She leaned her chest on mine. “Do you mean, ‘we enjoy this fucking day,’ or ‘we enjoy this fucking day’?”
A smile spread across my face from ear to ear. “Both. But mostly the second.” I fisted up a lock of her hair and brought to my nose, and inhaled.
“You enjoy sniffing my hair.”
I nodded, doing it again. “I love it.”
“Such a perv,” she said, but she was smiling.
“Guilty as charged.”
“I have an idea for the rest of the week.”
“Oh?”
“We should trade planning days for the other person. Like, fantasies. I mean, my plane leaves next Saturday for Chicago. That’s not even ten full days. Until then, though, I want to keep doing this. Whatever this is.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time felt stressed out already thinking about what would happen when she left. I had been wondering about her for five years. Although I personally wasn’t on any social media accounts, my old buddy Le Ral had given me his log in so I could personally stalk Amy and see what she was up to. He was friends with her through Becca. Every time I thought about giving her a call or shooting her a message to see what she was up to, it seemed like she posted a new picture with some guy she was dating. And I wasn’t a homewrecker. Nor was I the guy who desperately reached out to some girl he knew years ago and had a crush on. I’d always been satisfied knowing that she was happy—even if it wasn’t with me.
Now, the girl of my dreams was telling me she wanted to be my fuck buddy for the rest of the week. As much as I wanted more, how crazy would she think I was if I told her my long-term thoughts less than twenty-four hours before we had fucked the first time?
So I did what any reasonable man would do in this situation: I made sure to play it cool. “I can get on that idea. Until then, amigovios?”
She grinned. “Yes. Let’s be amigovios.” Her eyes darted from side to side, and she parted her lips but didn’t say anything.
“I know that face.”
“What?” she denied.
“Oh please. You’re thinking of something dirty.”
She chuckled.
“What are you thinking about?” I pressed.
“Okay, you can’t laugh at my fantasy.”
“Ha! I knew you were thinking dirty! I won’t make fun of you. And, actually—let’s make that a rule. No laughing at each others’ fantasies.”
“Okay, fine. I want to do it in a church.”
I stared at her, a little shocked. “You want to do it…in a church. Like on the alter?”
She shrugged and laughed. “I haven’t thought too much past the church part.”
I ran my hand through her hair.
“Have you ever told anyone else about this?”
“No.”
Mentally I began to flash through all of the churches that I knew of in the area, and I looked at the clock. “Oh shit.”
“What?”
“I have an hour until I have to leave for pre-game practice. And I’m damn ravenous. We also need to let the dog out.”
Jess must have heard, because she grumbled on the other side of the door.
“Can I come to your game today?”
“Course you can, Squirt.” I grabbed her and kissed the shit out of her. She had asked the question so innocently, like I wasn’t going to want her there or something. “I’ll have a ticket waiting for you when you arrive at the gate of the stadium today.”
* * *
The Friday afternoon crowd was pretty big for this game. I dribbled down the court, Blagovich guarding me close. He was yelling some stuff in Serbian that I didn’t understand. I passed to Le Ral who was in the post, and they doubled him. I ran to the corner and yelled for the ball. Le Ral faked like he was going up to the hoop and then found me with a no look pass.
Blagovich closed out but it was too late.
I swished another three pointer in as the buzzer sounded to end the first half. We were up by twenty, a surprisingly healthy lead over one of the best teams in the league.
Le Ral trotted over and gave me a butt pat and a high five. I loved the combination of his goofy voice and French accent.
“Hell yeah Spiros! What the fuck, man? The hell are you on today?”
“What?”
“Oh please,” he said, and chuckled as we walked to the locker room for our break. “Don’t be humble. You’ve hit like six threes this half. Is there a scout in the stands or something?”
“No clue.”
“You’re playing inspired tonight, that’s for sure, man.”
We walked under the walkway and I saw Amy. She stared at me, a giant smile plastered across her face. She blew me a kiss.
“Ahhhh!” Le Ral yelled, then doing a double take. “Is that…Amy?”
“Yep. We met on the plane here.”
Le Ral looked over at me. “Spiros, you finally made her your girlfriend! I knew it’d happen someday!”
I chuckled. “Not my girlfriend.”
“No?” he asked, waving back at Amy but shooting me a confused look.
“Just my amigovia.” I winked at him. I loved fucking with Le Ral.
We passed the underpass of the balcony and Amy disappeared from sight.
“Amigovia?” he asked. “Like…a side piece, eh?”
I clammed up. Le Ral was just fucking around, but something didn’t sit right with him calling Amy my ‘side piece’. But I also didn’t know how to explain my relationship with Amy .
“Nah,” I finally answered. “Not like that, exactly.”
“So, she is your girlfriend?”
“No. Um, not exactly.”
We reached the inside of the locker room, grabbed a couple of towels, and took a seat on the bench inside. Le Ral knew me well, maybe better than anyone. He’d seen me run through entire groups of girls. He knew what I was capable of. And I could tell he was having a hard time processing this information.
He put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. “You don’t have to explain man. I get it. She’s not one of the other ones. Don’t worry man, I am French. We get romance.”
I chuckled. “Thanks bud.”
“She’s your muse.”
“My what?” I asked, chugging down water while waiting for the coaching staff to give their half time pep talk.
“Muse. That’s what all the great French artists had. One girl who inspired them.”
I looked at Le Ral, wondering if all Frenchmen thought like he did. “I’m not an artist, though.”
“Well, you sure looked like one today on the court. You just use a basketball, not a paintbrush.”
“Fuck, Le Ral. Where’d you come up with all this poetry?”
A shit-eating grin spread across his face. “I don’t know man, it’s just a bunch of bullshit I’m making up on the spot.”
“I don’t know how to describe her man. She’s just…Amy. She’s Squirt.”
“Did you just say ‘Squirt’?” he asked, his face scrunching up.
I grinned. “Long story.”
“Ohhh…”
After a brief talk by our coaches, mostly to keep the score nice and cushy, half time was over and we all went back out on the court to a thunderous crowd. I felt like I was playing in slow motion the rest of the game. My senses, my reaction time, everything was enhanced.
I put up fifty-two points all in all in the game, and we won by the largest margin this year. Afterwards, everyone was asking me where the hell this outburst had come from. I wasn't sure, but I sure felt different that night. It was like all of the previous games I'd been playing in black and white, and now I was playing in color.
Amy was waiting for me at the players’ entrance, which was an open-air tunnel that led to a private parking area for the team, coaching staff and people who worked at the stadium. She was leaning against one of the side walls, in jeans, a v-neck t-shirt, and a jacket. She had a baseball cap on too.
"Hey there," I said, grabbing her around the middle.
I turned her cap around slowly.
"You messed up my ponytail," she complained.
I leaned down and kissed her against the brick wall of the stadium.
"Didn't want any obstructions to stop me from doing that." She wrapped her arms around me, and I even felt one hand slide down to my leg.
I released her.
"Dirty girl," I quipped, feeling her hand and where it was on my ass.
"I can't help it. You make me this way."
"I think I've found my mission on this earth."
"Speaking of missions, I'm hungry as hell." She raised an eyebrow.
"Me too. But I need to eat something else first. How about we go home and have a quickie, then I'll take you out to a proper dinner?"
She lowered her other hand on my body.
"How about a quick bite and a marathon?"
“Let’s just head out and see where the night takes us.”
Twenty-Two
Amy
Saturday morning, I went out to the corner café to grab Chandler and me two dark roast coffees. He was extra tired after his game and, well, our marathon session that had lasted into the wee hours of the morning.
I had woken up after just a few hours sleep, instantly awake. So alive. Since I’d arrived, I hadn’t taken a single pill for my depression, and the cloud of fog that usually followed me around had lifted.
As I ordered two coffees in Spanish, I randomly thought about my dad. He used to tell me that most of life could be boiled down to a handful of moments. For him, there was the time he saw my mother for the first time. His wedding day. When he got fired from his first job only to start his own company and mine and Sam’s births.
With Chandler, I wasn’t sure where our moments were leading us. There were three in particular that stuck out to me, though. The first, when we were chatting at some bar on Becca’s birthday five years ago, and I’d felt like I knew him better than any of the girls he’d slept with.
Our second defining moment, unfortunately, was when I saw him sucking face with some girl not two minutes after we’d made our connection that I thought was so deep. I hadn’t forgiven him for that. I hadn’t even asked him about it. That I’d refused to talk about when he’d asked me what had happened.
As if the first two moments hadn’t confused me enough, the third moment was after the sex, which was one thing. It didn’t confuse me too much that Chandler and I were great at it. Our sexual chemistry was insane.
But I questioned what the cuddling meant. Was this just regular after-sex cuddling? Did he do this with all his girls? Or did he usually kick them out after he was done? I realized I had no idea but the cavalier way he’d been with Norma and Bethany had been rather cold.
The barista handed me two coffees, mine with cream and vanilla, and Chandler’s black. How weird was I, that it wasn’t necessarily his sex with other girls that made me jealous, but his cuddling?
I walked back to his place down Muntaner Calle, enjoying the relative quiet of the warmish winter morning. If I were in Chicago I’d be freezing right now. In Spain, however, I could walk around with no jacket on a warm winter day.
As I carried the hot coffee in my hands, I thought about other hot things. Like our sexual chemistry, which was off the charts. Forget charts. There was no chart. I already felt more at ease with him sexually than I had with any previous partner.
For once, I felt that I was enough. Just me. Amy fucking Kershaw and her jaded outlook on life, and Chandler didn’t mind it. He appreciated it.
I took the stairs up to his place and Jessica greeted me at the door, wagging her tail. Chandler called to me from his room as I set the coffees on the kitchen counter.
“Squirt. Where’d you go?”
“Just went to grab us coffees,” I shouted.
“Oh, thanks,” he shouted back. “But come to bed for a few minutes.”
A huge grin spread across my face. I took off my jacket, shoes and clothes, and climbed under the warm covers with him.
Our cuddling chemistry was also damn good. His body was much bigger than mine, and I felt so protected when he wrapped me up.
“Chandler?” I said his name, and then promptly forgot the question that I was thinking about asking him. I don’t know what answer I wanted.
“Yes?” he said, stroking my hair.
A ton of questions circulated in my brain, and I couldn’t think what I wanted to ask him. Why had it taken us this long to do something that was so amazing? But I was able to settle on a curiosity that had been gnawing at me. Thinking about my own dad got me thinking about Chandler’s.
“Do you ever wonder where your father is?”
I turned my head and watched Chandler’s Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, his eyes locked on me.
“You’re asking me about that again? What made you think of that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always wondered that about you. Ever since our chat in the bar that one night.”
His eyes glowed. “Do you remember that night as vividly as I do?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You went so cold on me after that night. Why?”
My heartbeat raced. I had to tell him the truth but went for the obvious one. “Because not two minutes after I thought we were making an actual connection, you were making out with Señorita Bimbo at the bar.” The statement came out more accusatory than I had intended.
He propped his head up on his elbow and shook his head. “That didn’t mean a thing. She’s the one that kissed me. What was I supposed to do?”
I raised both of my eyebrows at him. “Really?” I scoffed. “That’s your excuse? So any woman that wants to kiss you, you’re just going to let it happen?”
He signed. “Okay, fine. But she did catch me off guard. Did you also see me wipe her lipstick off my face in disgust?”
“I figured you were toying with me,” I said. “And just trying to hide your relationship with her from me. I thought I was being played and made a fool of”—I stopped, glaring at him—“You’re getting me off topic. You’re deflecting about your father.”
Chandler breathed deeply. “I hate talking about this,” he said, deadpan. “But if it’s with anyone, it would be you.”
I turned my body so we were facing each other under the covers. Chandler put his hand on the flesh of my hip.
“I’m not trying to be nosy but…I’m so close to my dad and I can’t imagine him not being in my life.” I paused, not wanting to make him uncomfortable or open old wounds but part of understanding Chandler, his ways, and whatever future we had, was rooted in his past. “It’s just… You never talk about him in any personal way.”
His face was wrought with tension. “Honestly, I don’t think much about him on purpose. I just push the thought of him out of my mind, most days. Way I see it, I’ve lived twenty-six years without him so what’s another twenty-six?”
I put a hand on his shoulder, partly in comfort and encouragement. He looked as though he was processing something. I wanted to know what but I didn’t want this to dampen our moment together. “You now what? It’s doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, backpedaling. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“No,” he went on, squeezing my hip when I was about to turn around and go back to cuddling, which was safer then this topic I’d brought up. It wasn’t my business. If he knew about my depression and asked about it, I’d resist talking about it, too. “It’s fine. You’re right. I sometimes do wonder what he’s up to. Is he even alive? Does he have a job? Is he a deadbeat? Did I get my athletic abilities from him? Why couldn’t he stay with my mom? These questions pop up sometimes, but I don’t like them. I push them under the rug.”
There were so many things I wanted to tell Chandler, and ask him, but I was beginning to feel like a bit of a prodding psychologist. I did find it a little ironic that, as a psychology major and pretty knowledgeable, none of what he learned seemed to register abou
t himself. Or, he did know, and, as he said, pushed it under the proverbial rug.
I kissed him on the lips, and then on the chest, taking a moment to suck on his rose tattoo because why not?
“Why do you have this tattoo?” I asked, changing the topic.
“You and your questions today,” he said, but he didn’t sound mad.
“It’s a rose. You’re not a rosy kind of guy. Is it a ‘beautiful things have thorns’ kind of rationale?” I asked, tracing the outlines of each petal.
“I wish I could say there was a rationale. When I broke my arm one year in high school, I was bored and this girl I liked said a rose would look good on my chest. So I did.”
“As smart as you are,” I posed, propping my chin on his chest, “you’re not really a thinker, are you?”
He laughed. “Sometimes yes, sometimes not.”
As close as I felt to him, as good as the chemistry was, I still hadn’t figured this man out.
* * *
We puttered around the house for much of that day. I took a quick shower and dressed back in my skirt and top while Chandler walked the dog then he made us grilled cheeses with tomato soup for lunch. He mentioned off-hand while we were eating that he’d never been to the Joan Miró museum, which I found preposterous since he had been living here for four years after college, and Miró was the most famous artist to come out of Barcelona in the twentieth century. We decided to go to the museum, since we’d been spending a borderline unhealthy amount of time in bars during this trip so far, and our livers needed a break.
I tidied up the kitchen while Chandler finished cleaning up. Afterwards, I found him in the bathroom, just in jeans while he finished shaving. He’d paused and he was holding something in his hands, but I couldn’t see what. I surprised him from behind, running my hand over the smooth skin of his muscled bareback. He jumped a little but then tensed up.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, leaning the side of my head into the warmth of his body.
He didn’t say anything. When I shifted around to the other side of him, I found him with a rather grim expression on his face. “I should be the one asking you that. What the fuck is this, Amy?”
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