But I was falling for Derrin. I wasn’t quite there yet but I was well on my way. That feeling that borders on obsession, where your thoughts and body and heart crave him like water. You’re in a blissful, warm haze when he’s there and suffering in a dark hollow when he’s not. It was made even worse because I knew he was leaving. He wasn’t Mexican. He didn’t have a job here or a life. He was a visitor on these shores. There’s something so incredibly romantic and dramatic about that, the whole affair with a timeline, the impending goodbyes and heartache.
Thankfully I didn’t dwell on it too much. I wanted to enjoy the present. The past was brutal and the future was unclear but the present was brilliant. The present was in the shape of a strong, sexy man.
“I still think you should move back,” Luz told me, bringing my focus off the ocean. “You’re well on your way to recovery now. I say, move back to your place and get a cat for company.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Listen, you’re the cat lady in our friendship here, not me.’
She sighed loudly. “Fine. But I’m still going to call you every day and see if I can change your mind.”
“And I’m going to keep having hot wild sex with my soldier,” I told her. “Looks like I got the better deal out of this.”
She grumbled something and hung up.
“Did you just call me your soldier?”
I jumped in my seat, the sunscreen knocked to the floor and looked to the door where Derrin was standing there with a cocky grin on his face.
“Jesus,” I told him, hand to my chest. “How long have you been standing there?”
“The whole time.”
“How did I not hear you?”
“I can be quiet when it suits me.” He stepped onto the balcony and bent down to kiss me, soft and savory. He sat down on the other chair. I knew he wouldn’t be there for long. I guess I could blame my injuries, but I’ve always been the kind of person who can just sit for hours and hours and not move a muscle. Maybe it’s to make up for the fact that when I’m flying I’m on my feet all day.
Derrin, on the other hand, had a real problem sitting still. He was always moving. Sometimes I told him to chill out and forced him down with a beer but twenty minutes seemed to be his absolute max before he was up and doing stuff. The man just had too much energy though I was happy he was absolutely tireless in bed. The other day we’d fucked six times, included a blow-job in the bathroom of the restaurant we were at. I couldn’t get enough of him and he never seemed to tire. We made quite the team.
“So, Luz still hates me, huh?” he asked.
I gave him a sympathetic look. “She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t know you.”
“Well I tried to get to know her last night.”
“It doesn’t really help that you don’t talk much.”
“I do with you.”
“Only because I talk your ear off and you’re forced to keep up.”
He clasped his hands together, leaning forward on his elbow, his hands trailing over the gleaming skin of my legs. “So what do you want to do?”
“About Luz?”
“Today. What do you want to do today?”
There were a bunch of things I wanted to do. Most of them involved his dick. I think he knew this.
“Aside from the usual?”
He nodded and tried to wipe the grin from his face. “Yeah. Want to go check out the market in the old town?”
“The one that goes over the bridge? You planning on buying overpriced crap?”
He shrugged. “I’m a tourist aren’t I?”
Don’t remind me, I thought.
An hour later we were getting out of a cab onto the congested cobblestone streets of the old town. We would have taken the rental car – he had gotten a super sexy Mustang – but parking in that area of the city was a total bitch.
Today was no exception. It seemed every tourist, expat, gay lovers on vacation, and locals were out and about. It gave me a sense of purpose, vitality. I had slipped on a light batik-print sundress for the outing and even though I now had a walking cast on my leg, at least the doctor was able to put a black one on so it looked a bit sleeker. Okay, it probably didn’t, but it made me feel better. Plus it made it much easier to get around. I didn’t have to use crutches or lean on Derrin as I had been doing.
Despite that though, he still grabbed my hand. The intimacy of it all surprised me. It sounded absurd after ten days of fucking and sleeping tangled together and cuddling and kissing and all that wonderful stuff. But this simplest gesture was so pure and so proud. As he led me through the crowd to the market stalls, I felt like he was showing me off to the world.
How pathetic was I that this was the first time I’d felt that? That I felt someone was proud to be with me?
I blinked back the hot, sentimental tears that wanted to fall down my face. I didn’t want him to know how he was affecting me. He was starting fires in my soul from kindling I thought would never burn.
We walked along for a bit and I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this happy – if I had ever felt this happy. It was like everything before this moment was a blank slate. Even all the bad, the horrible, the sorrowful things, I felt like they couldn’t hurt me anymore. There was just me and Derrin, walking on a hot day through the old town of Puerto Vallarta, taking in the smells of fried tortillas and salty ocean breezes. Mariachi music drifting in from restaurants where tourists were smiling awkwardly, trying to get them to go away.
Eventually we found ourselves in one of them, ordering half-priced margaritas. In my purse I had some pickled chili peppers I picked up at the market. We dipped warm from the oven chips into fresh green salsa and ate them with juice running down our chins.
With a bit of a day buzz going on, we decided to try and walk back to the hotel. We’d go through the town on the Malecon and then walk north along the beach. If we got tired, we’d walk two steps to the nearest hotel and get a drink. It had all the markings of a perfect day. It was the perfect day.
We were walking through the town square, past the iconic church tower, when he squeezed my hand and said, “You know what, Alana?”
“What?” I loved the sound of my name with his raspy accented voice.
“Back in Minnesota, we have a saying that’s pretty applicable right now.”