Haven’t we had enough drama lately?
I have nothing to say, at least not in front of anyone else. Now that Shane’s here, so many thoughts and feelings are running through me, I can’t separate them out. I’m freaked, nervous, scared, relieved, pissed, and nostalgic. He feels familiar, like home, but he’s completely out of place.
Completely.
He’s handsome and annoying, and I don’t want to hurt him, even though I fear I already have. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been. And besides, he sprung the ring on me right before I left. What was I to do? I sit in agony as he eats, frozen, unable to move.
Finally, after seeing him wash down a half a baguette with two cups of coffee, I say, “Can I talk with you? Alone?”
Tavo’s mom gestures grandly down the hall. “Por favor. Be our guest.”
Shane follows me down the hall, his face tentative. I turn around and whisper-shriek at him, “What are you doing here?”
“I told you I had a surprise.”
“Weeks ago.” My hand flies to my hip, and heat infuses my cheeks. “Why didn’t you answer my messages?” We get to my room and step inside. I shut the door behind us.
“I needed to talk to you in person.” He’s acting weird, too, kicking at the ground and biting his lip. Then he reaches out and grabs me in another hug. “Hey. I missed you.”
As I’m in his arms, I feel nothing but friendship. And pissed off. “Did you read my email?”
“Yeah. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you talk to me? How come you never said anything?”
He lets out his breath, drops his arms, and takes a step back, looking out the window to the cork oak outside. “It’s pretty here.”
Answer my fucking question, Shane.
“Yeah, it is.” I try a different tack. “How have you been?”
“Well.” He clears his throat. “I’ve been well. Listen. I need to talk to you. Things have gotten way out of control, and talking with you in person was the only way to do this.” He eyes my unmade bed and then gingerly sits on the end, putting his hands flat on his thighs and letting out another breath.
I clamber up to the top of my bed and put my pillow on my lap. With my pulse racing, I open my mouth to say that I’m sorry, like I said, I really can’t marry you, but he interrupts my thinking.
“I’m—” He closes his eyes, opens them, and his face is full of terror and pain. Gone is the adrenaline-fueled American who showed up a half hour ago. “Kim. I can’t marry you.”
Wait. What?
He continues. “With you gone, it gave me time to figure out some things.”
“Me too,” I whisper, about to go into how much it’s not going to work between us. But then I look at him and it clicks. It all clicks. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but having him here, after the pause of distance, makes it all make sense. “It’s not me you want to marry.”
“No,” he whispers back.
“It’s Randy.”
He nods and tears form in the corner of his eyes. “You’re the first and only person I’ve told. I had to come here to sort out my thoughts.” And his face crumples.
“Honey.” I crawl over to him and wrap my arms around him to hold his pain.
“With you gone, I had … space. And I realized how much I’d been hiding. I’d suppressed everything for so long. Tried to talk myself into believing I was wrong. And I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t live a lie.” A tear runs down his face. “What are my parents going to say?”
“They’ll love you.”
“They’ll think I’m wrong. All my life, I’ve been taught my feelings are wrong.” He starts sobbing.
Rocking him in my arms, I murmur, “You’re absolutely allowed your feelings. Absolutely.”
“I’m so sorry, Kim. I’m so sorry. I was so scared of coming out to my parents that I’d pushed all of this aside. I knew I’ve had feelings for him … like this, but they aren’t allowed. I’m not allowed. I figured if I married you, I would get all of it out of my system. We’d be set up. It would all go away. And we could all be together. I like you. I love you.”
“But this is who you are.” And now I’m crying, too. “Oh, Shane. You’re more scared of coming out to your parents than marrying me.”
He nods, and his tears drip down onto my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I absolutely love you, Kim, but as a friend. Not as a lover.”
“Same, Shane. Same.”
“You like that Spanish guy?”
I nod. “A lot.”
“He’s cute.”
Shoving Shane, I almost laugh. “He’s mine. Keep away.”
He gives me a rueful laugh, but then it turns back to desperation. “What am I going to do?”
I know exactly what he has to do. Like me dying my hair. Like me owning that I wasn’t in love with Shane. Like me figuring out that I like to cook, and I don’t like to play hockey or speak Mandarin or get an MBA. He needs to own who he is and not let anyone talk him out of it.
“For starters.” I hold his hand. “Shane.”
“Yeah,” he sniffles.
“Tell me who you are.”
His eyes have that deer-in-the-headlights look.
“Say the fucking word, Shane.”
He shakes his head.
“When you say it, it’s the first step toward accepting it.”
He shakes his head again.
“Shane. Tell me who you are. Tell me who you really are.”
He shakes his head.
I stare.
Then he takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes. Opens them. And says, “Kim. I’m gay.” And he breaks down again. Noises come out of him that I’ve never heard from a person. He sounds like a wild animal. Trapped. Caged.
Now I burst out crying too. “I know, honey. I know.” And I did know. All the times we’d spent together, I subconsciously knew there was more than friendship between those two. “I love you just the way you are. We’re not getting married. I’m giving you back your ring so you can make it into something for the love of your life.”
He’s so big, with muscles and tight clothes, but when he cries like this, he’s a little kid.
“Let out that shadowy, secret part of you that you hide with your motivational Instagram posts and your schedules and your precision. You don’t need to hide anymore. At least not from me.”
He curls up on my bed, and I wrap my arms around him. Letting him shake out all these feelings.
After seemingly unending tears, his sobs get quieter. Then they cease.
“But Kim, I cheated on you. I never thought I’d do that. We just got carried away one night, and we kissed. And other things. I’m so sorry.”
My eyes narrow. “When did that start?”
“After you left,” he whispers. “I fought it until then.”
A bunch of emotions run through me. I settle on relief. “I’m glad that it wasn’t while we were together. I guess we both figured stuff out while we were apart. If it makes you feel any better, Tavo kissed me before I emailed you. So I’m sorry, too.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He stretches out and turns over, his red eyes looking at my red eyes. With a kiss of my forehead, he asks, “What did I do to deserve you?”
“We’re always going to be best friends. Just because we broke up doesn’t mean we can’t talk.”
At last, he sighs. “Thanks. I don’t want to tell anyone else until I’m ready. But I might need someone to give me a push.”
I shove his chest with both hands. “I’m happy to give you a push whenever you need it. I’ll even help you tell them if you like. I’ll support you.”
“Thanks.” He stares at my hair, pressing a strand between his thumb and index finger. “I wonder what our third wheel will think of this?”
“For fuck’s sake, go home to Randy.” I roll on my back and let out a chuckle.
“I know. You don’t know the half of it.”
And I can’t help but laugh for the first time in a while.
“I still can’t believe I didn’t realize you were gay, Shane.”
We’re both calm now. He’s sitting at my desk, and I’m lying on my back on my bed looking at the ceiling.
“I did my best to hide.”
I straighten up and sit against the headboard. “You were using me to hide. For years, Shane.”
He lets out his breath and squeezes his eyes shut. “I know that now. I don’t think I realized it before. And I’m so sorry.”
I look at him, and feelings war. Between genuine friendship and pissed that he used me. But I don’t want to keep all this inside. I want to resolve it. “Apology accepted.” I flex my fingers over my cross-legged thighs. “We were both kind of hiding.”
“How were you hiding?” His open, curious face makes me smile.
“By listening too much to everyone else. Shane, did you know how much I love cooking?”
“You do?”
“I’ve fallen in love with Spanish cuisine.” I’ve fallen in love with other things, too.
“You have?”
“Totally. I’m eating all this weird stuff you’d never find in Iowa. Fish and seafood and tons of garlic and olive oil. It’s so fresh and tasty, though. I love creating it. It’s fun. I feel like I’ve been given freedom to be in the kitchen, and I love testing to see when food is done, tasting all the new flavors. I mean, have you seen saffron threads? They’re tiny and ridiculously expensive. And they make everything taste so good.” I pick at my nails. I need to polish them. “I’ve spent so much time listening to my mother and her weight loss program, which is like fearing food instead of enjoying it.” I give him a pointed glance. “It’s also you with your protein shakes and meals designed for energetic content rather than taste.”
He gives me a sheepish smile. “Yeah. I don’t eat much variety. It helps me stay in shape, though.”
“True. And it’s not just that I’ve learned how much I like being in a kitchen. I’ve discovered that learning a language is a lot harder than I thought. It’s not how it is in class. Talking in class is like being in a controlled lab. Out here in the real world where we speak real Spanish, it’s all messy and hard to understand. They have this thick accent here, and even if I know the words, half the time it takes me a second before I process what they said. And they’re onto another topic before I can figure out what to say back. It’s fascinating and frustrating. When I have a good day and can do my work in class, it feels so amazing and satisfying. But a lot of the time it’s just impossible, and I end up feeling like this dumb foreigner smiling all the time.”
Shane furrows his brow. “I’m probably keeping you from class, too. God, I’m sorry for that as well.”
I let out a sigh. “I haven’t gone to school in a week.”
Should I tell him?
Yeah, I should.
“I haven’t been to school in a week,” I say, “because, uh, well, I found out I’m pregnant.”
His mouth drops open like a cartoon dog. I half expect his jaw to unhinge, and his tongue to go lolling out and then have to be rolled back in.
“You’re … what?” He shakes his head a little bit as if clearing out the cobwebs. “Pregnant. With Tavo?”
I glare at him. “Yes, who else would it be?”
“But Kim? Don’t you … didn’t you use protection?”
“We got carried away, and so caught up in it, I didn’t even think about it. It was like my brain had shut off, and all I wanted to do was feel.”
“We never felt that way for each other,” he whispers.
“No,” I whisper back. “He’s my lover, Shane. In all senses of the word.”
Straightening up, he rubs his jaw. “Jeez, Kim. Pregnant. How are you going to tell your parents?”
I get that bad feeling in my gut. Not the one from pregnancy. The one from not knowing what I’m going to do. “I don’t know. I’ll just have to tell them.”
“I mean, you’re going to keep it.”
I nod, and I’m not nodding because he’s telling me this. I’m nodding because it’s my conclusion, too. “Of course. Doing anything else, well, it doesn’t feel right. Not for me. Or him, he says.”
He stands up and comes over to the bed, sitting by me. Patting the back of my hand, he says, “If you want support in telling your parents, I’ll be there.”
“And I’ll support telling yours,” I say.
We just sit in the quiet for a moment. Outside a bird chirps, and a dog barks somewhere far away.
“But you and Tavo? Is it serious?”
“It’s so serious it scares me. Shane, you and I were always destined to be in the friend zone.” I scoot up and put my head on his shoulder. “I think we’re always going to be friends. With Tavo, my emotions are so fierce. I’m putting myself on the line. Like, I trust him with everything. Do you know how risky it is to have someone in charge of your everything?”
“That’s how I feel with Randy.”
I get chills up my arms. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “So with Tavo, everything has happened so fast, and I’m caught up in this whirlwind of emotions. It’s not just him, it’s the pregnancy. I think my hormones make me go up and down. My moods and emotions swing wildly from complete and utter despair to elation. My body aches. I’m sick all the time. And my brain is this fuzzy mess.”
“Well,” he says sagely, “maybe it’s best not to make any rash decisions.”
“Yeah. We’ve got all these things going on. He’s supposed to marry the neighbor girl to keep her father from foreclosing on the farm.”
“Holy moly.”
“And his mom doesn’t like me. Except for that, though, I love it here in Spain. Otherwise, I belong.”
“So you’re glad you came?”
I hug my belly. “Yeah. So very much. Even if it’s painful sometimes. It’s worth it.”
Twenty-One
Tavo - Presión
Only my sheer force of will propels me to leave Kim and go to the orchard, because given the choice, I’d rather submit to a sadist trying out gruesome and barbaric equipment from the medieval torture museum than leave her alone with her ex-boyfriend. I need him around like I need a third cojon. Does he want to get back together with her?
But while I want to stick as close to her as a pick-pocketer, if she asks me to go, I’ll go. I trust her. I’ve never trusted anyone like her. Unlike the Alhambra, no fortifications surround my heart. I built no walls against her to protect it, armed it with no snipers to attack. She has me by the heart, by the balls, and I’ve never felt more unguarded in my life.
With my hands in my pockets, I head to the casita to change into my boots. When I emerge, Guillermo’s running up.
“Can I come with you?”
I scowl at him. I’d rather be alone. “Don’t you have class?”
He shrugs and grins. Ah, the little rat.
I give in. “Fine.” As we make our way through the wide-planted trees, I push through the leaves and check the ripeness of our fruit. Guillermo follows suit.
“I think they’re ready, Gustavo, what do you think?” He’s buried behind branches, calling from the next tree over. “They’re really dark.”
“Yeah, I agree, hermano.” And that’s both a relief and a stressor, since it’s now time to face our fate. Will we earn enough money to not only survive next year, but pay off Mr. Molinero?
The alternative is unfathomable. Either way, we’ll know by next week.
The financial pressure I’m under makes the enormous and heavy granite rollers that grind the oil to its initial paste look like paperweights. Not just that.
Kim makes me dizzy like the centrifuge that extracts the oil from the paste in a spinning drum. How are we going to make this work? Two co
untries. Unsupportive parents. Little money. Lots of dreams. A baby on the way.
And me falling in love.
As if not only reading my thoughts, but also jabbing with me with them, Guillermo asks, “Who is that guy with Kim?”
“It’s her ex-boyfriend,” I mutter.
Thankfully, Guillermo has the decency to look puzzled. He strokes his chin. “I thought she liked you.”
“She does.”
“Then why is he here?”
“I don’t know.”
He rubs his nose with the back of his hand, leaving dirt on it. “That guy looks like a plastic action figure.”
I glare at him. Shane and Kim don’t go together at all, and I don’t understand why they ever were. He’s like her Instagram account filled with Starbucks drinks, not the joy of her travels. He can’t give her what she needs and wants—experiences, emotions, discovery. He couldn’t show her an adventure if it was scripted for him in advance.
My dagger-eyes make Guillermo throw up his hands like he’s being arrested. “What? I’m not saying that’s good.”
“It pisses me off because I don’t know why he’s here,” I admit.
“Don’t worry, Tavo. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”
I nod, and we keep inspecting. As we keep going, trying to calculate how long it will take to harvest and how many people and how much equipment we need, I calm down by focusing on the work.
Once we get to the end of the first row, Guillermo starts talking about the harvest. “The trees on this slope aren’t as ripe as the ones facing the other way. We’ll have to start over there first.”
He’s right. “How many liters do you think we’ll get this year.”
“I think yields will be up. Look here.” He tugs at an especially ripe olive, oily in the cold sun.
When we’re done, we head back up to the house and stop to talk to my mother who is driving into town. While I’m kicking off the dust from my boots, she’s dressed in an impeccable skirt and blouse with a blazer. As usual.
“How are the trees?” She holds her hand over her eyes and peers out at them.
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