I close my eyes. I don’t give a shit about the sunset that’s starting in front of us. I just want to focus on this feeling. The solid weight of her nestled up against me. The smooth skin of her palm under my calloused thumbs. The scent of her. It’s not coconut anymore—she stopped using whatever it was that made her smell like a piña colada. But a hint of something sweet is still there, subtle and intermingled with whatever intoxicating thing makes her smell like her.
I kiss her lightly on top of her head. She sighs.
“You okay, baby?” I whisper.
She exhales. “I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be fine.” Then, so quietly I wonder if she even wanted me to hear it: “I miss you.”
But I did hear it. And it fuckin’ guts me. I miss her too. More than I’ve ever admitted to myself before now. But I can’t say it back, because then I’d have to admit that this whole fuckin’ thing was a mistake, that I never should have left New York, never should have left her.
And I’m just not ready to do that yet.
I shift, and she sits up and looks at me. I lean in and press my forehead to hers, my eyes closed. Without me thinking about it, my hand cups her cheek. I can feel, rather than see, her shudder, can feel the skin of her forehead frown against mine with the pain. I get it, baby, I want to say. Neither of us can pull away.
Fuck it.
“I...it’s not enough,” I admit.
“What’s that?”
“Saying ‘I miss you.’ It’s weak. Like something you’d say when you’re away from home for a weekend. Not...not like this.”
My hand slides down her shoulder, and Layla takes it between both of hers.
“Brazilians have a word for that, you know,” she says as she sits back and plays with my fingers. “Saudade. It’s...it’s hard to explain because there isn’t a translation. But the way I had it explained to me, it’s like when you yearn for something or someone. Like your heart speaks to their heart, and when they’re gone, it’s that emptiness that remains. It’s a longing, maybe for something that never even happened.”
Slowly, I nod. “Sow-dodgy?” I repeat, trying out the unfamiliar syllables. They say Portuguese and Spanish are twin languages, but they sure as fuck don’t sound like it to me.
Layla smiles and nods. “That’s pretty much it.” She repeats the word, but smooths out the syllables, so it sounds less choppy and more like a waterfall.
Damn. That’s one hell of a word. And it fits perfectly. Because it doesn’t make sense why we should miss each other like this after having, what, a few months in New York? We’ve been apart longer than we were ever together. But it only took one second of seeing Layla again for me to see a future I could never have with her, and for that hole in my chest to open up all over again. Saudade? Yeah, I get it.
“So how do I say it?” I wonder. “I saudade you, baby?”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “It’s not a verb. It’s something you have. Like, I have saudade.” She looks at me, and her eyes match the color of the sky behind her, and my heart pounds in my chest.
“Eu tenho saudade,” she whispers in Portuguese
Her eyes lock with mine. They shimmer like the ocean next to us, deep and open. I could get lost in those eyes. I’d look at them the rest of my life if she’d let me.
“Para tí,” I whisper back in Spanish, so low my voice is almost carried away on the wind. But not quite. For you. Only for you.
“Sim,” she says.
“Sí,” I say.
Yes. Both words mean the same. They sound the same. Spelled out, there’s one letter of difference, but when you say them, it doesn’t matter. The differences don’t really matter.
We lean into each other like magnets while the sound of the waves crashing on the beach overwhelms the air. Eu tenho/Yo tengo saudade indeed. I’ll long for this girl for the rest of my life, whether I’m with her or not. I know now this longing will never go away. I had it before I even met her.
She leans into the pain, rubs her nose against mine, searching for something until her mouth finds mine. Her lips are soft, open, pliant, and fuck, it’s like they’ve never been gone. It’s a kiss that’s full of sorrow and longing, a kiss where Layla pours out her grief, and I take it. I cup her beautiful face with both hands and guide her again and again. I can’t go with her where she’s going next week. I can’t help her bear the weight of what’s happening to her family. But right now, I can help absorb some of that pain. I’d take it all if I could.
Chapter Five
Layla
We kiss. And then we kiss some more. We kiss until the anger and sadness and desolation I’ve been carrying around with me for the past three days actually melts a little. That’s what this man does to me, what he’s always done to me. And the longer we sit together, enveloped in each other’s touch and taste, the more I’m ready to get off this stupid beach and go somewhere we can be alone.
“I, um,” I try to speak as Nico cups the back of my head to pull me into yet another kiss that sweeps every painful, conscious thought away.
“What?” he grumbles before slipping his tongue in to dance with mine. “What is it, baby?”
My hands grip his t-shirt, and I’m having a hard time finding words. There’s only one thing I want right now. It doesn’t matter that we’ll have to say goodbye again in a week. I just want him closer, in the closest way two people can get.
“Go,” I manage to get out. “Alone. You. Me.” Finally, I manage to evade his next kiss so I can look him in the eye. “Please.”
His lips tug to one side with a smirk that reveals a dimple. Then he opens his mouth to answer, but his cell phone rings. When he pulls it out, a name is flashing brightly, even under the glare of the sun.
“Who’s Jessie?” I ask
Nico presses the silence button and shoves his phone in his pocket.
“Um, yeah. Jessie’s my roommate. I wish...” he trails off before placing a light kiss on the top of my head. “I wish you didn’t have to be so far away.”
“Me too—” I start to say before I realize that I don’t have to. New York is calling my name, it’s true, like a ghost I can’t quite shake. My family’s house in Washington is gone, and I’m certainly not at home here in my grandparents’ museum of a house. I might only have a dorm room to go to, but it will be filled with my best friends, and one small corner will be mine. I can’t wait.
But. My mother does live here now. It would be a simple thing to get state residency, and I could transfer schools. I could come to LA, I could stay, and maybe this ache that’s been in the pit of my stomach since May would finally go away. New York, I love. But maybe I love someone else more. Maybe he’s sitting next to me right now.
I’m just about to say so when a name echoes from down the beach.
“Nico!”
It’s a woman’s voice, and she calls his name again as she jogs toward us.
“Fuck,” Nico mutters under his breath as the woman approaches. His arm falls from around my shoulders, and I try not to be hurt when he scoots slightly away.
We both watch the woman as she comes closer. The first thing I notice is that she’s stunning—tall, thin, blonde, and tan, and showing it all off in a pair of skin-tight leggings and a sports bra that bares an incredibly toned stomach. Her sun-streaked hair is pulled into a high ponytail on top of her head. From the way her skin glistens slightly in the sun, it’s clear she’s been out for a run.
“Oh my God,” she says as she comes to stand in front of us. She reaches an arm over her head and stretches, making her belly even flatter than before. “Do you ever check your phone, hon? I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour.”
Hon? I tense further, and her sharp brown eyes zero in on the movement.
“Hi,” she says as she extends a hand. “I’m Jessie.”
My voice freezes in my throat as I hear the name. Jessie. Nico’s roommate. Who looks like she should be on the cover of a fashion magazine and who also happens to call
him “hon.” This is Jessie?
Beside me, Nico is rubbing the back of his neck and assiduously avoiding either of our gazes.
I look back at the Amazon standing in front of me. “I-I’m Layla,” I say, accepting her handshake. “I’m...a friend. From New York.”
“She’s just in town for a bit,” Nico finally breaks in. “We thought we’d catch up. We, uh, go way back.”
Jessie quirks an eyebrow between us. “Huh. Must be way back. You never mentioned Laura before.”
Nothing. Nico says nothing.
“Layla,” I say with a sharp look at him. “It’s Layla, not Laura.”
She blinks at me like an owl, and then flips her ponytail back and smiles brightly. “Lara. Got it. Well, I have to finish my run and get going. I have that photo shoot tomorrow morning, so I need to get to sleep early.”
She looks at me as she says photo shoot, as if I’m supposed to be impressed. Well, mission accomplished. In all her blonde, statuesque glory, Jessie makes me feel like a freaking hobbit.
“Anyway, babe, I was just asking you to pick up some toilet paper, okay? Also, I think we’re out of condoms,” she says to Nico, whose head immediately snaps up at the word.
Something inside me also springs into action. Whoever this Jessie person is, she’s clearly more than just a roommate. Roommates don’t call each other babe or hon. They don’t buy each other condoms. Not unless they’re my roommate, Quinn, and considering we are both heterosexual females in only a slightly codependent, but completely platonic friendship, I’d say she’s fairly harmless. Jessie is anything but.
“You know what?” I say as I get up. “I have to get going too.”
I try to brush off all the sand that is sticking to my legs, and, of course, it won’t go anywhere. I’m a sandy mess while I’m standing beside the next Cindy Crawford. Fucking great.
Jessie watches me with barely masked amusement while Nico scrambles up beside her.
“Hold on,” he says to me. “I’ll drive you back to Pasadena.”
“No, really, it’s okay.” I hoist my purse over my shoulder, where, of course, it keeps falling down. “I have some things I wanted to grab in Santa Monica anyway. I was going to take a bus over there to meet my mom for dinner.”
“Oh, you don’t have a car?” Jessie says it like it’s the worst thing in the world. Like I’m some pitiful child because I have to take public transportation.
“Like he said, I’m just visiting,” I say through my teeth.
It’s a lie. Mom is probably swimming in a vat of white wine with Grandma right about now. The first thing I’m going to do when I get off the beach is figure out how the hell to take a bus back to Pasadena, maybe even get a cab if I really have to, because there is no way in hell I’m going to ride in the car with Nico. I’ll break, I know it, and I just can’t deal with that right now.
That ache is back, only this time, it scissors through me like a blade. I catch Jessie looking at Nico like he’s a piece of meat—no, like something she knows intimately. Her mouth twists knowingly. The blade twists too.
“I’ll see you,” I mutter as I turn away. “Nice to meet you, Jessie.”
“You too, hon,” she calls. “Have a nice trip back to New York!”
But I’m already too far down the beach to answer. And all I can think as the wind whips my hair in front of my face, as the sand builds up around my stumbling feet, is that I need to get the hell out of this city and away from this man as fast as I can.
Nico
After Layla practically sprints off the beach, I turn back to Jessie, who is still watching Layla with a really satisfied expression. She looks at me, and the satisfaction turns to fear.
“What the fuck was that?” I demand.
Jessie bites her lip. “What? We are out of toilet paper.”
“Condoms? Really? That was some manipulative bitch shit there, Jess.”
Jessie bites her lip and tosses her long ponytail over her shoulder. “It’s not like we’ve never used them.”
I scoff. “What, three, four times this whole summer? You made it sound like we’re a serious couple.”
“What about you? I thought you were going to K.C.’s for the weekend. You think it felt good for me to run into you making out with some rando on the beach? People here know me, Nico. They’re going to think you’re cheating on me!”
My mouth falls open. “And why the fuck would they think that when we’re not together, Jessie?”
Jessie gives me an equally disbelieving look that makes me want to tear my hair out. I mean, I’m not stupid. I notice how she cozies up to me. Makes me dinner or hangs off me at the club, like I belong to her or something. That’s usually when I take off for the weekend. Give her a little space. Remind her that I need mine.
She crosses her arms and nudges me in the shoulder. “I know we’re not together, together,” she says finally. “But...come on. You’ve never thought about it? We have a good connection, and we already live together.”
I bury my face in my hands and groan. “Are you really asking me this right now? Right after you just chased another girl off the beach?”
“Please. Like that easy piece would ever be able to satisfy someone like you. Her shorts were about two inches long. Cheap.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I growl.
“Whatever. How old is she, twelve? You need a woman, Nico, not a little girl.”
I brush the sand off my shorts roughly. Jessie leans away to avoid getting it in her eyes. I couldn’t care less.
“I’ma say this once,” I state as evenly as I can. It’s hard, because I’m that pissed off. “You wanna stay on my good side, Jess? Then you better respect my friends and family, and that goes double for Layla. Otherwise, you can fuck off. If it’s between you and that girl, I choose her every time. You got that? Every. Time.”
Jessie’s eyes widen. She’s only ever known me as good-time Nico. Nico at the club. Nico at the beach. She might be my roommate, but she doesn’t know shit about the real me. Not like Layla.
“Fuck!” I shout, startling a bunch of seagulls a few feet away floating in the whitewash.
Jessie leans away, but doesn’t move when I glare at her. I pull out my phone and dial Layla’s number. If I’m lucky, she’s still in the neighborhood, although at the pace she was running she’s probably already up to Hermosa by now.
It goes to voicemail. Then again. And again. With another grunt, I shove my phone in my pocket and start jogging in the direction of my car.
“Where are you going?” calls Jessie.
“To clean up this fuckin’ mess you made!” I yell, not even bothering to turn around.
Two hours and about ten voicemails later, I’m done driving around Santa Monica hunting for Layla, and I’m pulling up in front of her grandparents’ big house in Pasadena. I’ll wait here all night if I have to, but she’s going to see me.
Before I get out of the car, I send one last text.
Me: You’re mad, I get it. Please, Layla. Im begging here.
I sit there for a few minutes, waiting for her to respond. It gives me a few seconds to take in the neighborhood, really take it in. Even in the dark, it’s clear the grass is way too green for late summer in Southern California. The columns and sparkling white paint makes the Spanish-style houses pristine, and the crack-free sidewalks and the tag-free garage doors continue that perfection. Manhattan Beach is nice, but this neighborhood is where the really rich live. Most of them would probably assume I was here to work on their yards.
Well, fuck ’em. I’m only here for one thing, and she’s pissed as hell at me.
I’m just about to get out of the car when she actually texts me back.
Layla: I’m at the airport.
The airport? What the fuck?
Me: Why? You were supposed to stay another week.
This time, the response is immediate.
Layla: Got an earlier flight.
I wait a moment, but no othe
r texts come. She’s gone.
I sigh and clap the phone shut. Fuck. I don’t want her to leave like this. I’m just not sure I can live in a world where Layla Barros hates my guts. I start the Jeep, suddenly full of decision. I may not be able to follow Layla back to New York, but the fuck if I’m going to let her leave thinking I’m some two-timing asshole. If I really step on it, maybe I can catch her.
Thirty minutes later, I’m jogging into the airport and scanning the ticketing area for a head of black hair and a pair of blue eyes. United? Delta? I shake my head, trying to remember which airline she took coming down here. It doesn’t mean she’s on the same one back to New York, but I’ll take that chance. Rich people like her family can afford to prefer one airline over another.
I have to find her before she goes through security. Fuckin’ 9/11. Never thought I’d miss the days when people could run all the way to the gates, but I’m about two seconds from buying a ticket myself just to get through security.
Security. That’s a thought. I follow the people funneling out of the ticketing area toward the clogged security checkpoint. It’s not too crowded here tonight, which makes it a little easier for me to spot her, just as she’s handing her ID and ticket to the security agent. Her brown-black hair, wavy around her shoulders, gleams under the fluorescent lights.
“Layla!” I shout over the crowds. Several heads turn as I weave around to get to her. “Layla!” I call, over and over again.
Finally, she hears me. It’s useful sometimes having a voice that’s deep, that carries. I can boom like a cannon when I want. Her blue eyes are wide with surprise as she pulls her ticket and ID out of reach of the agent.
“Stop,” I say, half out of breath as I reach her. I’m blocked by the thin barrier strap.
She just stares. “What are you doing here?”
Bad Idea- The Complete Collection Page 40