Chapter 16
Sixteen
ISABEL
Exeter Park might very well be one of the only subdivisions in Metro Manila with actual decent sidewalks.
Jaime and I walk side by side down the block, and though I’d gotten a glimpse during the drive over, I’m once again stunned by the size of the houses here.
Even with tall fences, you can see each lot is sprawling.
I wonder what kind of job you’d have to have to make enough money to afford a house here.
It can’t all possibly be clean wealth, can it?
Jaime nudges me. “You’ve always been spacey.”
“What?”
“In school,” he says. “You were always in your own little world. You and Rocío.”
Two things: I didn’t know he noticed me in school, and it wasn’t as though Rocío and I had much of a choice.
When they weren’t bullying us, most of our classmates were ignoring us.
We had to entertain ourselves somehow. Plus, I still feel high somehow—like I’ve been stuffed with cotton.
I hate weed; I don’t understand why anyone enjoys that lifted, nauseating feeling.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asks.
“Nothing, really. I’m just looking at the houses.”
“I have a favorite,” he says. He takes my hand and helps me cross the street, down a turn and then a right. “It’s made to look like—What did Cisco call it? House something. Oh, Haussmann. You know those buildings in Paris?”
Who doesn’t?
“We went for a jog this morning,” he explains. “For the longest time, I had no idea what this style is called. I just liked it. Cisco took Architecture so he told me all about it, and now I’m telling you. You’re welcome.”
I smile as we come up to the house. It’s fenced in by wrought iron gates. Several vans are parked in the driveway. Save for that, it looks as though someone had transplanted a building from Paris into the heart of the neighborhood.
“And here I thought you just had stock knowledge on architectural styles,” I tease.
“Would it be more impressive if I did?”
My head spins. If you told younger me that Jaime Salazar would one day come to care about impressing me, I would have never believed you. I smile to myself and continue down the block.
He reaches for my hand again, this time lacing our fingers together.
“I can’t keep doing this, Isabel,” he says. He tugs on me, and I’m forced to turn and face him. To his credit, he finally used my name.
“Do what?” I ask.
“You’re killing me here.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he snaps. “You know what I mean.”
Okay, fine. Maybe I do. No guy asks a girl to go on a solo walk for no reason other than just wanting to walk. But it isn’t exactly ethical, is it, or right, to hook up with your host’s ex-boyfriend?
“I want you,” he says. “God, I need you. It’s not fair. You fill my head with all these crazy ideas and it’s like I don’t even register in yours.”
My heart beats furiously against my chest. It’s rampaging, as if desperate to jump out and fall into sync with his. But how?
He steps forward and backs me against a tree along our path. I can only pant. I can only watch.
Jaime lifts a hand and grazes my cheek with his thumb.
“Don’t you want me back?” he asks, his voice a low whisper.
The way my body responds, it certainly does.
But my head is in a tizzy. I mean, do I really want a guy who calls me by the nickname I was christened with in high school by my bullies?
Do I want said bully’s ex-boyfriend? What are the ethics of hooking up with your former bully-turned-host’s ex-boyfriend?
It’s one thing to be teased about it while getting dressed up, and another thing entirely to act on it.
I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. At least not until we get Natalia’s permi—
Jaime takes my silence as a confession. His lips crush mine, and I’m pinned back against the tree, the bark rough against my head. I’ve never been kissed before.
Damn it all. I kiss Jaime back, sheepishly at first, overcome by worry that I’m not doing this right, that all I’m doing is signing my name in hell’s resident logbook.
Oh my God, I’m the worst. He slips his tongue into his mouth, and I’m shuddering.
Shuddering! I feel just a little grossed out.
It’s so wet and soft, like those popsicles that turn to jelly the more you suck on them.
What would Natalia think if she saw us like this? Would she be jealous? Jesus, maybe I do deserve to be bullied. Jaime takes my hand and slides it down his hard chest, down, down, down, to his growing bulge under his trunks. I gasp, drawing my hand back and breaking the kiss.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he says. He kisses my jaw, my neck.
I see myself as if I’m floating overhead, pinned to the tree by a boy stronger than me, with no one who knows exactly where we are.
I panic. I slap Jaime’s shoulders, trying to get him to back off.
He sucks on my neck harder, and I clench my eyes shut, desperately pushing him away.
With a groan, he backs off. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
The obvious irritation in his voice does nothing to curb my discomfort.
“I—I’m not ready.” It’s not as though I’m saving myself for marriage, though it is a nice idea.
And it’s not that I’m a Catholic prude who thinks sex outside of procreation is a sin.
I just—here? Now? With barely any lead up to it?
Jaime steps forward. He’s got what appears to be a tender smile on his face, but to me it reads as nothing but sinister.
“We can go slow,” he says, touching my hips.
“I want to go back,” I say, bracing my hands on his chest so he doesn’t come any closer.
It didn’t feel right to me to have sex for sex’s sake, to use another’s body to get off.
More power to those who don’t mind it, but it would mean a whole deal more to me to treat it as a communion of souls, and I found my soul had nothing it wanted to say to Jaime.
“Sugar—”
“Don’t call me that!”
Jaime sighs. He drops his head, then nods. “Okay. Okay, let’s go back.”
I cross my arms over my chest and follow him back to the house.
He doesn’t say a word to me the whole way.
Doesn’t even bother to wait for me before entering.
He heads straight for the backyard, pulls his shirt over his head, and dives into the pool where Bo’s now on a floater with yet another joint in his hand.
Jaime resurfaces and pushes his hair back.
He starts laughing at something Bo says. It’s as if nothing had just happened.
A lump grows in my throat. I head upstairs and take my toothbrush with me into the shower. I can’t scrub him out of my mouth and off my body hard enough.