Chapter 18
Helena had been home since seven that morning and had spent the day in a state of unproductive anxiety.
Technically, she had been productive, because she’d cleaned the apartment twice, stocked the fridge with enough food for a week, changed the sheets, bought flowers, and rearranged her bookshelf for no reason she could articulate.
The trouble was that she was supposed to be working, finalising a client pitch deck, and she managed to do none of it…
she was too nervous about Caitlin coming here, to her life, barely daring to believe how whatever they were had transformed so completely in the last few days.
Now it was just past three and she was standing in her living room, looking at her apartment through Caitlin’s eyes.
This is going to be a problem.
In Houston she’d played her apartment down, told Caitlin she had “a little place of my own,” and mentioned that she valued privacy.
That was technically true, just as technically she’d been working that day.
It was also wildly misleading, because Helena’s apartment was not little by any definition.
It occupied the whole of one of the upper floors in a modern building in one of S?o Paulo’s most exclusive streets, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen that could have hosted a cooking show, and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a panoramic view of the city skyline.
The furnishings were tasteful and expensive…
her mother had insisted on helping her decorate, which meant that every piece of furniture had been sourced from designers that her mother’s social circle approved of.
It was, in short, the apartment of someone with family money. A lot of family money. And Caitlin was about to see it.
Helena checked her phone to see that Caitlin had messaged from the flight.
Two hours to go. Cannot WAIT xx
Just about the least Caitlin message imaginable, and Helena absolutely loved that she had sent it to her. She fired off her reply:
Me too!! Look for the biggest smile in the arrivals hall xx
It was early still, but what was she going to achieve by waiting around at home? She picked up her car keys and headed for the airport.
***
Guarulhos was its usual controlled chaos…
the biggest airport in South America, Helena had been told, operating at a pace that suggested it was always slightly behind schedule and didn’t particularly care.
Brazil in a nutshell, she thought with a smile.
Helena found a spot in the short-stay car park and walked to the arrivals hall, positioning herself where she’d be able to see when Caitlin came through.
The flight status board showed Caitlin’s flight from Houston as landed. Long experience taught Helena it would be at least thirty minutes for taxiing, immigration, and baggage, so she bought a coffee from a stand and waited, her heart doing something ridiculous in her chest.
The arrivals doors opened and closed constantly, disgorging a steady stream of travellers. Helena scanned each face, her pulse quickening every time she saw dark hair. Which was often.
Then Caitlin was there.
She came through the doors pulling a wheeled suitcase, her cabin bag over her shoulder, wearing yoga leggings and a white t-shirt.
She looked tired from the travel but scanned the crowd still with bright, searching eyes.
Helena raised her hand and Caitlin saw her immediately, and the smile that broke across her face…
oh, that made it all worth it. Relief, joy, disbelief…
it was as if she couldn’t quite believe that the plane had dropped her off here rather than Barbados.
Caitlin walked towards her, quickening her pace, and then they were hugging in the middle of Guarulhos arrivals hall, a proper hug, tight and long, Caitlin’s face in Helena’s neck, Helena’s arms wrapped around her.
“You’re here,” Helena said into her hair.
“I’m here.” Caitlin leaned back and looked at her. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
“I can’t believe you came.”
“I can’t believe you asked.” Caitlin grinned. “Though I notice you didn’t bring a sign with Gatinha on it.”
“I did consider it.”
“I’m sure you did.” Caitlin glanced around. “Is two women kissing in public allowed in Brazil?”
Helena simply laughed and kissed her briefly on the lips. “Is that your answer?”
“Good,” Caitlin laughed. “Take me home.”
Helena took her bag, led her to the car, and they pulled out into the S?o Paulo traffic. It was late afternoon on a Friday, which meant the roads were somewhere between busy and apocalyptic, the S?o Paulo gridlock that the city was simultaneously famous for and completely unbothered by.
Caitlin looked out of the window as they drove, taking in the city for the first time… the scale, the density, the mix of gleaming towers and crumbling apartment blocks, the graffiti and the jacaranda trees and the sheer, relentless energy of twenty-two million people living on top of each other.
“It’s enormous,” Caitlin said.
“It makes Houston look small.”
“It makes Houston look like a village.” Caitlin was grinning. “How do you ever find anything?”
“You learn your neighbourhood and you don’t leave it unless you have to.” Helena navigated a roundabout that required the aggressive lane-changing that S?o Paulo drivers considered normal and everyone else considered suicidal. “My neighbourhood is nice. You’ll see.”
They turned off the main road into the tree-lined streets of Helena’s neighbourhood…
quieter, greener, the high walls and security gates that marked serious money in S?o Paulo.
Helena pulled into her building’s underground car park and they took the lift to her floor where Helena unlocked her front door and pushed it open, stepping aside to let Caitlin through.
Caitlin walked in, stopped, and stared. She turned slowly, taking it all in, then turned back to Helena with an expression of amused incredulity.
“A little place of your own?” she said.
The apartment was lit by the late afternoon sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the S?o Paulo skyline spread out like a painting across three walls.
The living area was spacious and open… the modern furniture, the art, the bookshelves, the kitchen visible through an archway.
Everything was clean and tasteful, not to mention unmistakeably expensive.
Helena felt her cheeks redden. “I may have undersold it slightly.”
“Slightly.” Caitlin walked to the windows and looked out at the view…
the city spread below them, towers, parks and the distant haze of the sprawl reaching to the horizon.
“Helena, this apartment is bigger than my house. And you’ve seen my house.
It’s a nice house.” She turned back again, smiling incredulously.
“Is this what ‘I value my privacy’ looks like in S?o Paulo?”
“It’s… my parents were generous.”
“Generous.” Caitlin ran her hand along the back of the couch. Imported Italian leather, Helena didn’t say, bought through a negotiation by her mother with the dealer. “This couch probably costs as much as my car.”
“It doesn’t. I promise.”
“It definitely costs more than my first car though.” Caitlin was grinning, not judgmental, just thoroughly entertained. “You told me in Houston that you had a little place. You made it sound modest.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was…”
“Rich?” Caitlin laughed. “Helena, I’m not an idiot. I saw your handbag back in Houston. I knew you had money. I just didn’t know you had this much money.”
Helena sighed and sat on the arm of the couch, accepting that the reveal she’d been dreading was also, apparently, hilarious.
“My parents bought this apartment as my twenty-first birthday present. They did the same for my sisters. Mariana has a place in the next street and Beatriz is in Pinheiros. It’s what our family does.
My grandfather bought my father and his siblings their first apartments, my father bought ours. ”
“Your twenty-first birthday present was a penthouse apartment?”
“It’s not a penthouse. There’s a floor above.”
“Really? Because I didn’t see a higher floor number in the elevator?”
“There’s the rooftop terrace.”
Caitlin stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Helena. You have a private rooftop terrace?”
“It’s communal. The other residents can use it too.” Helena paused. “Though the other residents are mostly in their sixties, so in practice…”
“In practice you have a private rooftop terrace.” Caitlin shook her head, still laughing. “I’ve been sleeping with a Brazilian heiress and I didn’t even know it, and you live…”
“I’m not an heiress. I work for a living.”
“…live in an apartment your parents bought you that has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entire city of S?o Paulo.” Caitlin walked over and stood in front of Helena, still grinning, putting her hands on Helena’s shoulders.
“I’m teasing you. It’s beautiful. I love it.
I’m just processing the fact that the woman who slept on my Target sheets in Houston in a bedroom that I painted myself apparently lives in a home that could be in a design magazine. ”
“Your sheets were very comfortable.”
“They were still from Target.”
“I liked them.”
“You’re sweet.” Caitlin kissed her, still smiling. “Show me everything. The whole place. I want to see it all.”
Helena stood and took her hand, feeling the last of her nervousness dissolve under Caitlin’s warmth.
She’d been afraid of the wealth gap reveal, the revelation of just how privileged her background was, but Caitlin had handled it with exactly the grace and humour that Helena should have expected from her.
The force of nature wasn’t intimidated by money.
She was entertained by it, and by Helena’s transparent discomfort at having it exposed.
She led Caitlin through the apartment room by room.
The kitchen, with its marble worktop and professional-grade appliances that Helena seemed to end up using mainly for coffee and reheating takeout.
The third bedroom that she used as a home office.
The master bedroom, the space where Helena fervently hoped that they’d be spending quite a lot of time.
The only one that Helena skipped was the main guest bedroom, for the simple reason that that was her playroom and she both didn’t want to intimidate Caitlin so soon after arriving and desperately wanted to keep it as a surprise for her later in her visit.
“It’s up to you where you sleep,” Helena said. “I’d love it if you stayed in my room, but I’d understand if you wanted the home office and the bed in there for your own space.” She grinned. “I don’t want to assume anything…”
Caitlin walked back over to the door to the master bedroom and glanced inside. “Nice bed.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“I’ll bet.” She walked to the window… more of the skyline, the sun setting now, the city starting to light up for the evening. “This view. You wake up to this every morning?”
“Every morning.”
“And you still managed to be miserable about not hearing from me?”
Helena smiled. “A nice view doesn’t fix everything.”
Caitlin turned and grinned at her. “I’d like to stay in here with you. If that’s not too much too soon, of course?”
“Definitely not too much too soon. You can use the home office if you do want your own space at all. The offer’s always there.”
Caitlin walked back over to face her, her expression suddenly serious. “Thank you for bringing me here and letting me see your real life. The apartment, the family money, all of it. I could tell you were nervous to show me that.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was showing off.”
“I don’t think that. I think you’re someone who works hard and happens to come from a privileged background, but for some reason is slightly embarrassed about the second part.
” Caitlin took her hands. “I don’t care about the money, Helena.
I care about you. And this apartment, this city, your family…
it’s all part of you. I want to know all of it. ”
Helena kissed Caitlin in her bedroom, in the golden light of a S?o Paulo sunset, and something deep down felt absolutely right, in a way that nothing ever before had quite felt right.
The reality of Caitlin was even better than the remembered version of her had been for the last nine months, in every single way.
Funnier, more engaging, more charismatic, more beautiful…
simply more wonderful. A part of her had worried that the reality in Miami would disappoint, but this was quite the opposite… this was falling hard.
“Welcome to S?o Paulo, Gatinha,” Helena murmured against her lips.
“It’s good to be here, Minha Dona,” Caitlin smiled. “Now, are you going to show me this rooftop terrace or not?”
Helena laughed and took her hand.
She had a week. A whole week with Caitlin in her life.
She intended to make every second count.