“Well…” He ends his incomplete sentence with a shrug.
“No, now you have to tell me.” I gasp. “Oh my gosh. Was it Jamie Oliver? It was Jamie Oliver, wasn’t it?”
“It was not Jamie Oliver.” He sounds so grumpy, I can’t help but giggle, and this softens his face. “It was salt.”
“Salt?”
“Salt.”
I’m confused. “What’s so special about salt?”
“What’s not special about salt is the question.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Explain what?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m asking. I want to know about salt.”
The server comes by and asks about dessert. I want cake, because it’s my birthday, after all, but Santiago shakes his head and gives him a platinum card or other, and I’m not going to be greedy, not when it’s already been the best dinner of my life.
“I’ll tell you about salt in the car,” he says.
41. Salt Made Santiago Fall in Love with the Whole, Wild World
OUTSIDE, THE TAXI awaits. Santiago opens the door for me again and slides in after I do, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body along my back. “Are you cold?” he asks when he sees me shivering.
“No. Tell me about salt.”
“So you didn’t forget.”
“Santiago. Stop stalling.”
“Fine.” He takes a breath and exhales slowly. There’s a fine mist of rain on the car windows, and with the violet of the evening light, I feel like I’m on a new, beautiful planet, just me and Santiago to work out our fears and hopes and dreams with each other.
“Salt,” he begins. “There are these types of salts called finishing slats. Salts that are spectacular in some way. Flaked, flavored, you name it. You add it to the meal after it’s done cooking.”
“Cool.”
“My mom saw my interest in cooking, and for my birthday she bought me a pack of finishing salts. A dozen of them.” He grins. “I couldn’t believe how a little pinch of this gave a fish a whole new angle, flavor-wise. I went on a quest. Sort of. I wanted to know what made salt so special.” He clears his throat and looks a little unsure, but keeps going. “Human civilization was basically built around salt. Mines and seas and shit like that. I mean, no one thinks about it now because salt is plentiful and cheap, but it was once this incredibly rare and valuable thing. It was used as money all over the world.” He smiles and takes a breath. “The oldest European city was based around salt. To this day, you can still visit the salt routes in Europe, which go back to the fucking Bronze Age.” He runs his fingers over my hand, eventually holding it. I hardly want to even breathe. Everything about this moment is so unbelievably perfect.
“Salt’s been the reason for wars, battles, revolutions. And it’s so beautiful, this little crystal. Everything that’s alive depends on it. We depend on it right now, and we don’t even realize how much.” He shrugs. “Anyway, that’s my big salt talk.”
“That’s amazing,” I say softly. “Like, how could something so common be so magical? But maybe everything is magic and we just get used to the magic or something.”
He’s eyeing me curiously. “So you’re not going to tease me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“For being a salt nerd.”
I burst into laughter. I laugh and laugh until Santiago scowls, but I can tell it’s a pretend scowl, because his eyes smile right along with me. “I never thought of you as a nerd before. But now I know.”
“Stop that.”
I bend over from laughing, and when I lift my torso, I’m somehow way closer to him. I stop laughing immediately, and his face is all serious too. I don’t know what to say, so I default to babbling. “I’m glad you told me, though, about salt. I never would have guessed. Not in a million years. And now I know we basically eat magical crystals on a regular…” Oh gosh. He looks like he wants to kiss me. His eyes are locked on my mouth like freaking dead bolts.
“Here we are,” the driver barks, and I jump when we come to a sudden stop. In front of us, the tour bus—big, silver, reminding me way too early about reality.
“They’re not back yet?” I ask, because it’s eight and all the lights are off.
“They’ll probably get their stuff later tonight. Birthday party.”
Right. The party my sister is having without me. Reality sinks in even more, to the point where my weightlessness drifts away with the breeze. When I climb out of the car, my feet feel like they’re stuck in the mud.
Inside, Santiago stops in the kitchen. “Why don’t you sit down,” he says.
“Why?” I ask, but then I just do it. These mud feet weren’t getting me much farther anyway.
“I made you something.”
“You did? Really?” I can’t stop the big grin on my face. “No one’s made me anything since my dad and the fireweed pictures when I was eleven.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious, you jerk.”
Santiago responds by sliding a pie in front of me. I smile. “It’s a pie.”
“Nice deduction there. You should be a private investigator.”
I ignore him. The pie is golden, the edges hand-pinched, and there’s a crimson sauce oozing out of the holes in the middle. “It’s beautiful.” I furrow my brow. “Wait, is this huckleberry pie?”
“Yes.”
I look up at him. “But you… you said you needed to save those for something special.”
“Yes.”
Lord, I’m slow. It finally hits me that he’s calling me special. Or, my birthday, at least. “Wait—”
“Here.” He jams a knife into the pie and cuts me a huge piece. He reaches for the ice cream in the freezer and rolls a scoop on top of the warm, gooey slice.
“Thanks.” I watch as he does the same for himself, and then he has a seat next to me, turning off the kitchen lights behind me. Now the only lighting is all the fairy lights, warm and magic all around us. He waits until I take a bite first.
Santiago raises his eyebrows at me in a silent, Well?
“Oh, come on,” I say. “What do you think? Have you ever made anything that wasn’t absolutely perfect? Lord.”
“So you like it?”
“I’d give my life for it.”
Santiago chuckles and the sound is so, so, so lovely. I want to keep the momentum going, you know? So I say, “It’s amazing what you do. What you’ve accomplished.”
He freezes, then looks at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, most people our age are trying to figure it out. What we want to do. I certainly don’t have a clue. But you are doing it. You’ve mastered, like, food. Completely.”
“It’s especially inspiring with only one hand, right?”
He sounds mean and sharp. I blink. “I mean, I guess?” I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t even thinking about that. After several long seconds, I say, “All right, I’ll bite. What is your deal right now?”
“Nothing.”
It doesn’t look like nothing. His jaw is firm and he’s shoveling the pie in with way too much force. He’s going to cut his tongue or something.
“Everyone thinks I’m amazing. An inspiration. Blessed.” He gives a little chuckle. “I didn’t know you did too.”
“That doesn’t sound… bad to me?”
“Of course it doesn’t!” I jump as he raises his voice. “You aren’t missing a fucking appendage. You don’t know what it’s like for everyone to look at you and feel so uncomfortable that all they can do is heap praise so they feel better about themselves.”
“That’s not what I was doing. You don’t see that? I wasn’t even thinking about your hand.”
“Sure.”
And he angles his body away from me, and that’s it. I’m dismissed. This whole evening, crumbled to dust. But I’m not done yet. No way in heckle. I stand and say, “Can you possibly, for one second, get your head out of your ass?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I’m sorry that people are so shitty to you. That they condescend to you like that, calling you an inspiration and stuff. But all I meant was, you seem to have your shit together, you know? You are literally the best chef I’ve ever met, and at the age of nineteen? What the hell. How is that fair? And me? I take photos, okay, but only because I was commissioned at fourteen to become my sister’s personal photographer. I have no idea what I’d be doing if my life didn’t revolve around her.” I swallow. “Anyway, I’m sorry that’s how my compliment came off. That’s not what I meant at all.” I dump my pie plate in the sink and turn away.
“Where are you going?”
“To my bed.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I wave my arms around helplessly. “It’s my bed?”
He sighs, stands, and gestures for me to follow him. “You can’t sleep in the bunk tonight. No one else is going to be here. We’re parked at the Evelyn Hotel, remember?”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.” We did two medium-size cities back-to-back the last two days. I totally forgot we’d be staying at yet another hotel so soon. “Well, I’ve got to get my bag.” Santiago is behind me, and he lifts my tote before I can reach for it. “You don’t have to…” But, as usual, he doesn’t listen to me.
We get our key cards from the front desk without speaking to each other, and the silence continues as we get in the elevator, until I have to break it.
“I’m sorry. I was insensitive with my wording. I’ll do better next time.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For jumping to conclusions and losing my temper.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not. I ruined your birthday.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” I whip my head around and smack his shoulder, then curl my hand into a fist. “What on God’s green earth is going on there? Do you wear shoulder pads made of diorite?”
He just smiles at me. “So your birthday isn’t ruined, then?”
“Of course not, Santiago. It’s the best I’ve had in a long time.”
He walks me to my room in silence, and when we get there, I gasp as he bends to kiss my cheek. The pads of his lips are way, way softer than what I’ve been fantasizing. Lord.
“Happy birthday.” He pauses. “Loki.”
“Oh, go to heckle, Thor.”
“Banana peel.”
“Salt nerd.”
We smile at each other for so long, it’s like this moment becomes a whole new universe, like this fraction of a second has been compressed to a trillionth of a period and we’re about to burst. I don’t know how or when, but Santiago and I are going to explode. We’ll become the dust of ancient planets and suns and moons. We’ll both become one whole, sparkling nebula, thousands of light-years long.
And then the moment is broken by an old dude leaving his room, coughing his brains out.
Santiago blinks and clears his throat. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I say back softly.
And I am not ashamed to admit that I let myself watch his backside for nearly his whole walk to the elevator. What? It’s my birthday present to myself.
42. Spending the Night with a Nebula (Is So Much Better Than I Ever Imagined)
WHEN I CHECK my phone again, I nearly drop it, because I have forty-eight missed calls, all from Mom. I should probably be freaking out. From the previews of the texts I’ve got from her, it doesn’t look like she’s trying to get in touch to wish me a happy birthday.
But that threat she made about me never coming back? It didn’t scare me at all. In fact, it was too good to pass up.
My skin is all tingly. And I can’t seem to stop pacing. I don’t want to be alone right now. So I wrap my pj’s in the white hotel robe and slide on the fuzzy, cardboard hotel slippers. And I head down to the elevator.
Room 1416. I stand in front of it for a full minute before knocking. When Santiago answers, he doesn’t look surprised. Pleased, but not surprised.
“I haven’t gotten a photo text,” he says.
“Right,” I say. I don’t know what else to say. His arm is now on my shoulder.
“Moon. Are you okay?”
I take a breath and pull my robe open a little at the top, where my scar gleams in the low light. I don’t know why it had to heal so dark pink and silvery. “I’m ready to tell you about them.”
Santiago nods and opens the door wider. When I walk past him to go inside, my shoulder and hips graze him ever so slightly. His smell, that ocean pine forest, comes around me in a soft, warm cloud. Everything about Santiago makes me feel safe. Little roots are growing out of the bottoms of my feet, all the way down to the other side of the earth. That way I never stumble again.
At first we’re sitting in bed, but then I yawn and he leans back, pulling me on top of him. My head fits in the cup of his neck. My hand fits across half of his stomach. His arm is along my back, his hand wrapped around my hip, his other forearm along the top of my thigh.
“I have cramps,” I mumble. “They suck.”
“I’m sorry.” He moves his hand up to rub at my lower back in circles. It feels amazing. I sigh and melt into him.
“I told you I’ve had sex with three guys, right?”
“Uh-huh.” I can feel the deep of his voice to the bottoms of my feet, rattling at the roots there.
“Well, the first guy was nice. I thought I loved him. But he turned out to be… basic, I guess.” I clear my throat. “The second guy was a huge jerk. All because…” I sigh. “I didn’t like it. He thought he was some kind of sex god, but afterward, I asked him, ‘You’re already finished?’ ”
Santiago chuckles, and I smile a little. “Yeah, he was not happy. And he said I didn’t like it because I was a whore. He said I was as loose as the Grand Canyon.”
Santiago’s whole body goes rigid next to me. It’s like he’s planking while snuggling me in bed. “What an asshole.”
“I know. Even more so because he then told everyone at our school. Grand Canyon became my new nickname.”
Santiago is even tenser. “What’s this asshole’s name again?” Like he’s going to do something about it.
I smile up at him. “I love you for asking that.” His eyes go all soft and he resumes the back rub. I sink even farther into him. “Anyway, I got back at him. I told everyone that it wasn’t my fault that his penis was as skinny as a strand of hair. After that everyone started calling him Spaghetti Dick.”
Santiago laughs, and it shakes me, the bed, and probably the whole floor. He uses his whole body to laugh. I love it. I want to kiss his neck, so I keep talking. “Anyway, right after I had sex with him, my mom found out. Because of La Raíz. She knew I’d gotten into the milk jar, that I’d had sex—she knew everything because of a handful of freaking moths.” There’s silence for a couple of beats. “You don’t know my mom. To her, purity is… It’s the only thing worth living for. She’d rather have had me kill someone than sully myself before marriage.”
Santiago makes a scoffing noise, so I lift my head to look right in his eyes. “I’m serious. Those are the exact words she said as she threw all the knives from the kitchen at me.”
His eyebrows drop, and his mouth goes open. “She what ?”
“I don’t think she meant to cut me. It’s not like she’s a trained assassin or something. First was the wrist, as I covered my face.” I lift my arm to show him the scar. “And I thought after the blood came, she’d be done. So I lowered my arms. But she wasn’t done. She had one last knife, the sharpest one, and it stuck in me like I was made of avocado or something.
“And I screamed and screamed, and she screamed, marched over, and pulled it out of me. She moved it around because it wouldn’t slide out nicely.” I wince. “That hurt way worse than the original stab.” I shake my head. “But actually, the thing that hurt me the most was after she put gauze on it and stopped the bleeding and all that, she looked at me, all calm, you know, right in my eyes. And she said, ‘See what you
made me do?’
“And before I could argue, she said, ‘If only you hadn’t turned out to be such a dirty girl. Then this wouldn’t have happened.’ ”
Santiago’s body is so tight, I think I could slide a paper over his stomach and end up with one of those folded snowflakes you make in kindergarten during the winter.
“You didn’t get stitches?”
I laugh. “She said if I told anyone I’d gotten cut, even a doctor, and how, she’d say I did it to myself and have me committed somewhere.” I shudder. That happened to my cousin Lucia, after her father found out she’d had a pregnancy scare.
“That’s such fucking bullshit,” Santiago says. His voice is a growl; I can feel the clench of his jaw at my temple. I love that he’s so angry on my behalf. I’m not used to it. I could get used to it. But I brush this thought away.
“It was an accident,” he says suddenly.
“What was?” I ask just as I realize he’s talking about his hand. “Oh. God.”
“Yeah. My sister and I were in her car. She was driving. We were going to her college. She had some cheerleading thing, and my parents and Andro were going to meet us there. They were doing lawyer stuff for Fotogram, back when it’d started to explode.”
“Right.”
“Well, a drunk driver T-boned us. Didn’t even hit us that hard. Just swerved into our lane, but it sent us flying. Rolled over into a ditch.”
I’m looking at him now. I can’t not look at him. But his gaze is somewhere between the windows and the sofa. He’s in another universe right now.
“My hand was crushed to pieces. At least it was my left one.” He chuckles like he’s been told this a hundred times and he still can’t believe people would be that thoughtless. “My sister died a week later. The head injuries were too much.”
“Oh my God,” I say. I grab his forearm, tight. “I had no idea. I didn’t even know you guys had a sister.”
“No one talks about her anymore.” He swallows. “She had both legs amputated before… you know.” He pauses with a long, shaking inhale. “And for a really long time I wished she’d lived because she would’ve understood. So that I wouldn’t have been the only one.” He does this strange, grief-laden chuckle. “How fucking selfish is that?”
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe Page 21