Chapter 18
Holland
For some reason I can’t name, that morning I notice Natalia’s running shoes in the clear box by the entrance, next to Lina’s boots. They’ve been there for months, but seeing them beside my daughter’s boots pulls a smile out of me.
It’s been a strange seven days, in a good way I guess.
The judge ruled in my favor, Megan isn’t going to appeal, the visitation schedule is signed and accepted.
And the whole thing with Natalia and the reporter comes to an end.
In general, everyone sides with Natalia and Bianca, though there’s always a special kind of person for everything and someone who doesn’t buy it.
I’m lost in my thoughts when someone pounds on the door with too much energy.
“Holland, boss lady, one quick thing and I’m out,” Iris says, already inside the house without asking if she can come in.
“I was just passing by and I brought Lina some league cards. You know they give them to me, and look, my mug is in one of those platinum specials. Limited edition, boss lady, I guess because I photograph well, I don’t know,” she adds, with a shrug.
Suddenly she takes a slow look around the living room, the table set for three, the boots and running shoes lined up at the entrance in clear boxes, and then she looks at me with a smile I don’t entirely like.
“Man. Such a peaceful home. It’s almost creepy,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Paula would be happy in a place this tidy. Enjoy it, boss lady. The midseason calm lasts as long as it lasts, because then come the playoffs and we all lose our minds with the pressure, I’m warning you, okay?
” she adds, stepping up to the table to grab an olive from the bowl. “Brazil’s good, right?”
“She’s good.”
“Yeah.” She chews, points at me with the pit. “Okay, but keep an eye on her anyway.”
And she leaves without waiting for me to ask what she means by that.
I hate when she does that kind of thing.
Iris drops lines like that and takes off before you have time to ask her to explain.
A lot of the time she doesn’t mean anything, she wanders off the main topic for no reason, but other times, she leaves you with a bad feeling.
Natalia gets there ten minutes later, her hair still wet from the shower after practice.
“Did I just pass Iris?” she asks, puzzled.
“She brought some league cards for Lina,” I explain.
We eat late, the three of us, listening to a long lecture from my daughter about why a wiener dog would be a better pet than a cat, because she and Natalia are trying to talk me into adopting a dog.
Halfway through the second course, Natalia’s phone rings. She looks at the screen, makes a face, and gets up.
“It’s Diogo, my agent, renewal stuff, you know,” she explains, and goes out to the porch to talk, closing the door behind her.
She comes back in five minutes, sits, and picks the dog debate back up like nothing happened.
I try not to make anything of it. An agent’s calls are normal for a pro player and I should get used to it.
But her contract runs out at the end of the season, and they still haven’t offered her the renewal despite how well she’s playing.
Later, in our bedroom, with the door closed and the light off, we peel each other’s clothes off, unhurried.
Lately it’s very different. We don’t ask ourselves anymore whether this will last one night or two. There’s a week’s worth of good news to celebrate in a bed that’s already both of ours.
I kiss her on the shoulder, on the collarbone, on the hummingbird tattoo on her forearm.
She told me once that bird fit her personality well, because it flew from flower to flower without ever stopping, just like her with soccer teams. I asked her if that would still be true, and she only smiled before kissing me.
She strokes my chin with her fingertips, tracing the scar I’ve had there since I was nine, the one from the bike.
Then she kisses me just below my ear, because she loves the goosebumps I get when she does it.
Her lips travel down my neck, nip gently at my collarbone, she knows the feel of her teeth on my skin undoes me, and they keep going down, taking their time, until they close over my nipple.
I gasp, arch my back against the mattress, and bury my fingers in her hair.
When we’re completely naked, the dark of the room only lets us see outlines, but that makes every touch sharper. I feel her weight on my body, the heat of her belly on mine, the hummingbird tattoo I kissed before, now grazing my skin with every breath.
I lose myself in the feel of her, already familiar while she grips my ass to pull me against her.
Our breasts brush as she slides a thigh between my legs so I can grind against it, the friction so good it has me moaning into her neck.
It’s like everything has vanished. The world around us fades and it’s just the two of us, skin to skin, nothing else.
She smothers a smile against my lips as she hears me moan, cupping my breasts, teasing my nipples between her fingers. I let myself go between gasps, tipping my head back, closing my eyes, the heat pooling between my legs.
Our ragged breathing breaks the silence of the night, and her every touch leaves a trail of heat on my skin.
I slip a hand between her legs, rubbing my fingers in small circles while she tries to do the same to me, sending shivers of pleasure racing through me.
“I want to feel more of you,” I whisper.
I pull her toward me, turning her body over mine until my mouth finds her just as her fingers slide into me.
It’s messy and greedy, intimate and familiar, the taste of her flooding my mouth while my tongue draws circles over her clit.
She moans against my thigh as I ride her fingers, chasing more pressure.
The mattress rocks softly with our rhythm. Pleasure gathers low in my belly like a wave about to break, and I can tell she’s close too: her breathing goes erratic, her nails dig into my skin.
“Faster,” I beg without lifting my mouth from her.
I arch my back at the feel of her fingers curling inside me while she grazes her teeth along my inner thigh. Soon her legs shake and her stomach tightens. She cries out my name, her fingers still inside me as she pushes me over the edge right after her, leaving me breathless.
“Give me your fingers,” I whisper, and draw them into my mouth.
We stay a good while without moving, her naked body over mine, lost in the taste of her lips and the smell of her skin. She drags her nails lightly down my side while she kisses me, and every time she says my name, it makes me shiver.
Afterward we stay wrapped around each other, her leg between mine, her breathing slowing against the skin of my neck. And while I stroke her back, I think about how good it feels to be like this on any random night of any random Tuesday, with nowhere to be.
***
Lina’s crying wakes us at three thirty.
I know it well, that half-asleep cry of a nightmare. I go to comfort her, but Natalia gets there first.
I stay in the doorway, not going in, just watching a scene that brings tears of tenderness to my eyes.
Natalia sits on the edge of the bed and sings her a lullaby in Portuguese.
It’s a beautiful melody, and my daughter calms down little by little, hiccups a couple of times, and falls back asleep, clutching the teddy bear we bought her last month.
“Good night, mommy,” we suddenly hear, and I don’t know who’s more surprised, Natalia or me.
We go back to bed in silence and lie down facing each other, propped on our forearms.
“She just called me mommy,” she whispers, puzzled.
“And are you okay with that?”
She takes a while to answer. In the dark I make out the movement of her throat as she swallows.
“It’s not something I expected to hear yet, or maybe ever,” she admits with a sigh.
It doesn’t sound like joy, it sounds more like a woman who’s just had a weight put in her hands that she isn’t sure she wants, and that worries me.
I find her hand and squeeze it. I don’t tell her what I’m thinking, and I don’t push her either.
Natalia squeezes back, but she stays awake a long time. I know because I can’t sleep either.
***
The next morning, she makes coffee and toast with blackberry jam before I come down. She has these little gestures with me that I love, because they say more than a thousand words. And even so, while we eat breakfast, I notice she’s a little distant.
I couldn’t explain why. She answers when I talk to her, laughs at the drawing Lina made of the future wiener dog we’ll adopt, clears the plates.
But it’s like part of her is holding a conversation I’m not part of.
She looks at her phone a couple of times and sets it face down without answering.
When I ask if something’s wrong, she says “nothing, you know, my agent.” Maybe it’s just that we barely slept last night.
I walk her to the door before she leaves for practice and I feel something strange. It’s the feeling that someone I love isn’t entirely here with me. The last time I felt that, the woman who caused it left for Virginia.
I shake my head and try to push those thoughts away. Natalia isn’t Megan. She made my favorite breakfast this morning and calmed my daughter in the middle of the night with a lullaby in Portuguese. I have no reason to doubt that everything’s fine between us.