Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad #2) (33 page)

Which is why I’m trudging through the frigid cold to accept María Carmen’s invitation.

My stomach is in knots. Yeah, I’m a little nervous about seeing her.

But I’m really nervous about seeing
him
. Javier. I know he’s written a lot of new material, and no doubt he and his as-yet-unnamed band are really ramping up their practice time. If some higher power takes pity on me, he won’t be there tonight.

I don’t know how I’m going to keep it together if I have to share a space with his deep, rumbling voice echoing off the church’s frescoed walls and ceiling. It’s going to kill me.

Carmen is waiting for me in the entrance hall. She’s wearing skinny black slacks and high-heeled pumps, her long, shampoo-commercial hair perfectly coiffed. She looks chicer than ever.

I glance down at my jeans and scuffed up boots. I let out a sigh of defeat.

As if today could get any worse.

“Maddie, I am so glad you came,” she says, kissing my cheeks.

I offer her a tight smile, hoisting my backpack further onto my shoulder. “Thanks for the invite. I really appreciate your help with my thesis.”

“I want to apologize again.” She takes my arms in her hands and looks me in the eye. “I meant what I said in my email. Every word of it. I am aghast at myself.”

Aghast.
It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. This girl and her faux cut-glass English—really, it’s too much.

“Javier is completely blameless,” she says. “It’s important that you understand that.”

I look away. “Did he put you up to this?”

“No. Yes, I spoke with him after—well. After the incident. But I always intended to apologize, whether or not Javier and I talked. I’m not that sort of woman, Maddie. I’m not one of those…how do you call them in English?”

“Home wreckers?” I reply tartly.

She struggles not to flinch at the word. “Yes. I am not a home wrecker. I only want to see Javier happy. And from what he told me, you make him very happy indeed.”

I meet her eyes. The hurt I see there only makes them more beautiful.

“Thank you,” I say at last. “I appreciate that.”

She gives my arms a squeeze. “Come on up, then. The church is all yours this evening.”

We climb the stairs, tingly excitement spreading through me as I take in my gorgeous surroundings. The marble, the plasterwork, the tapestries that line the gallery walls—the monastery is a visual feast.
 

How am I ever going to narrow it down to
one
topic for my thesis?

I am beginning to despair when I smell something—a warm, familiar smell, something savory. It gets stronger the closer we get to the church.

“Are you cooking?” I ask.

Carmen’s lips draw into a small smile. “You’ll see.”

“Carmen.” I slow my gait. “What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.”

My heart skips a beat when I hear the first notes of a song through the church’s closed doors.

A
country
song. An honest-to-goodness country song.

Ohmigod.

“Ohmigod,” I say.

I reach for the door, my hand trembling.

“Go in,” Carmen urges. “I promise you will like what is inside.”

I open the door. Javier is up on stage, leading his band in a rousing, flamenco-style remix of a country song. Leo grins as he humps the air in time to the beat.

For a minute I just stand there, dumbstruck. My pulse beats an uneven note in the back of my throat.

Javier is up on stage, and the Madrileñas—all of them, plus Rafa and Rhys and my señora, Stella—are gathered around a long table at the front of the theater.

I know what I smelled before. It’s my grandmother’s stuffing. I see a big casserole dish of it set out on the table, along with mashed potatoes and bowl of something green. Salad, maybe?

In place of a turkey, there’s a giant leg of jamón íberico—Spaniards
love
their pork products—which Rafa patiently carves, handing out paper-thin slices of salty goodness as he goes.

“Mads!” Laura shouts around a mouthful of that jamón, smiling. “Happy Thanksgiving, chica!”

Viv waves at me. “Stop staring and come eat!”

But I can’t. I can’t stop staring.

I can’t stop staring at Javier. He smiles at me, a blinding, full-face, slightly embarrassed smile that grows as he stumbles over a lyric.

He looks delicious in a (tight!) white henley and beat-up jeans, his hipster wave of dark hair slicked back. The muscles in his thick forearms bulge against his tan skin as he plays his gleaming black acoustic guitar.

My eyes prick with tears.

Javier leaps off the stage, still playing the song as he moves up the aisle toward me, still singing about the timelessness of his love for his lady, the ease of it.

The comfort of it.

I feel faint.

María Carmen places a hand on the small of my back, urging me forward.

“Go,” she murmurs. “Go to him, Madeline.”

For the first time, I don’t resist my need for Javier. My desire for him.

I go. I feel so light doing it, I feel such overwhelming relief, that I start to cry.

Javier finishes the song as we meet in the middle of the aisle. He’s still smiling that handsome-hot smile, the one that makes me feel weak in the knees, and then he swings his guitar onto his back and reaches for my face, guitar pick still wedged between his fingers, and plants a big fat kiss on my lips.

My friends—well,
our
friends, I guess—erupt in cheers behind us. Even María Carmen gives a very uncharacteristic hoot of approval.

The kiss leaves me breathless, the way his kisses always do, and when he pulls away I am glad he presses his forehead to mine. It’s the only thing that keeps me from falling over.

“Javier,” I plead.

“Have I convinced you to allow me to finally explain myself?”

I scoff. “Yes. Yes.”

“I’ve been waiting to hear that word from you,” he says, and even though my eyes are closed, I can tell by the warm sound of his voice that he’s grinning. “I know you’re scared, mujer, you don’t want to care because when you do, you always care too much. You’re passionate. I’ve known that from the start about you. It’s one of the things that made me fall so hard, and so quickly.”

I swallow. “It did happen fast, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says.

“And now I care too much about you.”

“Not any more than I care about you. Maddie, you’re home. You’re everything I’ve been looking for. Everything I’ve missed. You are my home, and I would never,
ever
betray that—the home we’ve begun to build together. It’s too precious. María Carmen, the kiss—it was all a misunderstanding. I was an idiot. I thought kissing her back might keep me from missing you. It only made me miss you more. I’m in love with
you
. It’s always been you. Only you.”

I open my eyes, meet his gaze. “I’ve been busy making plans for us to be together,” he continues. “Concrete plans, Maddie, not just ideas. I know you have to be home next semester, so I bought a plane ticket to the states at the end of January. I’ll come earlier, too, and help you and your mum pack up your house if you’d like. I checked out your university’s schedule for next semester, and you have a nice chunk of time off in March—perhaps you might come back here? Do a little more research while you’re at it? I even cleared a bit of space for your stuff in my closet. I’m willing to fly back and forth as often as you’d like until we can both be in the same city again. Even if I have to practice with the band over Skype, I’ll do it if it means being with you. If one of us has to move, then so be it. I love you. You love me. We’re going to make this work, come hell or high water.”

There are tears in his eyes. He’s trying. He’s making plans for us to be together. The forever kind of together.

The happily ever after kind of together.

“I am so scared, Javi,” I wheeze. “That’s a lot to commit to.”

He holds me closer against him, so close I can hear the dull thump of his heart. “I love all of you. The passionate parts. The pukey parts. I love all of you. Let me love you, guapa. Let me commit to you. I want you to have your own foot pussies that you keep under the bed next to mine. I want you to be happy. I want to be with you, Maddie, any way that I can. This is
our
life we’re talking about—not your parents’. Our life will be different, I can promise you that. I can promise you that nothing matters more to me than your happiness.”

“Say yes!” someone—I think it’s Katie—shouts. “Say yes so we can eat already!”

I laugh, I let myself laugh, and then I open my eyes and look into Javier’s and I kiss him, I grind my hips into his and I kiss his fucking adorable face.

When I come up for air, I glance over his shoulder. “But how did you do all this?
Why?
”

“I knew you’d be missing home today. So I had Viv get some recipes from your mum. She said your favorite was the stuffing. We couldn’t find the right sausage though, so we had to use chorizo. Hope that’s okay.”

“Who’s
we
?”

Javier looks down at me. “Leo and Rhys. You wouldn’t think it, but that footballer is quite the chef.”

“And the country song? What possessed you to learn that?”

He shrugs. “You’ve made me a convert. I’m a bit obsessed with country now. Mostly the older stuff—”

“Yeah,” I say. “Nothing beats Johnny Cash.”

His smile fades. “Do you forgive me?”

I wrap my arms around his neck. “I do. Of course I do. If you forgive me, too.”

“Vale.” He bends his arm and grabs my hand, leading me toward the table. “I’ve got a gift for you.”

“Besides the country music and the Thanksgiving dinner with my friends?”

He grins. “An early birthday present, if you will.”

Of course.

Of course Javier remembered my birthday, even though I only mentioned it once, and in a text message no less.

Vivian, beaming, ducks underneath the table and produces a box, wrapped in glittery paper. She hands it to Javier, who hands it to me.

“Viv helped me with the size,” he says as he watches me open it. “I hope they fit properly.”

I open the box. Nestled inside is a pair of the fuzziest, coziest looking slippers I have ever seen, complete with shearling and soft, velvety suede.

“Those foot pussies I was talking about,” Javier explains. “Your own pair.”

“Foot pussies?” Laura wrinkles her nose.

“That sounds fun,” Rachel says.

“Pussies are
always
fun,” Katie says.

I bite my lip, tucking the box under my arm. “Thank you, Javi. I love them. They’re perfect.”

“Later,” he murmurs in my ear as I lean in for a kiss. “I’d like see you in those pussies—
only
the pussies.”

I grin. “Should we try the kitchen again? The island is still virgin territory.”

He grins, too. “We
did
eat there together.”

“Eat?” I cock a brow. “Pun intended?”

“Pun always intended. C’mon, let’s try this famous stuffing and then get the hell out of here—my jeans just got
tight all of the sudden.”

Epilogue

Maddie

December

The Cessna bounces off the runway once, twice, and then we’re on the ground, groaning to a stop.

My heart is in my throat; my ribs ache from laughing so hard. It never stops being a thrill, losing gravity with Javier. Sitting next to him in this tiny plane with our legs pressed together, talking, teasing, looking out the windows at the city below, the city that has become my new home.

Falling for him, with him, never stops being fun.

I look at Javier, his profile limned in the setting sun’s golden light. Sharp nose, full lips, square chin. His stubble burns from black to red as he pilots the plane with confident ease. He’s ridiculously handsome. Hot. Handsome-hot. I still can’t believe he’s my boyfriend. I still can’t believe that he loves me, loves me hard and thoroughly and unconditionally.

I also can’t believe that Javier agreed to come home with me to Atlanta for Christmas and New Year’s. Mom is super excited to meet him, and of course she’s excited to have the extra help packing up the house. Javier and I already have plans—like, bought our plane tickets and everything—to see each other once every two months or so next semester. If all goes well (and I think it will!), I’ll head back to Madrid for the whole summer—my dad has turned a new leaf and is coming around to the idea—which gives me plenty of time to continue the work on my thesis. And plenty of time, of course, to bone/hang out with my studly Spanish boytoy.

Vale. A thousand million times
vale
.

Javier turns his head. He smiles, the dimples on either side of his mouth deepening. “You get what you needed?”

“I did.” I glance at the camera case, wedged between my feet. “Now that I know what I’m looking for, it’s much easier to get the right shots.”