How to Fall

by Rebecca Brooks

  “That’s kind of how we do it Down Under,” he said. “It’s so far to get anywhere that when people travel off the continent, they tend to save up their time and money and do it all at once.”

  “We’ve been on the road for six months,” Chris said. “We wanted to hit up the falls, and when we read about this hostel online, we knew we had to come. Now we just keep extending our stay!” She laughed.

  “It’s amazing here,” Julia agreed. “Where’s your next stop?”

  “We’re off to Santiago in a week,” Jamie said. “A few days in Chile, and then heading home.” He gave Chris’s shoulder a squeeze.

  “And you?” Julia asked Blake.

  “I came down through Central America and then across Colombia and northern Brazil. I’m supposed to be heading to Buenos Aires tomorrow.”

  Julia blinked. “Wow.”

  Blake had no idea what that look meant, if she was disappointed or impressed—or possibly excited?

  Or maybe she just had something in her eye. It was hard to tell when she kept herself so contained. But the point was that he’d said it. No pussyfooting around the fact that he was leaving when the sun came up.

  Wasn’t that the whole point of being newly single? No problems, no worries, nothing holding him back.

  So what was that “supposed to” and how did it creep in like that? He was heading into town tomorrow to get his bus ticket over the border. Nothing was going to make him change his plans.

  “Man, Buenos Aires is such an awesome city,” Jamie sighed.

  “We could always go back,” Chris said, and Jamie laughed, even though as far as Blake could tell, Chris hadn’t been joking.

  “Next time,” Jamie said.

  “I’ll drink to that.” She raised her glass.

  “To Iguaçu,” Jamie said.

  “To travel,” Chris said.

  “To not being on the bus,” Julia said.

  “To new friends.” Blake couldn’t help stealing a glance at Julia as he said it. They all clinked glasses, sloshing beer on the table, and he went to take a drink.

  “No, no, no!” Chris admonished. “You have to make eye contact, you idiot.”

  “What?” Blake asked.

  Chris shook her head in exasperation and turned to Jamie. “Don’t these people know anything?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Maybe that’s why the bloke’s cursed.”

  “Ouch,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, man,” Blake added. “Ouch.”

  “What are you talking about?” Julia looked from one to the other.

  “Do you Yanks not do this when you say cheers? Your whole country’s going to fall down the tubes.”

  “Chris has this thing,” Jamie started to explain.

  “You have to make eye contact when you take the first sip. Otherwise…” She paused and put her glass down for dramatic effect.

  Chris raised an eyebrow to Blake, and he leaned over to Julia. “Otherwise it’s seven years of bad sex,” he whispered loudly.

  He was rewarded by the pink fluttering in her cheeks, her hand nervously touching her hair.

  “Well I’d better try it to be certain,” she said with a flush.

  “Pretend you haven’t had a sip yet,” Chris instructed, topping off their glasses again. When she finished pouring Blake’s, she winked.

  Blake wanted to protest that he did not need help being set up. But Julia was standing between him and Lukas, and when Chris turned to Jamie, he felt a surge of—was it pride or adrenaline?—when Julia turned to him.

  “Ready?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t have anyone to look at,” Lukas complained.

  “The curse of the odd numbers,” Chris said. “I’ve got enough years of luck backlisted with Jamie, but from the looks of it, your skinny photographer ass could probably use a good streak.” And so although she first clinked glasses with Jamie, it was Lukas’s gaze she held as she drank.

  Jamie didn’t seem to care about the ritual, and Blake knew it was nonsense, but he felt a sudden stab for his friend.

  Not for long, though. Julia was holding his gaze, open and unblinking, and he couldn’t look away. Her eyes were deep brown, flecked with lighter bits that sparked in the sun. There was something unreadable in her, something hidden below the surface that he couldn’t see. Like her blush, it made him want to find out more.

  It was the writer in him, the one who made his living figuring out people and their situations. Looking at Julia, he wanted to dive right in.

  “To good sex,” he said.

  “To good sex,” she echoed, and lifted the glass to her lips.

  Julia took a sip, and then she put the glass down slowly and pressed her lips together. The move wasn’t so pronounced as to be obvious, but enough to make Blake wonder if she was intentionally playing with him. She smiled with her eyes, even as her mouth barely curved.

  Definitely a tease, he decided. How could they be eyeing each other, talking about good sex when they’d only just met?

  He really did need a jump in the pool.

  But Julia had settled back in her chair, still nursing her beer, and Blake couldn’t pull himself away even after Chris, Jamie, and Lukas returned to the water. He was just being nice to the newcomer. Just making friendly conversation. Not at all glad that the two of them had been left alone again under the shady palm trees.

  “So what brings you here for seven whole days, Ms. Julia?” he asked.

  “Ugh, don’t call me that.” She made a face. “That’s what my students call me.”

  “You’re a teacher?” Definitely not what he would have guessed. “I thought teachers usually got a last name.”

  “They try to be progressive.”

  “I bet your students love you.”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully. The laugh escaped him before he could stop himself. “I’m strict. You have to be.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’re lucky nonetheless.” He grinned. God, to have had a teacher like her… He would have paid a lot more attention in class.

  Maybe.

  “High school,” she went on, ignoring his attempts to compliment her. “Math, all levels. They’re hellions, but I love them.” She paused. “Most of the time.”

  “Oh my God—calculus?”

  She nodded like it was no big deal. Blake whistled. He wanted to admit that he was terrible at math and was sure to embarrass himself in front of her trying to figure out a bill or something. But that might open him up to questions about what he did for a living, and that was something he didn’t want to talk about—at least not yet.

  Not to mention that it implied some future meeting during which he might be paying said bill, and that wasn’t going to happen because even if he got lucky enough to do more than chat by the pool, he was leaving first thing in the morning. He swallowed his comment and tried a different approach.

  “So a week is what you get for, what, Christmas holiday?”

  She nodded. “I can’t even remember the last time I took a real vacation. It’s a new school, and I’ve been there since it opened. I adore the teaching part, but I do way too much of the administrative work because most everyone else is still learning the ropes. I’m supposed to be leading a training this week over the break, but at the last minute I just said fuck it, I can’t.”

  The sudden curse surprised him coming from her delicate mouth but he liked the contrast. Put that down on the list of more things he wanted to elicit from her. Preferably followed by the sound of her crying out his name.

  “So what made you say fuck it?” he asked, not trying to hide his smile as he took the opportunity to test whether she liked the word on his lips as much as he liked it on hers.

  She looked up at the sun beginning to dip toward the trees as though it held the answer, and that was when he saw it again, that hint of something else beneath the exterior she wore for the world. Now that he knew what she did for a living he could see the distinction between the self she put on as a teacher, keeping al
l those kids in line, and the other woman struggling to break through.

  “I guess I’d had enough,” she said softly, and suddenly it wasn’t the voice of flirty, easy confidence. Suddenly, she was telling him something real.

  He leaned forward and listened. “Enough of what?” he prodded as a shriek from the pool rose over a volley of splashes.

  “I had a birthday,” she admitted.

  “These things have a way of occurring.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “It can’t have been that high of a number,” he said.

  “Turning thirty when your whole life revolves around your job and a bunch of hormone-soaked teens is sort of depressing.” She sighed into her glass.

  “Well, I can tell you from the other side that life does go on, and the view from the ripe old age of thirty-one isn’t so bad.” He smiled warmly. That he’d spent his thirty-first birthday trashed out of his skull, depressed as hell over Kelley, didn’t need to be shared. The fact that Julia was so distressed about the big three-zero was pretty adorable.

  All the more reason for him to show her how good her birthday could be.

  He drained the last of his cup. “How about a birthday swim?”

  “Too late for that—it was yesterday.”

  “A belated birthday swim, then.” He stood and extended his hand.

  She hesitated for a moment, fingers resting on the knot of that thing around her waist. Drops of water from Chris and Lukas’s splashing stained her bathing suit and trickled down her stomach. He had to stop himself from trailing his finger along that same path.

  And then she seemed to decide something and let the cloth fall. Blake barely had time to appreciate the sway of her hips before she’d jumped in. He laughed to himself at how she’d already left him behind.

  Blake dove in and popped up alongside her. “Not bad,” he grinned, shaking water from his hair. The temperature was just right, cool enough to be refreshing but still warm enough to stay in for what felt like forever.

  “It’s pretty much perfect,” she agreed.

  She closed her eyes and floated on her back, drops of water clinging like stars to her lashes. Blake forced himself to swim a few laps to get his brain back. He wasn’t supposed to be noticing things like eyelashes, and the little curve of her nose, and the way her lips parted when she sighed.

  He was supposed to be having fun and forgetting anything that might make him linger. Resisting the pull that might draw him to one person, one place for too long.

  They swam until they were tired, came out for cold beer until they were hot again, and jumped back in the pool. Then Chris suggested a place in town for dinner, and they piled five into a cab, Julia wedged tightly between Chris and Blake in the back seat.

  He could feel her body pressed against his side, his thigh, smell her shampoo and a faint, clean whiff of chlorine. Her hair was still damp from the shower and only the fact that it was too cramped in the taxi to move kept him from brushing it back with his hand.

  She sat across from him at dinner, and at first he was disappointed, but on second thought he didn’t mind the view. They filled their plates from a buffet laden with grilled fish, spicy sausage, and a thick smoky stew. There were black-eyed peas and empanadas, fresh green beans and pickled beets, and a large fruit spread with mangoes, star fruit, and the pear-like cupuaçu.

  Julia was thorough about trying everything, sucking on the pulpy flesh of a cashew fruit as she tried to think of what it reminded her of. Blake wanted to be the one licking the juice from her fingers, tasting the fruit on her lips.

  For the cab ride back, he announced that his arms couldn’t survive another ride being pinned against the door and flagged down a second car. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when in all the confusion of who was going where, he wound up alone with Julia in the back seat.

  “Good Lord,” she moaned, “I hope I get to eat like this every day this week.”

  “That’s what vacation is for.” He smiled at her happiness.

  “Yet another thing I’ve been missing out on,” she murmured, and looked away at the lights of the town drifting away, lost for a moment in her own thoughts. Blake could hear a trace of sadness in her words and wondered if she even realized she’d spoken aloud.

  “Still feeling bad about your birthday?” he asked.

  She laughed, pulled back from whatever place she’d just retreated to that he couldn’t touch. When she looked at him again, she was smiling. “This has been a great introduction to thirty. I’m beginning to realize life actually does go on.”

  “Sometimes it even gets better,” he joked.

  She shook her head. “It’d be hard to top that pumpkin flan.”

  “I’m sure we could think of something.” He slid across the back seat, next to her.

  She looked startled, but he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been thinking about it all night. Not with the way they’d been looking at each other, pulled into conversations across the table even when everyone around them was talking about something else.

  The taxi was climbing the hill toward the hostel. He didn’t have much time. It wasn’t some grand romantic gesture, but who cared? The night was slipping away and he had to act fast. Before the taxi made the next turn, he lifted her chin with his first two fingers and pressed his lips to hers.

  Even in the dark of night she tasted like sunlight and fruit, and he felt the warmth flood him as her mouth opened to him. He could feel her back arch, her neck tilt to draw him in. She’d been wanting that kiss, he could tell.

  The car shuddered to a stop as they pulled up to the lighted entrance of the hostel. There was a volley of car doors as the rest of the crew piled out of the cab ahead of them.

  Blake pulled away reluctantly. Julia’s eyes were still closed and he remembered the water on her lashes, how she was lost to the world. He wished they could have kept driving, but he knew this wasn’t the end.

  He wasn’t done showing her how good her birthday could be.

  Chapter Three

  Julia tossed and turned on the narrow bed and tried to make her brain—and her body—stop sparking like fire crackers on the Fourth of July. She lay on her back. She lay on her side. She settled onto her stomach only to find herself rolling over again. She hoped that to anyone else awake, her sighs sounded like someone settling into sleep and not like someone so damn horny she couldn’t lie still.

  She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but she kept drifting back to that kiss. Blake’s warm hands, the press of his lips, the way she’d wanted that taste of him more than she’d ever wanted anyone, anything, before. She’d actually dared to slide her hands over his arm, feeling his muscles through his shirt, remembering how delicious he’d looked soaking wet from the pool.

  Everything had been going so well. So how the hell had she wound up lying alone in the dark in a room full of lightly snoring women, frustrated beyond all belief?

  Stupid brain, she cursed herself again. Always popping up at the worst possible moments to lecture her on what not to do.

  Part of her had longed to stop the car, stop time, and erase everyone around them so that it was just her and Blake and that kiss, with no past or future to stand in their way.

  But another part knew she never could.

  That was the Julia who yawned and told everyone she was beat from her long bus ride. The Julia who could barely bring herself to make eye contact with Blake when she said goodnight. The Julia who knew the smart thing was to leave.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Sensible. Prudent. The only way to keep herself safe.

  It was fine to share a little kiss, but then she had to be responsible and go to sleep.

  Alone.

  Except it wasn’t just a little kiss. It was a great kiss. An excellent kiss. A soul-shattering, spine-tingling, forget-your-own-name kind of kiss. The memory of his skin alone was enough to make her clasp her thighs together under the thin sheets, trying not to
make any noise.

  She’d thought the right thing to do was to back away. Stay strong and in control of herself.

  But now, in the cover of darkness, alone with her thoughts, smart, sensible ideas looked different than they had in the light. Her whole body was on fire, unable to stop replaying the moment when he slid toward her in the back seat of the car and her heartbeat raced into overdrive. His eyes had searched hers in the darkness and even before he leaned in to the kiss, she’d found herself lifting her lips to his. She wanted it, whether it was a good idea or not.

  And now she was kicking herself for letting him go.

  She pressed the light on her travel alarm, eyeing it under the sheets so it wouldn’t disturb anyone else in the room. When the party petered out and the other assortment of hostel guests returned from their evenings, Julia had stayed curled with her back to the room, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. She didn’t know whether Chris knew anything had happened between her and Blake, but she didn’t want to face any questions about what they’d done—and why it hadn’t continued.

  Now it was well after midnight and instead of congratulating herself for making the right decision—“the Julia decision,” as Liz would say—all she could think about was the feel of his body pressing against hers in the cab.

  She’d never be able to put herself back in that car and make a different choice. She’d always be stuck wondering, “What if?”

  She bit down on her lip to keep from whimpering out loud. There was no way she was falling asleep. Quietly, she slipped out of bed.

  If anyone woke up from the creak of the door opening or her flip-flops padding down the hall, she’d look like she was going to the bathroom. Like any normal, sane person might do in the middle of the night when they definitely weren’t aching for someone’s touch.

  But instead of continuing down the hall, she grabbed her bikini from where it was hanging on the line and quickly put it on. She needed to cool down, distract herself, work off this steam so she could finally get some sleep.

  She tiptoed out of the hostel, guided by the blue glow of the pool and the halo of garden lights. Doing something was infinitely better than lying in bed driving herself crazy. She just needed to take her mind off—