Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad #2) (31 page)

Please
, I pray.
Please, God, let me forget.

That’s when I hear it—my name, spoken in a voice so tight it warbles.

“Javier?”

My blood turns to ice. It can’t be. I haven’t heard from her—she left me, she hates me, she’s gone—

No.
Oh, Christ, no.

My eyes snap open. Maddie stands in the aisle a few feet away. I see the shape of her fists, shoved into her pockets, through the shiny green fabric of that adorably ridiculous puffer jacket she wears.

A slow, splotchy creep of red spreads over her face. Her eyes fill with tears. I’m so angry with myself for making her cry—for being such an idiot dickhead—that I can’t breathe.

***

Maddie

So much for surprising Javier. Looks like he’s the one intent on surprising
me.

The confetti-filled joy I felt five seconds ago—
I’m in love, I was brave enough to let him in, I am brave enough to tell him, I’m in love!—
turns to ash in my mouth.

The way I just saw Javier kissing María Carmen—that was no accident, no ordinary kiss. He was holding her face in his hands, his eyes clenched shut as if he were swept up in the passion of that kiss, its heat.

As if he believed in it.

He kissed me like that. How special and safe and
wanted
he made me feel with his lips on my lips.

I guess he kisses
everyone
like the world is ending.

Pain, blinding, acute, sucks the air from my lungs. For a minute I think I’m going to be sick.

I grab the back of a nearby seat. I don’t trust my knees to hold me up.

I blink, trying to clear my eyes. I want so badly for this to be a dream, for this to be something other than what it clearly is, oh, God, I
want it so badly
it makes my whole being hurt.

I wanted so badly to be wrong about Carmen’s text.

But I was right. Javier wants Carmen, even though he told me I was the one he wanted.
 

And that fact makes me feel like dying.

Javier jumps to his feet.

“Maddie,” he says. His lips are swollen, red. “Oh my God, Maddie.”

He moves, reaching for me, but I fall back as if he’d hit me.

The hurt in his eyes darkens them, makes them look almost black in the dim light of the theater.

“Please, guapa—”

I hold up a hand. “No. No, Javier.”

María Carmen ducks her head to look at me around Javier’s shoulder. Her pretty face contracts, like she’s about to cry.

“It was all my fault, Maddie. I promise you, I was the one who kissed Javier. Not the other way around.”

I look at Javier. When I speak, my voice is soft. Quiet. “But you kissed her back. I saw you kissing her back, Javier.”

“I was trying to forget you! I kissed her back because I can’t forget you, Maddie!” He spears a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Maddie, I’m going crazy thinking about you. Wanting you. I kissed Carmen because I thought I’d lost you.”

I shake my head, closing my eyes.

“You just did,” I say. “You just did lose me. I came to apologize for not giving you a chance to explain yourself the other morning. But now—now I’m not sorry anymore. I’m glad I left.”

“You came to apologize?” he says.

I open my eyes. Meet his. “I did. I also came to tell you that I’m in love with you.”

His features contort with pain.

Because I’m in love with him—because he’s
home
—that pain makes my own pulse brighter.

“Maddie,” he says roughly.

“Maddie,” Carmen is saying. “Listen to what I tell you. This was all my fault. Blame me, please, Javier is innocent.”
 

But I’m already turning away, my steps even as I walk back up the aisle toward the doors at the back of the theater.

My heart may throb and my eyes are burning, but I walk—I don’t run.

I walk away because it’s clear Javier doesn’t love me, and I deserve that now.

I’m done running because I know I deserve to love and be loved in return.

Chapter 25

Maddie

I’m hit with a rush of cold, clear night air as I step out onto the sidewalk. My eyes sting with tears—from the cold, from Javier—but I keep going, careful to stay away from the street.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, how I’m going to cope. But right now I just need to put one foot in front of the other and get the
ef
out of this place.

I’ll figure everything else out later.

My tears blur the world around me, dots of white, red, blue-edged darkness; it’s like looking through a camera lens before it snaps into focus.

The closest Metro stop isn’t far. I’ll take the red line to Retiro, maybe hunker down with my thesis and a cappuccino tonight—

A hand wraps around my arm, tugging me to a stop.

I turn to see Javier, breathing hard, as huge and handsome-hot as ever as he hovers above me, his shoulders blocking out the light from a nearby street lamp.

“For Christ’s sake, Maddie, let me explain myself,” he says.

His breath clouds around his head, a halo of grey against the indigo sky.

“There’s nothing to explain.” I offer him a tight smile. “I wish you the best, Javier, I do. I just…I wish you hadn’t lied to me about it.”

“I’m not in love with Carmen.”

I roll my eyes. “That line is getting really old.”

“You know what’s getting old?” he says. “You running from me every time you get scared. Stop being such a child and talk to me. Stay and fucking fight, Maddie. You say you love me, but you aren’t willing to fight for it. For us.”

“I’m not running from you this time,” I say. “I’m walking. I’m walking away because you don’t want me. You want Carmen, Javier. Or maybe you just want a bunch of women to swoon over you. Maybe you just want the attention, I don’t know. Just leave me alone already.”

“I don’t—” He pauses, runs a hand down his face. A second later a heated torrent of Spanish escapes from his lips. I’ve never heard him talk like this, spitting out angry curses left and right. He speaks so quickly and with such a thick Madrileño accent I can hardly make out what he’s saying. Something about fucking and Americans?
 

“I kissed Carmen because I’m a mess over you!” he shouts. “You have to give me a little credit here, Maddie. You’ve blocked my calls and my texts. I’ve tried calling you a
lot
. And then all of the sudden you show up out of the blue and tell me…Christ. Maddie, I can’t sleep. I can’t think about anyone or anything else. I smoked half a pack of cigarettes…”

I blink. Swallow. “Well. Your choices are your own fault.”

“I know.” He runs a hand across his face again “I just couldn’t help myself.”

I look away. “You couldn’t help yourself with María Carmen, either.”

“You’re not listening to me, Maddie.”

The bitterness of his betrayal—of losing him like this—and the sad, puppy dog look on his face makes my chest burn with anger.

“You’re a real piece of work,” I say. “I’m supposed to be the broken one. But here you are, saying you want commitment, saying you want to find your happily ever after and make a home with someone. Saying you want all that with
me
. Then you can’t even keep your dick in your pants for a fucking
week
? What the hell, Javi?”

“What about you?” Javier steps closer. He’s seething now, heat radiating off his body. “Leo reads the gossip columns—”

“Of course he does.”

“And apparently a ‘pretty brunette’ was spotted getting friendly with Guillermo Torres the other night at Ático. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? Considering Torres’ friend Rhys Maddox was there, too, with your girl Laura?”

I bite the inside of my bottom lip. “That’s different.”

“Fuck me it is!”

“I never promised you anything, Javier. I told you how I felt. I told you we couldn’t be together. I’ve been honest with you since day one. But you—you made me feel safe. Went out of your way to make me feel like I could trust you. You said you loved me. Love is forever, Javier. But four days later you’re already breaking that promise.”

His shoulders rise and fall as he breathes in, breathes out. His face is so handsome and I love it so much I want to pinch it. Kiss it.

Sit on it.

But I won’t. I won’t spend another moment entertaining the possibility of forever with someone who doesn’t want me.

“You used me,” I say. “You got what you wanted. So let me go. Please, Javier, let me go.”

“
I
used
you
?” He takes a step toward me. “Are you fucking serious? From the day you met me
you’ve
been using
me
.”

My heart blares, a painful, panicked beat. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I love you, but the way you seek out random guys, doing what you do—I think you hate yourself. Maddie, you think you’re garbage. I don’t know why.
I
know you are passionate and generous and kind. But you don’t see yourself that way. You think you need to be punished for causing your parents’ divorce, even though we both know you didn’t. You keep everyone at arm’s length—you only go in for one night stands—because you think you deserve to be lonely. And yet you deserve so much more than that, guapa. I hate that you used me to hurt yourself.”

I close my eyes against a fresh burn of tears.

“
I
hate your implication that a girl doesn’t sleep around just because she wants to,” I say. “Just because it feels good. You’re saying that a girl sleeps around because she must be damaged somehow. Fucked up.”

Javier stares at me. “Of course a girl can sleep around if she wants to. Same as a guy. I don’t hold that against you—against girls, I mean. Have all the sex you want, as long as it’s
empowering
. But for you, Maddie—I don’t think hooking up makes you feel any better. I think it makes you feel worse. Right now, anyway.”

Of course he’s right.

Hooking up used to be fun. Before shit went down with my dad, I totally enjoyed a little love ’em and leave ’em action.

But this semester? I’ve used sex as a weapon. Not against the guys I sleep with, but against myself.

I understand that now, and I was going to break that bad habit by giving Javier a chance.

What an idiot I was to think he’d come through.

“Well then,” I say. “All the more reason for you to be with Carmen.”

“Maddie,” he pleads, his anger softening. “I don’t know what else I can say to convince you that that kiss didn’t mean
anything
. I love you. Christ, I love you.”

I close my eyes again. “I want to believe you, Javier. I do. But I can’t. It’s done. We’re done, we both know that.”

A car trundles past, its muffler clanking against the cobblestone street. My head hurts. I want to go home, lick my wounds. Cry until next week. Next year, really.

I open my eyes. The car is actually a taxi, the crusty sign on its roof lit up.

I move toward it, raising my arm to hail the driver.

“Guapa,” Javier is calling in Spanish.
Guapa, please don’t run from me again. Please stay. Stay.

I’m shaking so hard I can’t open the car door.

Javier is at my side in half a heartbeat, opening it for me.

“You’re really going home?” he says.

I look at him. “I thought my home was with you, Javi. But I guess I don’t have one anymore.”

You’re tearing me apart
, he says.

“Now you know how it feels,” I say, swiping the pads of my fingers underneath my eyes.

There’s nothing I can do to make you stay?
he asks.

I shake my head.

He hesitates. I can smell him, the clean scent of his skin and the spice of the cinnamon on his breath.

“Fuck.” He lands his fist on the roof of the cab. The driver erupts in a string of Spanish curses. Javier doesn’t seem to notice.

He closes the door.

The car stalls when the driver tries to jam it into gear.

I watch as Javier walks away, his slumped shoulders limned in the yellow light put off by the street lamp. Something about the way those shoulders narrow into a taut waist—something about the long, muscular lines of his back—makes my heart curl in on itself.

The taxi jerks into motion.

It’s a long ride home.

***

Javier

The Next Week

I miss her.

I stare down the pack of cigarettes on my kitchen counter. I bought it yesterday, when I couldn’t take it anymore and thought filling my lungs with nicotine and carbon monoxide and all that other horrible shit might empty the rest of my body of
her
.

Maddie Lucas.

The girl whose tender heart I unintentionally ripped out and stepped on. Even now the memory of her face, twisted with hurt and disbelief, makes me wince.