Page 42 of After the Fire
I giggled. Like a swoony teenager.What is wrong with you?I touched my lips, stinging and swollen from the night before. I could still feel his skin on mine, igniting every cell he touched. I had a tender spot on my neck where Santiago had bitten down, then blown on, giving me goosebumps. The memory sent a shiver down my spine.
He reached for my hand and pulled me up, steadying me with his big hands. He interlaced his fingers with mine, and we walked to the kitchen island.
“Hop on,” he said. “I’ll grab you a coffee.”
He grabbed my waist and lifted me on to the counter. He dragged a bag and left it right next to me before turning to the stove. He started moving, and his muscles followed. He poured coffee from a pot, immediately adding two sugars to one of the cups and walking it back to me on the other side of the kitchen. The world melted away, and all I could see was him. For years, I had ignored this man, paid no attention to him whatsoever. My feelings for him bordered on jealousy, but now, now he was slowly becoming the center of my universe.
“Have you been up for a while?” I asked, trying to clear the awkwardness in the air. At least, that was how I felt at that moment. Awkward because I was giving myself to him, no intentions and no strings attached.
“A few hours. I couldn’t sleep.” He smiled at me. His eyes held my gaze so intensely. He pushed a lock of hair behind my ear, and I looked at him, his handsome face completely relaxed and happy. My eyes followed his messy hair, the stubble on his face. Carefree. He tilted his head and cleared his throat, interrupting the moment.
“Why?” I rasped, my voice cracking with anticipation.
“The floor is very uncomfortable.” He laughed. “A lot on my mind too.”
“Tell me.”
He gave me a sad smile and then grabbed my waist with his two hands, one on either side. He shook his head and turned, looking behind my shoulder. From this angle, I could only see his strong profile, but he looked cloudy, confused, like he was trying to solve all the world’s problems from this very kitchen.
“You want to know something?” I asked, interrupting his seemingly murky thoughts. I didn’t wait for an answer because I knew he was going to say yes. “What the worst thing about all of this is? It’s that I’m starting to doubt myself and the choices I’ve made. I’ve always been so fucking sure of myself, of everything that—in my grown-up life—I’ve decided to do. I’ve never, not one single day, doubted what I want and what I go after.”
He made a surprised face and turned to me. His eyes were glued to my face, paying total and complete attention to what I was saying.
“But all of this,” I said, gesturing towards the house and him with my left hand, “is making me doubt my instincts. I mean, now I can see all of the red flags, but hindsight, right?”
He was quiet, his eyes fixed on me, and his breathing was slow and even. He was listening to me. Paying attention.
“It feels like I’ve been reduced to a small child, like the decisions I make now need to be run by someone because my life is suddenly completely out of my control.” It felt like I could see where I needed to go, except that when I took a step forward or reached out my hand to grasp it, that thing kept sliding backwards. “So now, I’m paralyzed. I don’t know what to do. I’m in limbo, in a town that doesn’t belong to me but every day that goes by feels like it should,andI’m unable to go back home, because that doesn’t feel right either.”
Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t remember ever crying this much, let alone in front of basically a stranger. “Sorry,” I said, my voice wet with the tears stuck in my throat. “It’s so much. I don’t know how to move forward.”
I took a deep breath, trying to organize my thoughts. This happened to me sometimes when I was in court—I had so many things to say that things would just come out, unfiltered. I could feel the tension in my shoulders. At some point Santiago had moved one of his hands to my thigh and had it stretched across possessively.
“I still can’t figure out how my grandfather ended up here, which, to be honest, is the least of my worries but really changes everything, you know?” Santiago’s thumb moved in a soothing motion on my inner thigh. “Everything I’ve built to get where I am today is almost a sham. And pushed by Susana. Hard. She pushed and pushed, and the only thing I did was give. And how is that rewarded? Like this.” I swept my hand from the top of my head to my torso in a showing motion. “A fucking mess.”
He smiled. He looked at me, unblinking. His eyes went to my lips, and I instinctively licked them. I set my mug down on the countertop, trying to calm my beating heart, a traitor of an organ that was trying to leave my body through my throat. I felt his forehead on mine. “Sorry,” I said.
“Hey,” he replied. “Why would you apologize?”
“I don’t want to burden you with my baggage, Santiago.”
“Burden? Never, sweet girl.” He took a step back and tilted his head, his blue eyes holding mine. “You are not a burden.”
My laugh came out wet, more like a yelp than what I intended. “You are too sweet,” I said, not even recognizing the words that were coming out of my mouth.I like you so much,I wanted to scream.
Santiago leaned in close, so close that my vision went blurry, and whispered, “I like you so much too.” I was stunned, too stunned to speak. So I closed my eyes and sighed. He waited, watching me intently with those deep, expressive eyes, until I opened my eyes and looked at him. The moment was charged, and I was immediately covered in flames, my body burning from head to toe as soon as his lips found mine.
I was melting from the inside out. And it felt so good. Too good.
“I should leave,” I said, smiling into his mouth. Instead, he pushed deeper, opening my legs wider and standing closer to me, between them. He moved his hands from my waist to the countertop. The small movement gave me a moment to pause. “We need to stop kissing on kitchen counters.”
He barked out a laugh and pressed his lips to mine urgently. Our tongues danced, searching for each other like they were two lost souls, finally finding the other one after years apart. I savored him and the movements that felt so natural to me. My hands found his hair again, and I pulled on it softly. He groaned and took a step back, looking at my mouth like it was his most prized possession. His gaze flickered between my eyes and my mouth, and a small smile formed on his lips.
“I’ll walk you back,” he said, kissing down my neck, burning a path to my shoulder through my collarbone. “In a minute.”
21
SUSANA (1988)
