Lessons in Pure Life Read online

  “Si. This week was shit. I miss you.”

  Opening my arms, I draw him in. There’s nothing we can do but embrace for now. We haven’t figured it out, but the energy between us pulses.

  21

  Smoky, summery barbeques are lighting up in the colorful neighborhood Diego’s taking us through. People walk lazily in the dry, narrow street, eating vendor food among taxi-boat ads and cheap jewelry tables covered in purple sarongs. A bright red cola sign blazes dreamily from a restaurant in a corner of the village square. A few kids are breakdancing in a big gazebo that lies in the center of the grassy quad. Benches make long shadows on the stone walkway.

  I wait outside on the bike while Diego runs inside one of the corner stores Ticos call pulperías to pick up some juice and other supplies. Mellow sun wanes into golden honey dripped over the wings of coconut trees. The locals know to take this hour in, leaning in the frames of their Dutch doors, smoking, and drinking cold coconut water from a guy who’s riding a big sort-of tricycle around with a cooler full of fresh coconuts. I watch him slice one open casually with a machete. He hands it over gently to a young girl, the drink in one hand, the knife in the other. She takes her treat happily, and he pedals on to the next customer, kind eyes squinting against the light. The afternoon glows like a bulb of liquid amber before it cools into evening.

  Diego shuffles out of the store with a heavy plastic bag he slings over the bike handle, pausing to hold the door for a lady holding more bananas than anyone could need. She lugs them into the house next door, shoving through the swinging front door with her butt. A vibrant parrot swings on a perch hanging on the porch. It’s humbling to be reminded again and again that we’re just visitors here and that rainforest and ocean are ever-present.

  “You ready? It’s just a few more minutes from here.”

  “Really?”

  He starts the engine with a look that says I’m about to find out. The small town I don’t even know the name of begins to drift by faster and faster until we cut off the main road and turn onto a dirt lane. It’s dusty, but the view of the coast is still spectacular as we drive along the shining shore. The air is soft and buttery, adding to the natural buzz I’ve got soaring through me. Uninhibited or perhaps just softened by the light, I lean on Diego, embracing him fully. Amazing how we communicate – the way we touch shifts only slightly, but he accepts my surrender of pretense. This is the real me.

  The sun’s sinking lower, but nothing’s sad about this goodbye. Feels like I’ve lived many, many times before. Minutes of light are left glowing like candles, like slide-guitar music and Navajo rugs and red earth.

  We slow down to accommodate the narrow road that’s waned into dirt tracks with roots and vines growing all over them. Nature’s in charge, as usual. Tires crackle over gravel when we pull into a long, narrow driveway that cuts through the forest. A monstrous grasshopper straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom hops out of the way just in time, the headlights shining on it like it’s a circus acrobat. Instead of a drumroll, the moths set a beat for the evening.

  We come to a stop next to a dirty, rusty ATV and a small storage trailer. Looks like it was moved here recently, judging by the fresh tracks. Sherlock moment.

  With our supplies and stuff we walk along the sand and up some flat stone steps to the front entrance of a small cabin. He punches a code into a fancy glowing lock that makes me wonder what he keeps in there and shoves the door open.

  He finds a way to touch me no matter how we’re moving. He holds my hand as I step inside and he fumbles for the lights. A reassuring smile every time we share a gaze, like Lady and the Tramp sharing a noodle. I’m in so deep I’d nose him all my meatballs. Well, that’s a lie; I love meatballs. But I’d split them with him fifty-fifty, and that’s saying a lot.

  I inhale Diego’s cabin and tease out the aroma: saltwater and rainforest leaves like the ones used to make the albums they sell at the market. The whole place is wood, smells of forest winding into my brain and unwinding me further.

  Diego’s started mixing a mystery drink in a plastic pitcher. The wood-paneled kitchen is modern and minimalist but still homey, with an unusually narrow oven. It’s so cute that I can’t help but run my hands over the enamel and knobby dials. The counters are gorgeous lacquered mango wood.

  He’s got the essentials in the cupboards and drawers. I grab a couple of mugs and set them down next to his bar. The drink is simple and genius, a blend of the ubiquitous Ron Centenario, fresh pineapple juice, and tamarind syrup. Ice from the freezer tinkles as he stirs the cocktail with a wooden spoon and strains servings into each mug. Tastes sweet and tart, rum lacing the fruit with heat.

  Drink in hand, I begin to explore. The living area is a big overstuffed couch with a smallish TV, some books, and succulent plants in heavy glazed pots. The couch faces a large picture window revealing the ocean. In the corner down the wall from the kitchen is a short ladder-staircase kind of thing. It leads to the only upper-floor space.

  There isn’t much on the walls except a clock and a square yard of cloth with silkscreened art.

  He follows my gaze. “I just moved in, really. I still live half at home to take care of the family, but you can see how well that’s been working out. It’s small, but the land is very high value.”

  “This is yours?”

  “It wasn’t until very recently. I’ve been paying it off for a while, but I saved and I worked until it was mine.”

  Huh.

  “Wow.”

  “You like it?”

  “I really do.”

  “Enough to stay the night?”

  I laugh, wondering how to respond.

  “I’ll have to borrow some pajamas.”

  “Oh, it gets so warm you don’t need any, trust me,” he says, grinning.

  “You would say that.” I play-punch him, something I’m forming a habit of. His arms snake around me as we move in the space together.

  “Want to hear my sound system?”

  “Is that what they call it here?”

  “Call what?” he asks, playing dumb.

  “All right, play something.”

  “Bien… momento.”

  He fiddles around on his phone for a while, his face as relaxed as I’ve seen it, asking me to bear with him. Imagine if it’s a terrible demo tape? I hope not.

  Like we’re inside a jukebox and someone just dropped their coin in, music fills the room to the brim. Wall of sound coming from Royksopp’s last album.

  So fucking good. Each note is crisp and clean in my ears.

  “Hey, this is cool!”

  He’s got one of those Bluetooth hookups or a remote app or something. I open the door to check out the deck, just big enough for two chairs, a small table, and a barbeque. His laundry line hangs empty, and I imagine it decorated with his underwear like prayer flags. The ocean is dusky without the daylight, but it’s still impressive.

  Halfway into my Tamarind Sunset, I’m feeling the music, like those videos of babies who have the instinct to dance to pop songs in front of the TV. The beat’s everywhere; my cells are swaggering. I’ve blasted through a glass ceiling of inhibitions he wouldn’t think I had. Wouldn’t know because he isn’t female and hasn’t had to fight for self-esteem. For the right to be vulnerable without being assailed.

  I’m vibrating in deep, red waves. Bloody sunset. Startling like tart tamarindo on the back edges of your tongue. Robyn’s singing on heavy beats. I think my heart’s on fire.

  I lean back against the wooden rail and look up at the house. It’s smaller than I imagined him having, mostly because he makes me think of a Great Dane or some other beautiful beast that needs a big yard to run in, room to move. I remember a tiger I saw at the zoo once, how it rested on a cool slab of concrete that rose up into a massive throne like it knew exactly who it was. Hips swaying gently, I turn back to the horizon, humming the song, dangling an arm over the rail.

  “You look good here, at my house.”


  He’s come up behind me.

  Euphoria. It’s urgently underrated, those essential brain chemicals not nearly understood by enough of the world’s population. It’s a force like the Force. And if that’s so easy for millions of fans to believe in, why not this? What’s so hard to grasp about the invisible energy surrounding us?

  “It’s beautiful here,” I say honestly.

  He fills the air around me like our particles are mixing. Are they?

  I’m acutely aware of each moment unfolding now. And now. And now.

  Midnight-blue sky glowing at the bottom, a red-orange hum that reverberates in my chest. Sprinkling of stars when I look straight up. Even though the sky isn’t black, I can see constellations clearly, so many more stars out here by the water.

  This time when his arm comes around me, it’s not casual. He’s more cautious, slow and deliberate, his lumberyard hand loose on his wrist. So much heat coming off him. And tenderness in the way his heavy limbs know how to touch softly.

  He’s so near I feel his breath light on my ear. Wolverine’s wide hand on my hip.

  That breath means a whole other thing now that there’s room in my heart for it. Caring that he lives on whether I get to be around him or not. Love from my person to his, if I admit it.

  Suddenly I feel tipsy, and I know it can’t only be the cocktail. My senses are overwhelmed. A surge of dopamine fountains when the soft breeze sends his scent my way. It’s just him this time, sun-skin, salt.

  Alone with Diego Valverde.

  I wait for the panic attack to rear its head, but it doesn’t come. Instead I feel impossibly light, like I’m just a translucent screen the wind can blow right through. Free falling without the wrenching tickly feeling in my stomach. I could bob away and get lost in the sky.

  “Gringa, let me see you.” His voice an earthquake knocking stuff off my walls. If I were a building, I’d be rattling my fifteen-story windows, lawn rippling as the earth shivers delightfully.

  The tips of his fingers slalom their way down my back like they’re lazy. Taking all the time in the world because he can, now that the walls have come down.

  I turn to face him. He helps me unnecessarily, both hands warm on either side of my hips.

  I just can’t bring myself to look up at him. Where has this shyness come from? Two seconds ago I’m unraveled, and now I’m bashful as a schoolgirl on picture day.

  As if he heard me thinking, he stiffens. “Hey.”

  His tone is so serious and annoyed-sounding that I snap my head up to see what’s in his eyes. God, his hands are warm. And not just that. Caring, if that makes any sense. Like he’s gauging how I might want to be touched and his intuition is dead-on. This is how I want it.

  “What?”

  His eyes are terrifying and kind, impossible not to feel gaga at such close range. So easy to judge someone by the outer layer they were born with. What a trick that is.

  There’s a peppering of stubble on his chin, a spot where the skin curves over the jaw where his razor missed and the hair is a little longer. Lips just rosy enough, darker around the edge of the bottom lip where the sun must hit it. Nose like a hero, a slight rise in the bridge to keep him rough but refined at the tip to startle the world with the fine work. Raw, beautiful. Creature.

  “You do something crazy to me.”

  Can’t help but smile and blink at him like my eyelashes are six inches long. “I was thinking the same about you.”

  Shaking his head like he disapproves, except I know he doesn’t. This is the most exciting part so far. So far. The best is yet to come, and it’s going to come tonight. Give me the Red Lobster treasure chest.

  He doesn’t smile. Just exudes desire.

  An AC/DC tune starts up from somewhere on his body, interrupting the music on the speakers. He pulls his phone out of his pocket irritably, and the song gets louder. “Hell’s Bells.” He swipes a few times and it’s silenced.

  “There. Airplane mode. No more interruptions. I hate being that guy.”

  “You’re not that guy. More of a nerd, actually, with your Batman apps.”

  He cracks a smile like it’s not the first time he’s heard it. “Nerds are cool, man. Especially Batman.”

  “If you’re a nerd, I’m a nerd,” I joke in a movie-star whisper, doubting he gets the Notebook reference.

  “You’re the profesora. Queen of books, with her alphabet on the chalkboard.”

  He finishes the sentence licking the drink from his bottom lip, just barely biting it. Flirting at point-blank range. With that face, you expect a punch over a punch line, but he delivers.

  “Well, as long as I’m the queen…”

  I drink thirstily from my mug even though I should take it slow. Tamarind is my new favorite flavor. Damn.

  “Otra?” he asks, taking my empty cup.

  “Yes, please. Tamarind is so refreshing.”

  “Yeah, you like it? I used to try only to use local ingredients at the bar. It’s not so hard around here, but you have to be creative.”

  “Mmm.”

  He pours me another and I take it with both hands, sipping deeply.

  “Me gusta.”

  “Yo también,” he replies, never able to keep a totally straight face when I try to speak Spanish.

  “What’s upstairs?” I ask innocently, nodding over his shoulder.

  He watches me over the rim of his mug. Two fingers are all that he can fit through the handle.

  “It’s where I sleep,” he tells me, panther in his voice as he wanders over to the couch and eases himself down. “Diego’s bed.”

  Diego’s bed. Words I’ll savor.

  We clink mugs and I sit down next to him. He pulls my legs over his lap and grabs my bare foot absently, examining my nail polish.

  “This is the color from the tienda, that day with my dad?”

  “Yep.” Like we do this kind of thing all the time, referring to past experiences, his attention to detail.

  “I like it.”

  “I walked out with it clutched in my hand. Didn’t notice until I got home, so I paid the day after.”

  He pulls me into his lap and kisses my shoulder, then the top of my head.

  “You would do that. I’m so sorry, diosa.”

  “That was a bad day.”

  He runs his hands over the tops of my shins with distracted affection, taking his time while gazing out the picture window at the moonlit ocean.

  “That was a bad day,” he agrees, adding, “I’m glad you’re here after everything.”

  “Me too.”

  We hold hands. For the first time his fingers wind through mine. It’s almost painful, how much his thick hand spreads mine apart. I loosen his hold, get comfortable. Like a couple tied together for decades longer than we have been, we let a few minutes pass in comfortable silence as we gaze out at the night water. The ocean’s almost disappeared into the dark.

  “I can’t believe it’s still out there. The ocean seems more massive when you can’t really see it,” I comment.

  “I always thought that too, even when I was a kid. It used to scare me to swim at night.”

  “I can’t imagine you being afraid of anything in the water.”

  “Not anymore. But I was. I just grew out of it.”

  His fingers are massaging my legs now, and again I get the urge to take a photo so I will always have a fresh memory of the time Khal Drogo gave me a foot rub. To epic EDM. With cocktails. See? No one will believe me.

  I’m one pointy little exclamation mark of excitement and quasi-belief.

  I need to get up and know how it feels to move through the air in here. Nothing is ever cold. I don’t need to put slippers on or wrap a robe tight around me like a second skin just to maintain my core temperature. Instead, the floor is a pleasant few degrees cooler than the humid air that hangs around.

  Diego gets up and pulls something from a storage cubby I didn’t notice in the wall. The moon finds his arms lifting whatever it is down easily
. Even earth’s satellite wants a piece of my man.

  My man? Don’t want to consider anything yet. Just want now.

  A switch flicks, and I see he’s set up a plug-in fan. I pull my hair up off my back and stand still, letting my skin chill as the wind dries the dampness. Such a wonderful cooling system. I begin to wander.

  It takes five steps to get up to the loft, to Diego’s bed.

  Even though my balance is a little off, up and up I go. It’s my choice. It’s my chance.

  I’ve hit HQ.

  The Batcave is cozy, and damn if the Dark Knight doesn’t have a chocolate-brown, Egyptian-cotton bedspread. Moonlight on the wooden floor.

  The steps creak with his weight and he’s already up here with me, body filling up the space.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I like it very much.”

  He gets the shy look again. It’s so fucking charming, but I don’t know if that’s the Diego I want tonight.

  The music changes, and the speakers do their magic. Cumbia sonidera. God, I love this music. Sexy, tropical rhythm. My body’s waking up. Where before I would have felt awkward in front of him, I can’t believe I’d not be able to move like this in any situation. When music gets inside you, it vibrates, and so you have to vibrate too.

  My drink is nearly empty in one hand, but I like the feel of it. The heat of the environment and the fire in the booze make me blush all over. I feel a light sweat prickle down my lower back, the sign my body gives when it’s really alive.

  Peripherally I watch him watch me step up onto the low mattress, barely a foot off the ground. My drink sizzles down along my spine, branching energy out into my limbs. He spectates, and his expression changes. This isn’t going to end with a family intervention this time. We’re in his place, and it’s ours tonight.

  My body is a melting blur of motion, the light of a candle flickering on the wick. The timing is right. Legs shimmer in the milk light, showing slices of my body in the silky, peach shorts with scalloped trim.

  When I turn to face him, deciding that I’ll make the first move, he’s already drifting toward me. His hands are in his pockets, but he’s not a good boy. He looks more like a bully. Taunt in his eyes, hunger glinting on his teeth. Absent of maliciousness but full of aggression, if that’s possible. The kind I’m hungry for.