“Then how will I know if I’m doing it right?”
He laughs. “Don’t think so hard. You can’t anticipate the steps with your head. Trust your body. It knows what to do.” He sweeps me even closer, too close for me to see my feet, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. Or is that his heart? I look up at him. He blushes again and pulls back an inch.
And then we dance.
With our bodies this close, I can feel his every movement. There is nothing to think about, nothing to anticipate or analyze or complicate. The shift in his hips tells me when to glide to the side. The pressure of his thigh on mine means it’s time to step back. The weight of his hand against the small of my back brings me forward again.
“Perfect.” He beams. “You’ve got it.” I don’t step on his foot once.
“Ready for something more?” he whispers into my ear. I pull back enough to look at him. “I can teach you another step.”
“Yeah. Why not?”
But the music stops, and this time Dan has found me.
“Having fun?” he asks, not quite smiling, not looking at Mateo.
“Yes, lots.” We stand in silence for a few seconds. “Dan, have you met Mateo?”
“Not officially.” He turns ceremoniously and holds out his hand. They shake. “Well, shall we?” I take Dan’s arm.
Over his shoulder, he says, “Nice meeting you, Matthew.” I look back, apologetic, but Mateo, surrounded by a flock of women, is already walking toward Anna on the other side of the hall.
Dan and Jamie are full of energy and want to go for drinks. Tired, I head home and leave them to find their way to large bottles of cheap beer.
“Are you sure you trust me alone with your man?” Jamie says with a huge smile. Dan blushes.
“I’ll take my chances,” I say with a smile, playing along.
It’s only ten-thirty, but the house is dark and still. Andrea and Jorge must be out—no one goes to sleep before midnight around here. It isn’t until I’m ready for bed that I realize I’m not that tired after all. It’s cool enough to make a cup of tea. I turn on the radio and curl up on the couch by the window with my steaming mug. With all the lights off, the courtyard flora sparkles in the moonlight.
Someone’s knocking on my door. It must be Andrea wanting to hear about my tango adventures. She hits her stride after dark. Some nights she keeps me up until the sun rises, talking and drinking maté.
I open the door, the sliver of hall light stretching across my feet, and see Mateo.
Did I fall asleep on the couch? I must be dreaming.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“We didn’t get to finish our dance,” he says and steps toward me.
Before I can put down my mug of tea, his hands are on my face, his lips against mine. His tongue pushes softly into my mouth and finds mine. I taste red wine, I taste tango. I throw my arms around him. Warm tea sloshes out of the cup and against his back, but he doesn’t stop. A slow song comes on the radio, and Mateo pulls me to him, his hips pushing against mine. I step back and to the side. His right hand moves down my cheek, throat, breast. My left hand strums the side of his torso. I am vaguely aware of music in the background. Mostly, I hear the sound of us breathing into each other, our hearts beating out their own rhythm against our chests. There is no thought, no anticipation, no plan. Every part of us, feet, hands, fingers, lips, tongues, breath, just dances. It’s everything and nothing like I’d imagined it would be. I don’t want this to stop.
“I could kiss you forever,” he whispers.
Forever. From him, the word rocks me out of reverie. Does he mean it? I remember that night after the party. Life isn’t a Tom Hanks movie. Happily ever after is a fairy tale. I’m reluctant to let anything ruin this moment, but now this is the only thing running through my mind, trampling all in its path. Everything I want—things I didn’t even know I wanted—pushes to the surface. There is no stopping it.
“I don’t understand you,” I whisper back, frightened of the words as they come out of my mouth, frightened of what I want them to convey, frightened of their potential to end this moment, this kiss, this dance.
“What don’t you understand?” He kisses my shoulder.
“What do you want from me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He laughs lightly, nuzzling my neck.
I pull back. “Is that all?”
“No, no, that isn’t all.” He pulls back enough to look me in the eye. “Of course that isn’t all.” He shakes his head. “Is that what you think of me?”
“How would I know what to think?”
“I let you stomp all over my feet for half an hour. That should tell you something.” He laughs but stops when he sees I don’t get the joke. “And I’m here right now, aren’t I?”
“And what about tomorrow?” Even as I say it, I know I’ve ruined everything, but I can’t stop myself. “What happens tomorrow, Mateo?” I can see in his eyes, in the disappointment pooling there, that the moment is over.
I’ve looked at my feet again. For good or bad, it’s the only way I know how to dance.
“I don’t know, Cassie. I don’t know what happens tomorrow,” he says quietly, cautiously, adding, “I know you’ve been hurt . . .”
He’s right. I have been. Which is why I’ve got to stick to The Plan. Spontaneous decision-making isn’t my strong point. “Look, I’m going home soon, and I just don’t see the point of us . . . I don’t see the point of us wasting our time pretending.”
“I didn’t realize this was wasting your time,” he says sharply, straightening up.
“Well, it is,” I force myself to respond. “Maybe you should go find Anna.” I don’t even recognize my own voice.
“Anna?” He looks at me with a question mark. “Maybe I should leave,” he says at last. We stand apart, arms rigid at our sides. Our swollen lips are all that remain of our kiss.
“Maybe you should.”
As I shut the door after him, it makes a sucking sound, and I feel that sound inside of me, that sucking of air until there’s nothing left to breathe. I open my mouth wide, placing my shaking hands against the door to steady myself, and catch my breath. When I can breathe again, I have nowhere to go but mad. Any residual passion from that one kiss twists into a rage. How dare he! How dare he come up here and kiss me like that! How dare he walk out on me! Mostly, I’m angry that he can get to me like this. So I am determined not to let him. He is of no consequence in my life. Mateo de la Vega can take his “forever” and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Wide awake with anger, I notice that my apartment is a mess. While I stomp around picking up papers, tossing food wrappers, and slamming cupboard doors, “You May Be Right” comes on the radio. I used to love Billy Joel. Before my father left us, he played this song all the time. He’d turn it up loud, and he and I would boogie around the living room, limbs flailing, not caring how stupid we looked or that we didn’t know the right moves. Once my mother came in from the kitchen, yellow dish gloves dripping with suds, and started singing along into the spatula she’d been scrubbing. Even her. Even me. I walk over to the radio and turn it off.
I give up on cleaning and try to sleep, but after tossing, turning, and watching the clock for far too long, I give up and check my e-mail. How could I waste time stewing over Mateo when a stellar job offer might be sitting there waiting for me to come to my senses?
Three form e-mails notifying me that my résumé has been received, a joke from my stepdad that I read about two years ago, a lengthy update from Sam and Trish on everyone we know in Seattle, and a message from C.J.—the new website is ready to go live.
I click on the link to his work in progress. C.J. has outdone himself. I can’t believe this is my website. It’s better than I ever imagined. He’s added tons of new bells and whistles and redone all the graphics. The main color used, as I requested, is a deep red. It’s the color of my apartment walls, the color of my un-Cassie dress, the color of a painting
that hangs in El Taller, the color Mateo’s cheeks blush when he’s embarrassed. It is the color of Buenos Aires.
“All it needs is a new domain name!” C.J. proclaims in his e-mail. For some reason, he is enthusiastic about this new home for my silly scribblings. He thinks my website is brilliant.
Could he be right? Maybe the website is brilliant. Maybe Jeff and my old boss were wrong. Maybe I’m fantastic. Maybe Mateo is missing out on the best thing that ever happened to him. Not that I care. I am strong and determined. I am Cassie Moore, and I have a plan.
I also have my website’s new name. I type those five words—Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club—and hit send.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning, over a plate of sweet mini-croissants drizzled with honey, the way I love them, Andrea asks how the dance class went. I tell her, as offhandedly as I can manage, about running into Mateo at the community center.
“Oh, yes,” she says, turning away to fuss with Jorge’s jumper. “I forget he goes there sometimes.” She passes me the platter of medialunas again, even though my plate is still full. “So you liked the class?”
“Yeah,” I say casually. “It was fun.”
“Just fun?”
“It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I learned a lot.”
Andrea peers at me over the rim of her teacup, sizing up my response. I don’t expand. We sit in uncharacteristic silence for a while. Jorge reaches for a medialuna and attempts to shove the whole thing in his mouth. Half of the pastry sticks out, like a crusty tongue. The tallest dog, Maradona, named for a famed Argentine soccer—that is, football—player, helps himself with one lick, setting off a fit of little-boy giggles. Andrea shoos Maradona away and wipes Jorge’s face with the corner of a napkin dipped in water. I scan the morning newspaper that’s spread across the kitchen table as a makeshift tablecloth. The president is campaigning up north, where support is waning. The local government is trying to get an injunction against a group of workers who have taken over an abandoned factory in the city. La Boca won its last football game. I am halfway through the front page before I realize I actually understand most of what I’m reading.
“Would you do it again?” Andrea asks as she hands Jorge an orange slice.
“What?” Have I been found out? Did she see Mateo let himself in and climb the stairs to my apartment last night?
“Tango?”
“Oh. I don’t think so,” I say, rising to clear the table. “Tango’s a beautiful dance, but maybe too complicated. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
“Ah,” she exhales, like a wise sage divining truth, and takes a sip of coffee. “Entiendo. Entiendo.”
Jamie, on the other hand, doesn’t understand at all. “I don’t get it,” she says, lifting a pleather miniskirt from the rack. We’re on our eighth store. With the power of the U.S. dollar sinking in, Jamie has gone into serious, and inevitable, shopping mode. She holds the skirt against her waist and does a little America’s Next Top Model for me. I laugh so hard, I snort.
“What don’t you get?”
“You say you don’t want to waste your time with something that can’t go anywhere, right? Something that isn’t in your plan, or whatever.”
“Yeah?”
“But in a month you and Dan will be on opposite ends of the U.S.” She slips on a pair of white Elton John sunglasses and makes a face at herself in the mirror. “You know that isn’t leading anywhere. So why is it okay to hang out with him and not Mateo?”
I think of Dan, sweet, stable, safe Dan, with his humongous bouquet of roses, his fumbling hands in the night, his silly jokes that make me giggle against my better judgment. And then Mateo.
Mateo doesn’t come to me as a series of qualities or memories or other essentials that make up normal human relationships. There is no Idealmatch.com profile that ticks through my head. No, when I think of Mateo, it’s not even about thinking. It’s just feeling. That feeling fills me up. There’s no other way to put it.
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“Uh-huh.” Jamie puts the skirt back on the rack, watching me from the corner of her eye. “Care to elaborate?” Jamie, I’ve recently discovered, is one dissertation away from her master’s in psychology. She’d planned her wedding date to coincide with her graduation, but a few chapters from finishing, she realized she didn’t want to be a psychologist or a wife or anything else she had planned on.
“Not really.” She stares at me hard until I give in. “Okay, maybe it could go somewhere with Dan. He could move. I could move. People do those kinds of things when they find the right person.”
Jamie takes a pile of clothes into the dressing room, but she isn't about to drop the interrogation. “And you think Dan might be your Mr. Right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He’s pretty much exactly the kind of guy I’ve always seen myself with. He fits.”
“Fits what?”
“The Plan.” I cringe when I say it, though I don’t know why.
“And why is that so important to you?”
“Well, Doctor . . . I think it all began when I didn’t get a bike for my eighth birthday.”
The dressing room door swings open abruptly. “Classic avoidance,” she says seriously. “Though if you want to talk about the bike, I’m all ears.”
“I’m not avoiding. I just don’t see the point in agonizing over something that’s simply not an option.”
“Agonizing—that’s an interesting word. Does thinking about your plan feel like pain?”
“No. It usually makes me feel really good.” Good and happy and safe, but sometimes lonely—kind of like eating an entire Toblerone bar all by myself. But I’m not about to tell Jamie that.
“Usually?” Holding up a sheer blue blouse for inspection, she watches me through it, and I’m reminded of my cryptic conversation with Andrea just a few hours before. Only this time I haven’t got the slightest clue what’s really being said. “Your parents are divorced, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Your mom’s kind of controlling?”
“Whose isn’t?”
“What you’d really like to do is pretend nothing’s wrong, and when you get back to Seattle, every piece of the puzzle that is your life will fall magically into place?”
“Yes, please.” I take a big breath.
“And Mateo doesn’t fit into that puzzle.”
“Exactly.”
“Good thing you’re going home soon, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, puffing my cheeks, and letting out the air in a cartoonlike whoosh. “Good thing.”
Once the hunting, gathering, and analyzing is done, Jamie heads back downtown to her hostel with her bags of booty. It’s been a fun afternoon, but I am left alone with my thoughts again, and that’s no fun at all.
Going home. There’s something I have no choice but to think about. Somehow, amid all my preparations for going home, beneath the comfort of list making and box checking, going home has become a reality. I knew the day was coming, but I didn’t expect it to come so fast. Now here it is, hurtling toward me at breakneck speed. And I’m glad. Thrilled, really. It’s just so soon. Under five weeks to go, and nothing’s in order. I haven’t made any headway in the job department, my savings are running out, I don’t have a solid plan for where I’m going to live once I’m back in Seattle, let alone any idea what I’m going to do with my life when I get there.
What I do have is a lot of e-mail, mostly messages from old blog readers raving about the new site. People love the new chat pages that C.J. designed—many seem to be using them as a makeshift dating service—and there is a daily stream of praise in my in-box. Unfortunately, their praise isn’t going to help pay my rent back in Seattle. Or could it? There is a message from a woman who wants to buy space on the website for a personal ad. If she’s willing to pay me, how many others might be, too? I could definitely use a few bucks in the bank once I’m back in Seattle. Mostly, I like the t
hought of helping some of these broken hearts fall in love again. I forward her e-mail to C.J., asking if there’s some simple way to automate ad purchase and posting for site visitors. If it works, I tell him, I’ll cut him in for half. Within minutes, there’s an e-mail from him. “Great idea! I’m on it, boss!” I smile at his enthusiasm, then shake my head, worried that I’m wasting more time—mine and his—on some silly website for complete strangers, something that isn’t in The Plan.
When I tell Sam and Trish about the website in our next weekly phone call, they don’t seem to think it’s silly at all.
“Cassie, this is fantastic!” declares Sam, who wastes no time keying in the URL. “You did this by yourself?”
“I’ve had some help from a friend on the technical bits, but basically, yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about it before?”
“There wasn’t much to it until now,” I say, though I’m not sure that’s the real reason. Part of me might also have felt stupid showing my little blog to my career-fast-tracking friends.
“What a great name,” says Trish. “And it looks so professional.”
“Yeah, C.J.’s the best,” I say, trying to sound casual. In truth, I’m thrilled that they like it.
“I love that color red,” Sam pipes in.
“Me, too.” I consider explaining its inspiration but decide to keep that just for me. “It’s the color of that old velvet jacket I had,” I say instead.
“Ooh, yeah. I loved that jacket,” says Sam. “What ever happened to it?”
“I think I might have stashed it at my parents’ place.”
“If I may interrupt this very important discussion,” Trish bursts in, “Cassie, how many hits are you getting?” She is always one for the hard facts.
“I don’t know, exactly.” I think for a second. “I guess it was about two thousand when I last checked.”
“Two thousand hits a month is pretty good.”
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club Page 23
