Chapter 9
CJ
They don’t hear her leave CoLab, so CJ gets a full beat to watch it happen: Ash pushing a visibly ecstatic Luis up against the wall before launching at him, a kiss so passionate that CJ has surely underestimated the sexual tension brewing between them this past week.
There’s something so carnal about Ash’s open wanting that CJ gets a thunderbolt of desire herself, a sharp intake of her own breath, the parting of moist lips, a surge of electricity to her nipples, the backs of her legs, the tops of her thighs.
Fucking hell, they’re really going for it: the very definition of two become one.
And it’s not that CJ feels envious that Ash is kissing Luis – Luis does not belong to her.
It’s just, Ash so obviously wants him, and CJ is privy to the fact that Luis is a most expert lover.
Ash is about to have monumentally good sex that could ruin most other men for her from here on out.
It turns her on, to think of what Luis can do: his deliberate, firm grip, his instinct for slow, delayed gratification, his lack of squeamishness, his reverence for all the deep, odorous, wanting parts of a woman.
And then Luis, as if he can sense CJ’s thoughts about him, opens his eyes just enough to catch CJ looking, and he fucking loves it, he’s thrilled she’s being a pervert, a little peeping Tom.
CJ sees his tongue dart from between his lips to lick at Ash hungrily, and CJ’s clitoris throbs.
Luis looks again, and CJ holds his stare until Luis sticks up his middle finger from behind Ash’s back, and laughs, keeping a steady eye on CJ as she skulks away, horny, annoyed. And OK. Fine. A little bit envious.
Any woman worth her feminism knows men are not worth fighting over – men are good, yes, but they’re not that good.
So it comes with no sense of pride or satisfaction to CJ that after bearing witness to Luis snogging Ash last night, she’s feeling uncharacteristically territorial.
She’s spent the brief walk to work examining the moral ethics of this: is she wrong to want Luis’s attention for herself?
Is it wrong to get in the way of whatever Luis and Ash might have?
But she comes up in the negative for both: no, it’s not wrong to want Luis’s attention for herself, because they’re best friends and have always hooked up, long before Ash arrived on the scene.
And no, it’s not wrong to get in the way of Luis and Ash’s dalliance: one could argue, in fact, that Ash is getting in the way of CJ and Luis’s romance.
Well, maybe not romance. They’re not hearts-and-flowers kinds of people.
They’re sexual soulmates, and it turns out that as generous as CJ has historically been about either of their infidelities, for some reason the combination of Luis and Ash makes her jealous, and the jealousy is actually quite fucking arousing.
She’s desirous in wanting to mark him out for herself: yes, it’s quite the headfuck.
‘Morning, handsome,’ CJ says to Luis as she saunters into CoLab.
It’s beach day today, with CJ, Luis and nineteen CoLab guests not far out from boarding a bus to Praia da Adraga, over towards the west, about an hour’s drive away.
The plan is mostly beach games and photo ops – it’s still early in the season, so it should be a cool twenty or so degrees, which isn’t quite sunbathing-for-hours weather, but is certainly mild enough to enjoy the views afforded by the low season, before the crowds take over.
It has a certain romance to it, the empty-ish beach in April, and Praia da Adraga is so dramatic with its black cliffs in the background, its humongous rocks peppering the sand like the debris of planets discarded by the space gods.
They’ve got blankets to sit on and food prepared by Miguel and Todd at Querido.
It should be good – a lovely, wholesome day.
And CJ intends to get fucked six ways to Sunday by the end of it, thankyouverymuch.
‘Handsome?’ asks Luis, cocking an eyebrow. He’s got a clipboard and a pen, ticking something off a list, three medium-sized plastic boxes at his feet, supplies for the day.
‘I’d say you’re not bad to look at, absolutely,’ CJ says, approaching him to issue a kiss to each of his cheeks – a display of affection that is not common for her and so instantly marks her mood out as special.
First the left cheek, mwah, and then the right, mwah, she lingers close to his face and smiles lazily, suggestively.
‘I’m wearing that bikini you like,’ she continues. ‘The purple one? With the thong?’
CJ isn’t shy about her body, and it’s quite normal for people to go nude, even, at some of the beaches. CJ often settles for topless, in a very small bikini bottom, a fact that Luis knows all too well.
‘You’re teasing me,’ Luis replies, features wolfish. ‘But I like it.’
CJ laughs and leaves it there – she’s got all day to drive Luis wild, and it will make the time fly.
‘This all looks good,’ she says, gesturing to his list, the packing, his apparent organisation.
‘Yes,’ Luis nods. ‘Everything is ready, sorted. So if you wanted to make me a coffee, so we can relax for a while, I wouldn’t say no.’
‘Done and done,’ CJ says with a captain’s salute. ‘That would be my pleasure.’
She fixes them a couple of coffees and they sit at the breakfast bar area of the mess and let the day’s attendees slowly assemble in dribs and drabs around them.
‘How’s Jorge?’ Luis asks, in between sing-song good mornings to folks.
‘He’s good,’ CJ says. ‘Just happy, you know? That’s all I want for him. No worries, just to play with his toys or with other kids, or to engage with the grown-ups around him with ease … I happen to think he’s becoming quite the conversationalist, as it goes, which of course makes me very proud.’
‘He’s your son,’ Luis counters. ‘Of course he is good company.’
‘You’re kind,’ CJ says. ‘Miguel and Todd are due as much credit as I am, though. They dote on him, truly.’
‘And yet they don’t want kids of their own,’ Luis says. ‘It makes no sense to me.’
CJ shrugs. ‘I get it,’ she says. ‘They have this nice life with Querido, and their trips, and I think it’s possible to love children and be good with them but still know being an uncle is enough.
It’s admirable, really. All the people in this world who become parents as a sort of insurance policy, because they’re scared they’ll regret not having them?
Criminal, really. And we don’t go around asking people who do have kids why they’ve done it, do we? We only ask it of the ones who don’t.’
Luis nods his head, left and right, considering her point. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose I worry for myself. You know this, this is not news to you – because I want so desperately to be a father. It’s hard to understand those who don’t wish this for themselves.’
CJ digests this. ‘What makes you so sure on fatherhood?’
‘What made you so sure on motherhood?’ he counters.
‘Fair,’ CJ nods. ‘I just … knew. No big drama, no big question, I just knew.’
‘Do you think I could do it alone?’ Luis asks. ‘Like you? All the women seem to be doing it these days, but you never see a man become a parent on his own, do you? It somehow seems unnatural.’
‘Ricky Martin did it alone, I think,’ CJ says. ‘And Ronaldo, before Georgina. He had three before she came along.’
‘This is true,’ Luis agrees, musing on his sporting hero. ‘Although I always imagined a wife. I turn forty next month, CJ, and what do I have to show for it?’
‘You have plenty to show for it!’ CJ tells him, reaching out a hand to his across the table.
‘You’re the heartbeat of this place, and that’s no small thing.
Lives are transformed here, whether that disgusts me to say or not.
People come to Lisbon and get shown her magic and beauty by you.
You don’t get enough credit for that and I’m not bullshitting you, I swear.
You’re loved by your grandparents, your family.
Everyone in Bairro Alto knows your name.
And you’re part of my family, in a way. Uncle Luis. Jorge adores you.’
Luis looks at her, and CJ can’t tell if he’s sad or if what she has said has made him happy.
‘Hmmm,’ is all he says. And then, ‘I adore him too. You really are doing a fantastic job. I see you with him and I know he will grow up happy, and good.’
‘I hope so.’ The conversation is more serious than she anticipated twenty minutes (and one mention of her thong bikini) ago, but that’s no bad thing.
It’s hard not to objectify Luis sometimes, with the way he looks and moves, and the party-boy behaviour he perpetuates, but CJ knows better than anyone that still waters run deep, and Luis’s heart belies a strong current.
Other people could be at risk of taking Luis more seriously if only he took himself more seriously, but he so seldom does.
CJ meant what she said about him being the heartbeat of CoLab.
But he needs to stop shagging every new arrival and go to bed before midnight, then, if that’s not the life he wants any more.
CJ can’t say this to him, though, because she did, once, and he screamed – actually lost his temper and screamed – ‘AND SO WHAT DO I DO TO KEEP MY MIND FROM TURNING ON ME AND GOING INSANE, CJ? IT IS TORTURE!’ As his friend, all CJ can do is walk beside him as he works this out.
Maybe she needs to be more generous with him vis-à-vis a genuine desire to live differently, but then any thoughts of this nature are quickly eradicated with the arrival of Ash in the mess.
A reminder that literally, only just last night, Luis was shagging a random who won’t even be here by high summer – like, my dude, come on, make the actions and the words align. Make it make sense.