“Hanging off of other men, going out, gettingdrunk,” I go on.
“First of all, I am not hanging off of other men,”she says, pointing her finger in the air. “That was apicture taken at the wrong time.”
I both bite my tongue and raise my brow.
“Second of all, going out, getting drunk? That’s justwhat I do. That has nothing to do with respect for you,Mateo. I find those things fun. Jesus Christ, you thinkyou can just lock me up in your apartment and swill scotch all night, or maybe take me to your parents or to some of your so-called friends who look at me like I’m nothing but a slutty homewrecker, and who are boring as fuck? It’s not my fault that I’m still young and you’re not anymore.”
Now it feels like I’m the one who has been hit. Not a slap, but a wrecking ball right into my chest.
Vera sees it. Her face falls slightly, torn between wanting to battle and wanting to sympathize. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You meant it enough to say it,” I say quietly, tearing my eyes away from her. The irony is that Vera is always the one telling me that I’m not old, that I’m still in my thirties, that when I hit forty the forties are the new thirties. But how could she even know that? It’ll be another six years before she’s even thirty. We’re on totally different wavelengths.
I thought she’d found herself when she found me. Now I am not so sure.
“We both say things we don’t mean when we’re angry,” she explains.
I still avoid her eyes. “And why again are you angry?”
“Because I don’t like having to defend myself against something I shouldn’t. I don’t like feeling guilty for trying to live my life the only way I know how. It’s like the only time we’re really together, really a couple is when we’re both here. Other than that, our lives don’t mesh at all, and whatever way I’m living it is all completely wrong to you.”
I don’t like the tone her voice is taking, full of regret and resignation, of months of things unsaid. It makes me bleed, undoes me, to think that all this time she’s been suffering her days in some way or another, keeping her true feelings to herself.
“So what are you saying?” I ask her, my voice surprisingly level. “That you’re only mine when you’re here?” I glance at her, and she’s flicking her fingers against each other, leaning from one foot to the other. “And out there you’re free to belong to whoever?”
She stares at me for a few moments, still fidgeting. “I always belong to myself.”
“And to me second . . .” I rub my hand along the back of my neck and feel only sweat and heat. It’s getting too hard to breathe anywhere. The month is suffocating us.
“I can belong to both of us at the same time,” she says, though it sounds like she’s conceding. I watch her carefully. Her shoulders seem to relax a touch.
“Just promise me you’ll watch yourself,” I say warily.
She shoots daggers at me, back on the defensive. “I’m not fucking twelve years old.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not saying you are a child, Vera. I’m saying just have some respect for me when you’re out there, and this will all be over. We won’t have to discuss this again.”
“No, it won’t be over,” she says. “Because I do have respect for you. I’m fucking in love with you, you big idiot.”
Her words don’t have their intended effect. I turn suddenly and snatch the magazine up from the table, shoving it in her face. “This is not a picture of woman who is in love with me. This is a picture of . . .” And she is right in that we say things we don’t mean when we are angry. I at least manage to hold my words in. But she can see right through me in that uncanny way of hers.
Her pupils are shocked into pinpricks. “A drunken whore, that’s what you were going to say.”
I was not going to say that, not exactly. My thoughts had been more polite, but that was close.
“There is a difference,” I say carefully, “between being something and acting like something.”
“Is there?” she asks. “Because you’re being a chauvinistic asshole right now and acting like it, too.”
“Why don’t you call me old again, or is there no venom left in you?”
“Oh, there is plenty of venom.”
I step over to her until she’s backed against the table. She looks unnerved for a moment until I grab her hand and press it to my heart. I peer down at her, my gaze unwavering.
“This is me. This is who I am. You knew that when you met me.” I lean in closer until I feel submerged in the gold flecks of her eyes. “You know the things I care about. Pride, yes. Respect. For me. For family. For relationships. If these things cause me to be, what did you say, a chauvinistic asshole, then it can’t be of any surprise to you.”
There’s something about the way she’s staring up at me—feral and subtly violent, like a cornered wolf—that’s turning me on. The heat is no longer just the thick dusty air or the sweat on my skin, or the anger simmering in my heart—it’s a warm tidal wave pushing through the center of me. Before I know it, I’m hard and my breathing has become heavier.
It does nothing to temper the wildness in her eyes. It doesn’t have to.
“You surprise me each day,” she says, voice flinty but drawn-out. Her gaze drops to my mouth.
The pressure inside me builds, my eyelids becoming leaden. I put my hand to the back of her neck and grip her there. She’s infuriating me, this inability of hers to understand how I feel. Sometimes I feel she has less at stake in our relationship than I do, though I know that’s not always true.
“You need to understand that you’re mine,” I tell her. It comes out more as a hiss now, and my lips are at her ear, inches away from the moisture of her skin. “Only I can do this to you. No one else. Not anyone else.”
I reach down and unzip my fly. She stiffens slightly at the action, and I pause, letting her reactions cue me. She relaxes, and that’s all I need to lift her up and place her ass on the edge of the wrought iron table. It teeters a bit under her weight, but it holds.
Her eyes are now a mix of lust and fight. She’s still angry, still ready to battle. So am I. But it’s coming out in a different way now. I don’t normally associate anger with sex, so this is new to me. As I stare into her eyes, slipping my hand between her skirt and legs to push her underwear aside, I can see it surprises her too. I guess I do surprise her every day.