Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad #2) (16 page)

We wrap up with “The Girl”, and after that the guys pack up their instruments and head out with promises they’ll learn the new music by this weekend. Leo lingers a bit until his kinda-sorta booty call texts him, and then he exits the building like it’s on fire.

Maddie is standing by the organ, clutching her notebook to her chest as she looks up at it.

“I can play that, you know,” I say, stopping to stand beside her.

She jumps at the sound of my voice, dropping her pen.

“Sorry!” she yelps. We bend down at the same time. Our fingers brush as we reach for it, a small, singeing touch. It’s fleeting, our contact, but my skin pulses with the heated aftershocks of it nonetheless.

Heat I haven’t felt in a long time.

I look up. So does she. We’re crouched on the floor, our faces less than two inches apart. Her eyes flick to my lips. I could be imagining it, but I think her gaze darkens, gleaming with a sharp edge of interest.

Her nostrils flare. She breathes in. Breathes out. It sounds like the ocean, her breath, battering against the bulkhead of whatever it is she resists inside her.

The scent of her coconut shampoo fills my head, blocking out anything else. Any rational thought.

Any thought other than
holy shit I want to kiss this girl. Now. I want to kiss her hard and I want to kiss her well and I want her to cry into my mouth when she comes. When I make her come again and again and again.

Maddie is wearing pink lip gloss, the same shade that clung to her lips that night at Ático. She’s as sexy tonight in her leggings and sweater as she was in that teeny-tiny joke of a dress.

Sexier, because I know her now. I know she loves this monastery and she loves my band. I know how much she’s enjoying my world here in Madrid.

Is there anything sexier than that?

But then she blinks and I blink and suddenly I’m aware of how close we are. We’re way too close. I’m too close to a girl who is definitely not the girl I want.

I want Carmen. I want a forever girl. And I’m not doing myself any favors by indulging in a little heated eye contact with a twenty-year old American who’s leaving Madrid in a month’s time. Not when I’m determined to settle down here, make a home with someone who’s in it for the long haul.

I also told Carmen I’d call her at ten, so I really should get going. You definitely don’t want to be late for any kind of date with her.

“Got it.” I swipe the pen off the floor and leap to my feet a little too enthusiastically. I hold out my hand to help her to her feet. She doesn’t take it.

“Thanks,” she says. She grabs the pen, careful not to let her fingers touch my hand.

Good.
It’s a good thing that Maddie keeps her distance.

Even if my pulse thuds in disappointment, I know it’s a good thing that Maddie and I stick strictly to business. The thesis-kind of business, obviously, not the kind you engage in without your pants on.

But yikes we were really good at that kind.

Not that it matters.

I want Carmen, and Maddie wants…well. She wants what she wants. It’s not me, and it’s not love.

I clear my throat. Maddie crosses her arms. A beat of awkward silence passes between us.

“So you can play this thing, huh?” she says at last, glancing up at the organ.

“No,” I shake my head, scoffing, and shove my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “I was just fooling with you. I definitely can’t play the organ. I mean. Wouldn’t learning it be kind of a bad idea? It’d be like picking up Latin. Completely pointless.”

“Not pointless.” Maddie meets my eyes, fighting a grin. “They still use these things a lot, actually. I’d learn how to play it for sure.”

“Yes, but you’re a history nerd, so you don’t count.”

“Point taken,” she says. She looks back up at the instrument. “It’s just so…big. Monumental. Ha! That’s what she said.”

I grin. “Now who’s the perv?”

“Oh, you’re not getting off the hook that easily, Uncle P.”

I glance at her notebook. While her handwriting is so pretty it looks like a computer font, the notes themselves are a bit messy. Lots of circled passages, arrows pointing up, arrows pointing down, arrows connecting a line at the top of the page with one at the bottom. There are a few drawings, too, rough but well constructed. It’s very Word-document-meets-Jackson-Pollock, if you will.

I should go. I have to call Carmen.

But I find myself wanting to linger with Maddie a bit longer.

“Any light bulbs go off tonight?” I say.

Maddie lets out a sigh, shaking her head. “Nothing yet. I’m still absorbing it all. It’s really wonderful that there is so much to see—so much to talk about, you know? But at some point—if I want to use the monastery in my thesis—I’m going to have to narrow my focus. Pick one thing and run with it.”

“Right. The picking isn’t going to be easy,” I nod. “I’m a bit of a history nerd myself—”

“I’ve noticed.” She smiles.

“And I’ve noticed that everything in this building fascinates you. The architecture. The acoustics. The music played here. The art and the sculpture and, well…” I look up at the organ. “This dinosaur of an instrument. It’s all worth studying, but you’d need several lifetimes for that. So you have to choose. Only once you pick, it will be difficult not to imagine being more inspired by what you didn’t pick.”

“Yes. Exactly. Grass is greener kind of thing.”

I meet her gaze. My pulse skips a beat at the flash of interest in her eyes.

Carmen
. I need to think about Carmen, dammit! Her eyes are pretty too. Really pretty.

But I’ve never seen them light up the way Maddie’s do.

“We should get going,” I blurt.

“Oh. Yeah, yeah, definitely,” she says, the faintest blush reddening her cheeks. “Sorry. It’s easy for me to forget myself when I’m—um. When I’m here. At the monastery, I mean. With you—you and the band and everything…”

“No worries,” I say.

That’s a lie. I am worried.

Worried about the way Maddie looked at me. Really
looked
. With intention and interest.

I’m worried she might have seen the same things in my eyes when I looked back.

Which is ludicrous, because there are several very good reasons why I shouldn’t be looking at Maddie like that. Maddie, the girl who prefers drama and one night stands. Maddie, the girl who doesn’t care to know who I am or what I want.

Maddie, the girl who couldn’t be more different from Carmen, the girl I
do
want.

I came back to Madrid to build a home.
 

Maddie came to Madrid to run away from hers.

Even if I wanted her—which I don’t—we’d never work. Period.

End of story.

***

Maddie

Javier and I are both quiet on the way home. I’m glad it’s dark so he can’t see how red my face is; it’s practically on fire.

Something happened between us tonight at the monastery. Something changed, shifted.

And I think it’s my fault.

I told myself I wasn’t interested in Javier. I’m not interested in
anyone
. I’m definitely not interested in letting anyone in—letting them see how shitty I feel about myself and my life in general these days. No one wants to deal with that ish.

Least of all Javier Montoya, señor-I’m-looking-for-love sappypants. I have no doubt he and María Carmen will ride off into the Spanish sunset in the very near future to make beautiful memories and even more beautiful babies.

Javier’s got his shit together. He knows what he wants, and it certainly isn’t me.

Tonight I kept my eyes on the prize and focused on research for my thesis. But then Javier started opening doors for me and laughing at my jokes and checking me out when he thought I wasn’t looking. He smiled at me from the stage and protected me from Leo’s pelvis and asked me to go flying with him.

He made me feel like a million bucks. Like I was
worth
a million bucks. Like I was interesting and intelligent and sexy.

I haven’t felt that way in a really,
really
long time. And honestly? It was wonderful. So wonderful I allowed myself to bask in the feeling longer than I should have. I let down my defenses, and somehow, in the space of two freaking hours, Javier managed to work his way inside my skin.

He saw it in my face—I know he did—when I looked at him after we almost-nearly kissed. He saw the longing I feel, stupidly, for him.

Longing I knew he doesn’t feel for anyone but Carmen.

I embarrassed him, and I embarrassed myself, too. He’s just trying to be nice, just trying to do his nephew a favor. And here I am, mooning at him like a lovesick teenager. Ick.

I leave Javier with a quick “hasta luego”
(“see you later”) before bounding up the stairs to my señora’s apartment. My heart pops around inside my chest like a panicked ping-pong ball. Viv is gone; Rafa’s parents are out of town, meaning she’ll be spending the night at his apartment. It’s just me and our tiny trundle that Vivian and I affectionately dubbed “the marital bed”.

I set my stuff down, pace the room as I shoot off some texts; I fold some clothes. I can’t sit still. I can’t stop thinking about Javier, the way he smelled like cinnamon mints and soap. The way he made me feel like…like everything was possible, I guess.

Finally I throw open my laptop and sit down at the rickety desk beside the bed. I pull the notes I took tonight out of my bag and set them next to the laptop. Then I open a blank Word document and pluck the cap off a pen with my teeth.

The only thing that might take my mind off Javier is writing this goddamned thesis. Medieval architecture thrills me
almost
as much as Javier’s deliciously broad shoulders do.

Almost.

I begin to type.

I slipped up tonight. I can’t—I won’t—let it happen again.

Chapter 12

Javier

Saturday Night

María Carmen slides into the chair I hold out for her, offering me a high-wattage smile in thanks. Making my way around our table, I glare at the man across the aisle who’s been ogling Carmen since we arrived an hour ago for cocktails.

I’d forgotten what it’s like being out with her. The stares, the cat calls, the universal and voracious interest in her every move. I lost count how many fistfights I’d gotten into over Carmen at bars and discotecas when we were younger. I hated the way men felt it was their prerogative—their right—to look at my girlfriend like she was a piece of meat.

Even now my hands curl into fists underneath the table, the hair at the back of my neck prickling with testosterone-laced awareness. I don’t fight anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t shoot a “back the fuck off” look at every guy who passes.

“Javi,” Carmen is saying. “Javi, you don’t have to do that.”

She’s still smiling as she watches me, her bright red lipstick making her teeth appear fluorescently white.

“Do what?”

“Toss those daggers in your eyes at everyone in the restaurant. Really, it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right,” I growl, picking up my menu. “How does Pedro feel about the way other men look at you?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure he even notices.”

That’s bullshit,
I say in Spanish.
He’s your boyfriend. How could he not care?

Javi
,
the cursing—please
. She frowns at me.
 

Sorry
, I murmur.
I just don’t understand how it doesn’t drive him crazy.

I remember it drove you crazy
, she says. She’s smiling again.
 

What can I say
? I smile back.
I was crazy about you.

In the low light of the restaurant, her eyes are soft, almost black.
I was crazy about you, too. I miss those days. We had a lot of fun together, didn’t we?

I feel myself leaning into her pull, and for a second I think she’s leaning toward me, too, her perfume—
orange blossom
, she’d called it, some fancy stuff from London—tickling my nose.

Some of the best times of my life
, I say.

Me too
, she says.

I pass Carmen the wine list, and she orders a bottle of something French that sounds very expensive. I guess I also forgot how…well, pricey her taste is. Even when we were teenagers, she liked her fancy things. I remember blowing every single Euro I earned one summer as an usher at a local cinema on a sapphire and diamond necklace for her. I don’t think she even liked it—I saw her wear it maybe once—but I remember how proud I was, how nervous, to buy something so nice for my girl.

The restaurant is packed and gets louder and louder as the hours pass. By the time we finish with our food and the wine, we’re leaning so far over the table Carmen and I are practically in each other’s faces; it’s the only way we can hear each other. We talk about our jobs, our parents, our past. I make her laugh, the familiar sound making my chest swell.