimental.
“So good,” he mutters, focused on his task, when the eponymous song starts playing.
“Rudimental. Do you know them?”
“No. But I like their sound.”
I already knew that. I don’t deserve any credit. All I had to do was search my memory a little.
I uncork the bottle after a short struggle and pour wine into both glasses. He wastes no time grabbing his and holding it up to mine for a toast.
“Do you want to say a few words?” I tease.
“Apparently I don’t need to.”
There it is: his ability to wield silence, his panty-dropping weapon. Well…one of his panty-dropping weapons. Tristan is hot when he’s silent and when he laughs. But when he shuts up, an aura of mystery grows up around him that makes him simply irresistible.
I take a lap around the living room, but nothing in here would tell me anything about him. Until he finds a more permanent apartment to rent, he’s not going to bother adding a little warmth to his pad.
“You grew up in Madrid, right?” I hear him ask me.
“Yes.” I nod. “Not a cat, but yes.”
“What do you mean, a cat?”
“You’re only considered a ‘cat’ if you’re a third-generation Madrileno.”
“Oh wow. There are castes.”
“Duh. My mother was from Salamanca.”
“Was?”
“She died when I was really little.”
“I’m sorry.”
I look over into the kitchen to watch him. He’s chopping the ingredients with so much concentration his brow is furrowed in an expression that almost makes him look angry.
“Don’t worry. I have an incredible father who never forgets a single detail about my mother, so I grew up with hundreds of stories about my mother. She feels…close.”
“That’s good.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” He seems confused by the question, like he wasn’t expecting to have to talk about himself.
“Do you have family here?”
“No. They’re all in Vigo. Not many and in Vigo.” He smiles.
“I’ll bet you anything you miss your friends more than your family.”
“You’re very witchy.” He smiles to himself and then looks at me. He looks at me, and he wants to devour me.
Tristan has a whole range of looks. Icy ones. Hot ones, which make you melt inside. Funny ones. Some of them are a little bit shy. Nervous. And contrary to what some of his smiles can do, they’re all very similar even though some of them say no, some say yes, and a few of them leave no trace of doubt. When he wants you, there’s no room for error in reading it. And when he looks at you with disdain, there’s no mistaking it either.
My heart skips a beat when I remember how he was looking at me two days ago, sitting outside the café on Calle de Fuencarral. How he looked at me when he told me he didn’t want to live with me anymore. That he didn’t want his life and mine to keep hanging by the same thread. I guess I suddenly look worried, because his expression changes.
“It was a joke,” he clarifies. “I don’t see you cursing anyone.”
“I know. Sorry. I lost my train of thought.”
He doesn’t add anything else, and I sit on the stool looking at how meticulously he’s chopping and preparing the mixture. It’s almost hypnotic, and I can’t help myself: I get wrapped up in the image of our breakup. It would’ve been so easy to become engrossed in his hands or to float away on the scent of his cologne. But I don’t.
For the first time in two days, I wonder if there could be someone else. People always say men don’t break up with their partners unless they’ve got someone else lined up. That devastates me. So much that I grip my wineglass hard.
A question nestles deep down in my brain. A complex one that I have no way of answering because…I’m waking up in the past, but does our timeline still run its course? Is Tristan with someone else right now on the couch in another house, kissing her neck, thanking her for helping him break free of me? And if so, then what am I doing? Where am I? Is there an “I” still sleeping, lying there, dead?
I don’t ask permission. I just jump up and fling open the doors to his tiny balcony overlooking the street and lean against the railing for a long time. The image of Tristan kissing someone else turned my stomach.
The footsteps of his boots on the parquet floor precede his scent, which quickly engulfs me. I don’t know if I’m angry, sad, worried, or everything all at once… I don’t know. But suddenly, I’m back on the idea that avoiding all this pain is the only possible answer to the question of why I’m reliving all this.
“Everything okay?” He hands over my wineglass, and I take it, nodding. “You ran out onto the balcony so quickly I thought you were going to throw yourself off.”
“I don’t have suicidal urges. You don’t have to worry.”
“I figured. Dinner’s ready.”
I nod with my eyes on the street, and he leans against the balcony’s side wall with his glass in his hand.
“Can I be the one who plays at guessing things now?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“You sure?” He raises his eyebrows.
“Yes. If you offend me, I can always throw my wine in your face and make a triumphant exit.”
He’s smiling gently when I look at him.
“Some guy hurt you.”
“Oof,” I reply. “You have no idea.”
“What happened?”
I roll my eyes. “The same thing that always happens. It ended.”
“I’m guessing he broke up with you.”
“Good guess.”
It seems unbelievable to be having this conversation with him when he’ll never know that I’m talking about his future self.
“Was there someone else?” he asks.
“I don’t know. One day, we were fine, and…the next day, he dumped me.”
“That can’t be true,” he says. “There must’ve been signs.”
“And I was blind or stupid? Neither of those options really appeals to me.”
“Or maybe you were looking the other way. I’m not saying you did it on purpose. Maybe there were too many things fighting for your attention.”
For a moment, as I look at him, it seems like there’s something shining in his eyes, the truth about our relationship, and he knows it perfectly well, but it’s just a mirage.
“We argued and stuff. I don’t know. I’ve always been really in love with my work.”
“More than him?”
“No.” I laugh bitterly. “Wait, why are we talking about this?”
“Because I get this weird feeling that I remind you of him. Or I bring up similar feelings for you. Maybe the breakup is too recent. I don’t know. You tell me.”
And that can only mean one thing: that he’s really into me. He doesn’t want to waste time or get into a weird mess or drama. That’s my Tristan.
I want to laugh, but I turn around and lean against the railing. Tristan comes over to me decisively and tugs on me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but he just pulls me away from the edge.
“You’re making me nervous perching there,” he confesses, and his voice scratches.
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Well, just in case.”
He puts a few more centimeters of distance between us when he goes back to leaning against the wall and takes out his pack of cigarettes. He’ll quit in a year or so because one morning, when he gets up, he’ll feel like he’s coughing too much and that he’s too young to be getting out of bed with a death rattle, plus he’ll admit to me he’s tired of always airing out his jacket so it doesn’t stink of smoke. He’ll quit cold turkey, and he won’t need any help. Just like when he quit me two days ago.
“Can I have one?” I ask him.
“You sure? Didn’t you quit?”
“Apparently it’s time to revisit some vices.”
He gives me one and holds out his lighter. I take my first drag without breaking eye contact. He lights his own cigarette. The air fills with smoke and the smell of the strong, blond tobacco that he smokes.
“Let’s have dinner, and then I’m leaving,” I say, diverting my gaze to the ciggy.
“I know. That was the deal.”
I nod without looking at him. Suddenly, I’m really mad…really hurt. I like his voice so much, the patchy beard on his chin, how thick his hair is, the undefined color of his eyes, his mannerisms, his caresses, his fucking cologne…that it makes me angry. It makes me angry that I lost him, that I still love him, having him so close, our thing not being strong enough to follow him to this past that isn’t what it was, that we’re changing. He should remember, shouldn’t he? If he loved me so much, if I was, as he said, the woman who made him understand what it meant to really love someone, he should remember me. A spark. A glimmer of recognition. Something.
I feel like slapping him.
“What?” he says, breaking the silence.
I take another drag and stub it out in a pot full of dry dirt and cigarette butts hanging from the railing.
“Let’s have dinner, and I’m leaving.”
“You’ve already said that quite a few times. And I said that was cool, and I agreed,” he teases.
“Yes, but this wasn’t part of the deal, and it doesn’t mean that anything’s going to change.”
“This what?”
He wasn’t expecting it, but his lips seem excited to meet mine once they recover from the surprise. Yes. I kiss him. I don’t know why or if there is a why. Because I always kissed him. Because he’s Tristan and there’s still a kind of right floating in the air, like he belongs to me and his mouth should be attached to mine. And his tongue to mine.
We both have the taste of cigarettes lingering in our mouths, and we’re still holding our wineglasses, but none of that stops us from delving deeper into the kiss and pressing closer against each other.
Tristan kisses like always. Like he kissed me the first time. Well. Very well. There’s a hint of hesitation superimposed over passion; I think these are the two sides of pleasure. He abandons himself to pleasure. I run with it. I need the intensity to make me feel more real and tangible. He has his own rhythm, which he always imposes. In his kisses. In his fingers. In his mouth. In his hips. And that turns me on and pisses me off.
His tongue tangles with mine, tracing wet circles that I chase. He’s trailing his mouth violently across mine, then gently grazing, and I melt into him. He bites my lower lip a little. When I do the same, a low, sensual growl emerges from his chest.
I would never stop kissing him. I would die of starvation, thirst, cold right here. But he wouldn’t. And after a kiss probably longer than appropriate for a first kiss, he pulls his head back a little and looks at me. He seems stuck somewhere between embarrassed, excited, and a little offended because I’m still calling the shots, and he doesn’t like that, even if he won’t admit it because he wants to be way more modern than that.
“Wow…” he whispers. “You’re so weird.”
I can’t help but laugh, even with all my sadness and my rage. He laughs too.
“The weirder, the better. That way, you won’t ask for my number when I leave, and you won’t call me tomorrow.”
“I’m walking you home.” His hand holding his glass is resting on my hip, like he’s trying to soften the way he pulled back from the kiss.
“You don’t have to.”
“But I want to. And I want to ask for your number too.”
“Why? If I’m so weird.”
“Very weird,” he insists, his brow furrowing. “But you make me feel really comfortable. And at home. And that’s weird too.”
“Yes. It is.” A flame of heat rises to my cheeks.
“I’m probably a pretty weird guy too. I’m probably so weird you’d look normal next to me.”
I laugh, and as I do, like I have so many times over the last few years, I go over, lean my head on his shoulder, and we half hug.
“Or not,” he adds. “Come on. Dinner’s ready.”
We don’t kiss again.
Not even when, true to his word, he goes down to the street with me, intending to walk me home. I guess, knowing him, that he’ll want to kiss me when he gets to my door. Kissing in the middle of the street would seem barbaric to him… These northern boys and their modesty. But I have no intention of us getting all the way there. I’ve had enough for today. In fact, I’ve already had too much. And I’m bloated, swelling up with all the things that were, the things that maybe won’t be, and the things that are. I need to go home, curl up in the fetal position under my sheets, and find out where I’m going to wake up tomorrow. Or more like…when.
“I’m going to get a cab,” I decide.
“Oh…um…”
“I already told you, you’re not walking me home.”
“I mean…fine. It’s cold.”
“Thanks for dinner.”
“Thanks for the conversation. And the kiss.” His eyebrows arch into an expression somewhere between teasing and seductive.
“Take care then.”
I throw my hand up at the first green light on a taxi that comes down the street. I don’t want to see him anymore today. Plus, I’m starting to get the feeling that I’ll have to do this all again tomorrow.
“Hey…” He stops me as I’m stepping off the sidewalk.
“What?”
“Will you give me your number? Just in case you want to return the dinner invite.”
The taxi stops, and I take a few steps toward the car. He doesn’t move. As I open the door, I say yes. He takes out his phone and taps in the numbers as I call them out to him, three by three. He smiles as he slides it back into his pocket.
“Good night,” he says.
“Good night.”
The door closing swallows up the sound of my goodbye; it gets lost, split in half, between the street and the inside of the taxi. Tristan doesn’t move; he stands there with his hands dug into his jacket pockets even when the car has pulled away. I try to follow his figure through the rearview mirror, but I lose him when the taxi turns around the corner.
I have a bubble of helium floating in my chest, and I don’t know if the feeling is pleasant or unpleasant. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.
We’re crossing Alonso Martínez Plaza (this has got to be the shortest ride this taxi driver will make all week) when my phone buzzes. I look at it out of habit. Just for something to do. In case it’s Ivan.
But it’s not.
Tristan:
I wish we had hugged.
Next time. We have way more weird stuff to show each other.