it’s okay. I’m just…are you sure it’s okay? This is a big move. I mean, how are they going to understand us or any of this?” I gesture to us, making wild circles with my finger in the air.
“They’ll understand, you’ll see.”
“Your mom hates me.”
“She doesn’t know you. After she meets you, really meets you, she’ll love you to pieces. Just like…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, just gives me a quick smile and nods at the ticket. “We are running a bit late though, so we should get going.”
That is the understatement of the day. Fortunately we make it, and secure our first-class seats just before the doors close.
I take a quick, furtive peek at the other passengers around us as we’re taxiing down the runway.
They’re staring at us.
Well, they’re staring at Alejo.
When they meet my eyes though, they look away.
I lean into him, my nose close to his neck. He smells like mint and oranges, whatever fancy schmancy Hermés body wash he uses. “People recognize you,” I whisper.
“They usually do,” he whispers back, stroking his chin and mugging for me. “Come on, look at this face.”
I can’t even roll my eyes at that because it’s true. “I know, but don’t you think they’re going to talk? They might recognize me, or maybe they don’t, but they’re going to wonder who I am.”
“I’m really not concerned about a bunch of passengers.”
“But I am. Should we have some story just in case?”
He sighs, closing his eyes. “I hate this,” he says softly. He lets his head fall to the side and looks at me. His eyes seem to dig straight into my heart. “Why do we have to hide? I don’t want to hide.”
“You know why,” I say quietly, making sure no one can hear us over the drone of the engine. “I don’t like it either, but that’s just the way it is.”
He searches my face and then nods reluctantly. “Okay. I don’t know. Just say you were alone at Christmas, and we’re friends and you came over for the holidays. Simple as that.”
That doesn’t sound very simple to me, but if it comes up it will have to do.
The jet takes off into the sky.
The flight goes by fairly quickly. We’re picked up at the airport in South Tenerife by a private car, but it’s fairly late and too dark to see anything. The driver zips us along a highway, and here, in the dark in the back of the car, we fold into each other.
His arm around my shoulders, my head in my favorite spot, the crevasse between his chest and his arm. Our hands entwined. I hold on to him, knowing how precious moments like this are, especially after a period where we aren’t allowed to touch each other. When I have to be apart from him like that, I become so aware of what a connection we have. My body trembles inside the way that magnets do when they’re held too close to each other.
Soon we enter the seaside fishing village of La Caleta. The moon reflects off the Atlantic, giving a sense of desolation, and the town seems to be only a few streets long. The car veers along the rock coast and comes to a stop at a set of massive gates framed by palm trees.
The gates slowly open, and the car goes through a long gravel driveway until it stops in front of a Spanish-style hacienda lined with a few weather-beaten trucks.
“This is where your aunt and uncle live?” I ask him, incredulous. “What do they do for a living.”
“He’s a fisherman,” he says, opening the door.
“And are the fish he’s catching filled with gold?”
He laughs. “I bought them the place. They’re all I have left of my father, really. They deserve it.”
Wow. Alejo is certainly putting his money to very good use. My heart warms at the thought.
“In fact,” he says as we step out of the car, “I’ve offered to buy them a place in Madrid, so we can be closer to them, but my uncle won’t give up his fish.”
“Ahhhhh!” someone yells from the house as the door opens and a whole load of people pile out. “Alejo!”
I stand back politely as the small crowd swarms around him, chattering away in highly excitable Spanish that my newbie ears can’t pick up on. There’s an elderly woman who must be in her late eighties, a middle-aged couple, an older man with white hair, two men my age or maybe older,