by Ella Fox
“Why Spain?” I asked, curious. Whatever the reason was it worked for me. If I had my way, she’d be seeing a lot of Spain in the very near future.
She blushed as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “It’s dumb.”
“I’m learning that when you try to divert, you claim something is dumb, and I know it’s because something has embarrassed you. That just makes me want to know more.”
I watched as she struggled not to laugh. “Fine,” she conceded after a few more seconds. “We wanted to go because Enrique Iglesias was born in Madrid.”
I waited for her to expand on that statement but no further explanation came. “So you planned to hunt him down?” I hate to admit that for half a second I was a tad worried that maybe she was obsessed with a celebrity. I’d deal with it—I wasn’t letting her go for anything—but I was a little freaked out because I’d been so sure that she was normal.
“Don’t worry, Jerry,” she snorted, “you haven’t stumbled into a stalker-type situation. We were teenagers with big dreams of doing choreography for his tour dancers. I’ll admit that maybe there was a pipe dream or two that one of us would wind up marrying him, but we were realistic enough to know that the fact that he’s been with Anna Kournikova for a hundred years made it highly unlikely. It isn’t like either of us planned to track him down and kidnap him Annie Wilkes style.”
“Thank God,” I laughed. “I was really worried about being tied to a bed and hobbled to get me to agree to take you to meet him after you found out that the CS Markets are sponsoring his current tour.”
She rolled her eyes at me before turning as the person in front of her moved forward in the line, allowing Kaya to set the three bags of candy on the conveyor belt. When she looked back at me, her smile was a little smug. “I’ve already met him. He survived the encounter and left safe and sound. I didn’t even try to tag him,” she joked.
“You met him?”
“Emery got us backstage for the opening night in Miami a few months ago. We didn’t tell him about our choreography dreams, but we did get a few pictures. It was nice—and totally sane.”
There was no bite to her voice, but I still felt like shit. “I’m sorry, Kaya. I didn’t mean—”
She waved me off. “It’s not a big deal,” she assured me. “Don’t worry about it.”
The thing was that I did worry about it. I didn’t want to insult or alienate her in any way, and I wasn’t happy that my past experiences had made me question her for even a moment. That wasn’t fair to her. I vowed then and there to leave my issues where they belonged—in the past. I knew Kaya was different—had known it since the moment I met her. She wasn’t my past—she was my future. I had to remember that.
The subject was dropped when she stepped forward to the cashier because it was her turn. I watched as she reached into her purse and pulled something out at the same time the cashier asked her if she had a store loyalty card. Kaya nodded her head and fidgeted with whatever was in front of her until she found what she wanted. I chuckled when she handed a fat keyring of loyalty cards to the checker, the CS Markets card singled out to be scanned. It was clear that if a loyalty card was available, Kaya had it.
I reached into my jeans and extracted my wallet only to tuck it back in again when Kaya gave me the stink-eye. Without a doubt, I knew she would be annoyed if I tried to pay and I didn’t want that. She’d allowed me to pay for lunch only after I insisted that I had to since I’d invited her.
Later she grudgingly conceded and let me pay for her movie ticket, but she insisted on covering the ridiculous bill at the concession stand for our two sodas and the bucket of popcorn we got. She wasn’t kidding when she said she liked butter, either. Watching her maneuver the pump up and down on the butter at the self-serve kiosk was damn near my undoing.
Until Kaya, going to the movies with a girl had never been a turn-on. All that changed when we were side-by-side watching The Breakfast Club. After she’d untied the long-sleeved shirt at her waist and put it on over her dress, she sat down and got comfortable. I wanted nothing more than to touch her in some way, so I settled for slinging my arm over the back of her seat. I spent most of the movie surreptitiously leaning in closer to enjoy her cotton-candy perfume. I wanted to bury my face against her neck and breathe it in for hours because it was that damn good. Instead of giving in to that desire I held myself in check and enjoyed the moment. With Kaya things were unfolding slowly—but I was damn sure that she was worth the wait.
13
Kaya
I’d seen Alejandro every single day after our movie outing and each day I grew considerably more comfortable with him. On Monday lunch and a movie stretched out to include dinner with him, Rafe and Elvis on the back patio. It was a little uncomfortable since Rafe hadn’t thawed toward me all that much. He was polite, but I could tell it was because he felt he had to be. I wondered who or what had pissed in his Cheerios but at the end of the day I didn’t care because my primary focus was on spending time with Alejandro.
Tuesday and Wednesday I managed to avoid the Cruz house entirely because Alejandro and I were busy watching Stranger Things in Emery’s living room after he got off work. Both nights I’d cooked—spaghetti and meatballs on Tuesday and chicken cordon bleu on Wednesday. Thursday he’d talked me into a six and a half mile hike through Solstice Canyon. Dinner that night had been peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Emery’s patio.
Friday, I’d asked him to go with me on a Malibu Winery tour I was going on for my YouTube channel. The tension between us was electric but other than touching me whenever an opportunity presented itself; he hadn’t done a thing. I’d been eighty percent certain he was going to kiss me after the winery tour, but then he didn’t. Although I should have felt relief, I was disappointed.
Now it was Saturday, and we had plans to go to dinner in Santa Monica at Ocean and Vine, one of the restaurants in the Loews hotel. We’d already had brunch at the Carbon Beach Club, after which he’d gone for an informal visit to a CS Market, and I’d headed home to FaceTime with Emery who was halfway around the world in New Zealand. For her, it was already Sunday. I was out on the back patio in the process of filling her in about what was new with Elvis. As we talked, he strutted about proudly in between staring into the screen and cawing at Emery.
The boy loved his momma, and seeing her on the computer screen made him happy, although he hung his little blue head when she scolded him for leaving the yard to rifle through the neighbor’s trash. Naturally, that made Emery assure him that she wasn’t angry, just worried and disappointed. She told him that she still loved him to the moon and back, something that clearly pleased him since he returned to cawing happily and pecking at the screen every minute or so like a lunatic. Like I said before, animals are far smarter than they are given credit for.
“He’s still sleeping in my yard at night, right?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yep. Every time I wake up and check I see him out where he’s supposed to be. After the original trash issues, he’s only hopped the wall to be over there if Alejandro’s brother is awake. For whatever reason, he’s attached himself to Rafe. It’s like they’re soul brothers. I’m really curious what will happen once the rest of Alejandro’s family arrives. Rafe has a twin brother—I’m wondering if Elvis will be able to tell the difference right away.”
Emery shook her head in a kind of stunned surprise. “I really can’t believe that he’s going out of his way to hang out with a man. Other than my grandfather and Dean, Elvis has never given a damn about men. It’s why my grandma called him Elvis when he was a baby—because he always gravitated toward the ladies."
“I was surprised too,” I agreed. Elvis didn’t like men, mostly because Emery’s Uncle Mick had been a loud and overbearing asshole. His crappy attitude had done a number on the way Elvis interacted with men. A good example of that was the way he was with Elliot—or, more accurately, the way he wasn’t, since to Elvis, Emery’s boyfriend didn’t exist. He balls ou
t ignored Elliot whenever he’d tried to interact with him, but he had a lovely habit of shitting on the hood of Elliot’s car.
Personally, I concurred with Elvis’s judgment of Emery’s boyfriend.
“For whatever reason, he’s taken to Rafe. He’s even good with Alejandro, but it’s Rafe he loves. Whenever I go over to check they’re in the backyard playing catch or lounging beside the pool. I’d have a complex about Elvis not loving me as much anymore if he didn’t get excited every time I go to pick him up. I swear he just loves keeping me on my toes.”
She snorted out a laugh. “He’s always been high maintenance,” she agreed. The sound of her laughter made Elvis caw three times in quick succession before he pecked at the screen again. It was his way of interacting with her while she was gone, and it was adorable.
I snapped my fingers as I remembered something important. “On a positive note, he’s also been taking some of his hoarded treasures over to Rafe as either some kind of friendship offering or a way to brag. In any event, I’ve gotten to return the rose gold bangle your grandmother gave you for your high school graduation, one-half of a pair of your favorite hoop earrings and your Tiffany tag bracelet back to your jewelry box in the last few days. Oh, and one of the key fobs for your truck.”
“I knew he had all of that!” she squeaked. “And every time I asked he played innocent. I swear I’ve learned my lesson about taking jewelry off in the sunroom. Whenever I do, he takes off with it. Keep an eye out for my E necklace and one of my aquamarine earrings. If I’d known showing off his stolen booty was the way to get it back, I’d have tossed him over the wall myself,” she joked.
Elvis was a master hider. We’d spent hours searching the property for his pilfered goods, but we normally came up empty handed. We’d long since realized that his real hiding spots were up in his trees—and we couldn’t access those.
We spent a few minutes talking about our week—her first few days of shooting and my adventures with Alejandro. I could tell by the way she was looking into the screen to study me that she had picked up that I was feeling a certain type of way toward him, even though I was doing my best to keep it in. I thought she was going to let me get away with it until she threw that out the window and bluntly confronted the situation head on.
“So what’s up with you and Alejandro? Is he as hot as you’re making him sound?”
I ducked my head and bit my lip as I tried to formulate a response.
“Your hesitation says a lot. I’ve never seen you do that before, Kaya. Not even for Paul. Maybe especially not for him.”
My stomach cramped at the mention of his name and the reminder of how dumb I’d been. “Paul wasn’t exactly a choice I’d have made in my right mind, so…”
She nodded. “Alejandro Cruz is, though. I can tell. It’s in your tone of voice, and I can see it in your face when you talk about him.”
I sighed and nodded as I lifted my head to look back at the screen. “He is, but I just don’t know if I can trust it, you know? Plus, you know how I feel about dating before I’m twenty-five.”
She flat-out scoffed at that. “Babe, please. That’s an arbitrary number that you glommed onto because it’s how old Gigi and Dean were when they met. Their age didn’t make their relationship stable, Kaya. It’s thrived because they work hard and they’re still head over heels in love forty-six years later.”
“But my parents—”
“I’m going to stop you right there. I’ve said it before, but now I feel like I need to be firm about it to get through to you. Those people weren’t worthy of being your parents. Not when they were twenty and not now that they’re in their forties. Age didn’t change a thing. At last check, they were still the same selfish fuckwads who ditched their daughter because they didn’t want to be parents. That would’ve happened even if they’d met and married after they were twenty-five and we know this because they were twenty-six when they gave Kayan up for adoption because he needed too much attention.”
I winced at the mention of my brother. I’d only found out about him when he was ten years old.
Had Gigi and Dean been told that I had a sibling, they wouldn’t have hesitated to take him on. Instead, my parents had given him up for adoption two months after his birth without bothering to tell any of us that they’d had another child. I don’t think they ever would have mentioned it at all, but my mother ran into Gigi and me at a restaurant when she and my father had been in town for a friend’s wedding. Since the last time I’d seen her before that had been when I was four, the conversation had been a bit stilted.
For whatever reason, my mother had chosen to drop the brother bomb. Knowing that they’d given him up and that they hadn’t even bothered to be original with his name was a blow. If I could have one do-over in my life, I’d never have stepped foot into the restaurant that day because it set off a chain of events that I would always regret.
“I just don’t know. I mean really, Em. I’m a house sitter who makes YouTube videos on the side, and he’s got an MBA from Stanford and a family business worth billions. He’s so far out of my league it’s ridiculous.”
Emery’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you ever say that again! You’re the nicest person alive, Kaya. You’re gorgeous and sweet, funny and caring. Whoever you wind up with will be lucky that you looked in his general direction.”
“I’m not saying I’m chopped liver,” I replied. “I’m just saying that he’s a billionaire and I’m just a girl from a small town whose long term dreams involve a house full of kids and an oven loaded with baking cookies.”
She barked out a laugh and rolled her eyes. “It’s true. You have basically always wanted to marry a Mr. Rogers type so that you can pop out a few children and be a mom.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Alejandro Cruz has nothing in common with the Mr. Rogers types of the world,” I sighed. “His future wife will probably roll around in diamonds, couture, and twenty thousand dollar handbags every day of her life. There will be a team of nannies to raise the two children she pushes out to lock down the money, and that will be that. Billionaires marry heiresses, socialites and ladder climbers for a reason, and the reason is that they want a trophy wife to look beautiful and keep their opinions to themselves.”
Emery tsk-tsk-tsked. “That’s super precise and also very judgmental. You spent fifteen minutes telling me all the fun things the two of you did this week and never once did you say he seemed stuck-up. I think you’re painting with too broad a brush here, Kaya.”
I rubbed at my lower lip with my left thumb as I exhaled a long breath. “I’m being really stupid since none of it matters anyway. He lives in Barcelona, and I live at whatever house I’m currently being paid to take care of when I’m not in your guest room. At best I’m a vacation flirtation. He probably does this all the time. With crazier girls apparently—but clearly this is his modus operandi.”
She groaned and sat back in the desk chair she was perched in. “Maybe that’s the case,” she agreed. “And you know what? I say if the situation presents itself you go for it. You’re young, gorgeous and on birth control—why shouldn’t you have a little fun before you marry a boring Mr. Rogers sweater vest wearing guy? Just make sure the Spanish god wraps it before you let him tap it.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “That’s nasty.”
“No,” she said dryly, “that’s practical. Better safe than sorry. There’s a reason I make sure Elliot always wears condoms. Not that we ever have sex anymore, but still.”
I tilted my head and assessed her silently. There were a million things I wanted to say. Run, he’s a piece of garbage, get out while you still can, it’s weird that your boyfriend of six months hasn’t had sex with you in two, he gives me a weird vibe, and I think he’s just using you. I said none of those things because I didn’t want to hurt her. We’d had our first real argument over Elliot a few months before, and I wasn’t looking for a repeat. Still, something needed to be said.
“Em, if
you aren’t happy…”
“I’m not,” she admitted, “happy, that is. I know this isn’t sustainable, but you know how much I hate confrontation. There’s nothing to be done about it here—I’m stuck with him in New Zealand until we wrap. If nothing changes by the time we come back, I’m ending it.”
My knee jerk reaction was to cheer, but that wouldn’t have been an appropriate response. Instead, I nodded and remained calm and casual. “Follow your heart.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she answered.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“I will if you will.”
I chewed on my lower lip as I stared at my best friend, hating that she was half a world away. “My situation is different,” I argued.
“Nope, nope, nope. I’m making this deal and it stands the way I laid it out. I’ll follow my heart if you follow yours. Stop being so uptight. Take some chances. Live a little, Kaya. You’re twenty-one. This is the best time of your life. If you don’t get some Spanish loving now, you never will and from the way you’ve described the hunk of burning love next door, that would be a tragedy.”
“I don’t know…”
“Just do it,” she pressed. “Say yes. If he never makes a move, fine. But if he does, don’t get a case of the vapors and shove him away like a scandalized sixteenth-century virgin.”
“I hate you,” I said, even as I laughed.
She made overly dramatic kissy faces at the screen. “Don’t lie, babe. We both know we’re in this thing for life. Besties always and forever.”
“Always,” I agreed.
“So you’ll do it, then? If he makes a move, you won’t run away?”
I winced and nodded. “Fine. If—and it’s a big if—he makes a move, I won’t run.”
“Woot woot!” she cheered. “Sweep the cobwebs out—”
