Page 53 of No One Aboard
Lila clasped Alejandro’s face in her hands so he could not look away. “Where is he taking us, Ale?”
Alejandro said nothing.
She tried again, this time sliding her bare thigh across his chest, so she sat perched over his boxers. “Is it a nice surprise, at least?”
She was hoping for a Bahamian resort or a new holiday home in the Caymans.
“He’d kill me if I spoiled it.”
“He’d kill you if he found you here,” Lila whispered in his ear, and Alejandro’s entire body shivered in response. “You know I have plans for the twins’ birthday. Will we at least be home by then?”
Alejandro tried to sit up, but she pinned him to the mattress. He couldn’t hide. Not from her.
“Ale, I have auditions booked. Luncheons with friends. Audra Tines and I are supposed to spend a weekend at her place in the Catskills. These things might not seem important to you. Or to him. But to me...” Lila cleared her throat carefully. “To me, they are everything I live for.”
Event to event. There was nothing as exciting, as life-giving as that. Her childhood had been a series of activities, being whisked from church to pageant, from party to play. Lila needed an existence that brimmed with exhilarating moments. Overflowed with them. It was only in the soundless in-betweens where her spirits sank. Rylan once told her she was not unlike a shark, which must keep swimming, keep passing water over its gills, or it will suffocate and die.
But how could she make Alejandro understand that, this man who was, in many ways, her opposite? He preferred to be silent rather than speaking. He preferred to be cooking than having any sort of adventure. He didn’t talk about himselfmuch, but Lila had once gotten out of him a glimpse of his childhood in his apartment kitchen in Fontana. His parents had worked two jobs each, and his abuelita watched him and his baby sister during the summers. She taught him how to cook and play cards. She taught him how to change his sister’s diapers and make a healthy meal that even a picky little kid would devour. Alejandro spoke a language of slow, sunny Sundays where the only sounds were his abuelita’s afternoon soaps and the sizzling of tortillas on a pan.
Alejandro shifted on the bed. “You like surprises, though, no?” He sounded less certain.
Lila lay on top of him, hoping to apply physicalandemotional pressure.
“I like diamond necklaces, not schedule upheavals.”
“Lila...”
She fanned her hands across his clavicles. “Alejandro...”
Alejandro caught her hands and sat up even with her entire weight against him. He propped himself against the headboard, holding onto her. “It’s not that kind of surprise. It’s... uh... it’s not for fun, okay? That really is all I can say.”
Lila sat back on her heels. “Not for fun?”
“And not... not really for you.”
Well, of course it wasn’t. This trip never had been for her, had it? Lila refrained from rolling her eyes.
“What is it for, then? Will we be home in time for my audition?”
Alejandro watched her for so long that Lila began to feel uncomfortable under his gaze, a sensation she had never felt with him before. She hated it.
“No,” he answered at last, and the word might as well have been a gunshot.
“No.” Lila touched her ribs. If she wasn’t going to be in Florida in time for the audition, she wasn’t going to be in Florida intime for the twins’ birthday, the trip to New York, or a thousand other engagements.
Francis, that narcissistic bastard. Where were they going that was so important, then? And if he had to go, why drag her along with him? It’s not like he enjoyed her company.
Lila’s eyes smarted, and she waved her hands to keep too much heat from splotching her complexion. She wanted to slap her husband. She wanted to strangle him.
“Well, then,” she whispered. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry.” Alejandro attempted to recapture her hand, but she folded it in her lap instead.
Francis had lied from the beginning about their destination. Lila sucked in her cheeks, trying to remember back to the day they had boarded the ship. Had anything been off? Had there been a kind of sign she’d missed, something she should have noticed so she could turn to her husband with her finger in his face.Aha! I know what you’re up to!
But she couldn’t think of anything. Tia had arrived. They’d eaten dinner. Then the cake fight, the gifts, and...
The pearl necklace that matched the earrings.
