Chapter 16
“Are you seducing me?”
“Do I need to?” I asked nervously. I wanted to. I wanted to have all of him, while I could.
Iván trailed his fingers down my arm. “No, you don’t need to. I want you all the time, but the chemise is very nice.” Now his fingers drifted across my nipples. “Very nice.”
“I have to tell you something first. It’s just so you don’t take things personally.” My nerves increased.
“I feel like we’re about to do something very personal.”
“We are, so I want to tell you.” Now I was swallowing. “Sometimes I kind of check out,” I said finally. “It won’t have anything to do with you.”
His fingers stopped. “Check out? What does that mean?”
“I just…go somewhere else in my head. During sex. I don’t even know what’s been happening, sometimes.”
“You never did that before, when we were kissing, touching.” His forehead crinkled. “Did you and I didn’t notice?”
“No!” Strangely, I hadn’t. “But we never went all the way, so I just don’t want you to think that you did something wrong. I can’t really control it.” I bit my lip. “No, that’s not true. I never tried to control it.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“I guess I never had the greatest experiences with sex. It’s always been easier to avoid it.”
“You don’t mean physically avoid it.” Iván’s voice was a growl. “You mean, that man did what he wanted to you while you lay there and made your mind escape.” Every muscle in his body clenched in anger and I didn’t know who it was for.
“That’s not what I mean. Robin would have stopped if I asked him to. Don’t be mad at me, please. I’m trying to explain. It was before.”
Iván visibly got himself under control. “What do you mean, ‘It was before?’ What happened before?”
Little snatches of memories drifted through my mind. The door opening. Footsteps. “It’s all over now. It was a long, long time ago and it won’t happen again,” I explained calmly. “There’s nothing that can be done.” How many times had I told myself this? “Even if the police could find them, the statute of limitations is already up,” I heard myself say.
“Them? Maura.”
From the look on his face, I thought he was going to cry. “I’m ok,” I told him. “I’m definitely ok. It was a long time ago.”
I ended up telling Iván everything. I hadn’t ever, not to anyone. He got up after a while to get me a glass of water and then later, a cold cloth to put on my swollen eyes. I had cried a lot, and I hadn’t been able to stop it. Sometime in the early morning I fell asleep, and when Iván’s phone started chiming with his alarm not too much later, neither of us was ready for the day.
“Stay in bed,” he said, disentangling himself from me, his voice hoarse and rough. He looked exhausted. “Come over to the pool later after you sleep more.”
I sat up, my hair tumbling around my face. I felt like I had done a triathlon—every muscle in my body ached. I listened to Iván getting dressed, unnaturally clumsy and loud. He sat on the bed before he left and hugged me. “I’ll call you. Will you answer?”
I felt terrible that he needed to ask me that. What kind of unreliable person was I, to make him worry? “I will. I’ll call you, too.” He didn’t seem to want to leave. “Go,” I told him. “I’ll sleep and come down to the pool, like you said. Go.”
But when he left, I couldn’t get back to sleep. All these years, I had thought that I couldn’t remember, and that it was better to make myself forget. I thought I had successfully put it away, stored it up neatly, and moved on.
It hadn’t worked, what I tried to do with my life. There were bad things that I’d tried to box up and ignore, but I hadn’t controlled them by doing that—they were still there, as much as I didn’t want them to be. My life hadn’t been all darkness and misery, not by a long shot. There were plenty of good things, too. Why had I wanted to forget them? Was it better to try to make the slate clean even of the happy times, the decent people, the love I’d experienced? I started to think that I didn’t want to let those good things go anymore, even if the memories could hurt.
I felt a little strange, kind of confused. I also felt oddly light now that I had said it all out loud to Iván. I realized I needed to do some things.
I sat up again, reached for my phone, and called Benji’s grandma. We talked for a long, long time, mostly about Benji and how he was doing right now, but also about Undine and his future. When I hung up, we had firm plans for me to go to Georgia over my spring break, and Benji was going to come to visit me in the summer. She had put him on the phone, too. He was heading over to his aunt and uncle’s for their party for him. I told him that I would see him soon, and he started whooping and then panting a little.
“Are you out of breath from doing that weird happy dance?” I had demanded.
“Yes!”
Next, I finally called Joana back. I told her all about Benji and we set a time to meet up when I got home. I left a message for Iván that I would see him soon. I stretched a lot, showered, and got dressed slowly, the aches working themselves out. I felt better, really, than I had in a while. The lightness inside me seemed to be increasing.
The swim meet was not boring, as Iván had thought it might be for me. I watched some incredible races, cheered loudly for our team, but mostly just stared at Iván. I watched him talk seriously to the swimmers, I watched him pat them on the backs and console them, I watched him laugh, but not as much as he usually did. He still looked tired and worried. I knew it was due to me, and I wanted to wipe that away from him. But at the same time, knowing that he cared that much, it made me glad. Which was probably not the nicest thing, but it was true.
As the day wore on, I started to get really tired. During the last race, when a lot of spectators had cleared out, I made my way down the bleachers and leaned over the edge of the stands.
Iván saw me and came over. “Good job today,” I told him.
He beckoned, and I leaned down further so he could give me a kiss. “They swam well.”
“I’m going back to the hotel. See you there?” I smoothed my hand over his cheek and he turned to kiss my palm.
“See you there,” he told me.
I lay down fully dressed, so sleepy. Just as I was dozing off, my phone rang with a LA number. I answered, expecting a call from the pool.
“Hey, you! Are you coming back soon?” I smiled in anticipation of hearing Iván’s voice.
“Maura?”
I sat up straight in bed. “Mikey?”
“Yeah. Hi.”
I didn’t know where to start. “Mikey?” I repeated. “You’re back in Los Angeles?”
“I never left California. We never made it to Mexico,” he said. “You know how it is.”
Not really. I had never had warrants hanging over my head like he now did. “I was so worried about you. I wish you had let me know where you were.”
“Yeah, I was busy. Sorry,” he said.
There was a silence. “I have your stuff,” I told him. “We moved it a few times for you.”
“You can get rid of that junk,” he responded.
I got very angry. “I think you meant to say, ‘Thank you. Thank you for helping me.’ Right?”
“Yeah.” Mikey sounded very surprised. I never got mad at him. “Thanks, Maura.”
“You need to come back and talk to your parole officer and we can try to straighten it out. You know you have to.” He didn’t answer. “Sooner or later this is going to catch up with you, Mikey.”
“How are you doing?” he asked me, rather than responding. “Everything ok?”
“Yeah, I’m ok.” I thought for a second. “No, I’m better than ok. I’m really good.”
“I’m glad.” He sounded surprised again. “You still with that dipshit Robin?”
“No.”
“I always hated that guy.”
“No one really liked him. I was only with him because I felt obligated to him, and I was afraid to be alone.” I was shocked as the words came out of my mouth. They were totally true.
“Robin was a tool. You always had to take care of him.”
I had done the same thing with Mikey, too, or I had tried to. “I guess I did.”
“Listen, I don’t know when I’ll talk to you again. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Yeah.” I thought of Iván. I couldn’t let him get hurt by Mikey. “I don’t want that, either. But Mikey? I love you.”
A sound came through the phone that sounded almost like a sob. “I love you, too.”
I didn’t want to hang up. I closed my eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t ever talk to him again, but I had to hope. “Goodbye.” I put the phone down and my head on the pillow, and thought for a while.
Iván came in not too much later and threw himself on the bed next to me. He rested his head on his folded arms for a minute then reached over and pulled me to him. “You’re not sleeping,” he announced.
“It would have been hard with you bouncing me off the bed. You know, cuando el gato—”
He put his hand over my mouth. “I’ll stop bouncing if you promise to give me that book of sayings.”
I pointed at my head. “I can give you the book, but they’re all up here, now. It’s too late. La persistencia de la memoria.”
He stared at me. “That’s not a proverb. That’s a painting by Dalí.”
“I know. I’ve also been studying Spanish art.” I held out my arms. “Come here, please.” Iván put his head on my shoulder and I hugged him to me. “I’m happy you’re back.” I told him about talking to Benji and that I was going to go visit. Then I told him about saying goodbye to Mikey. “I’m glad he called.”
Iván nodded against me. “I’m glad too, for you.”
“He said we could get rid of his stuff. I don’t know. If he comes back to Oakland…”
“We can keep it a while longer, if you want to,” Iván said. “Just in case.”
“Maybe that’s best. I think, someday, he’ll get himself back on track.”
“I agree. We don’t need to be in a rush to throw things out. We have plenty of room,” he assured me.
I smiled at the top of his head. It was nice to have someone in your corner.
Both of us fell asleep. I woke up later snuggled up to Iván. He was lying on his back, practicing his loud, deep breathing. Definitely not snoring. I sniggered. I wiggled up and kissed his cheek gently, and then, because I couldn’t help myself, I kissed his neck, too. I unbuttoned his team polo shirt and kissed his chest.
I could tell that he was starting to wake up. I carefully pulled up his shirt and kissed his stomach and his ribs. I glanced up and saw his dark eyes watching me. I pulled his shirt some more and he rose up a little so I could take it over his head. I slowly swung my leg over his hips, straddling him, and ran my hands down his arms, over his shoulders, and back down to his stomach. I watched his chest move up and down, his breathing getting faster.
I pulled my shirt over my head and he brought his hands up to my breasts. His deft fingers ran across my nipples and slid my bra straps off my shoulders. I arched my back and reached behind me and unhooked it. It fell to the side with our shirts.
Iván sat up, his abs rippling. He cupped my breasts in his hands. “This is what I think about,” he told me softly, undulating his fingers. He licked, then pulled my nipple into his mouth. I held his head to me. My own breathing quickened. Iván picked up his head. “You tell me, Maura,” he said, just as he had before. “Tell me when it’s enough.”
“It’s not enough,” I answered, and he kissed me, easing me back onto the bed, his hips against mine. We kissed and kissed, while I ran my hands up and down his back, then moved to the front and undid his jeans.
He pulled them off. I could see how hard he was, pushing against the fabric of his boxers. I reached out and felt there, moving my hand up and down, until he swore in Spanish and pulled them off too.
Oh, glory. My mouth dropped open. I had never seen…But Iván’s hands were already on my zipper, tugging it down, tugging down everything and leaving me naked against him. We lay on our sides and I pressed closer, into his warm skin.
“Tell me, Maura.”
“More.”
His mouth was on mine again, but his hands roamed. Up my back and onto my butt, kneading. Then between my legs, and he put my knee on his hip. “Look at me,” he said, and I met his eyes as his fingers rubbed up and down my slit. One long finger went inside me and I pressed down against it, grinding into his hand. I didn’t know what I wanted. Just more. His thumb was rubbing against me, gentle and teasing against my clitoris, and then another finger entered me. I clutched his shoulders and he kissed me again. “Look at me.” I lost myself in his brown eyes as pleasure and pressure built and then burst through me.
“Iván!” I hung on his neck and gasped his name. “Iván.” I shook and quivered.
I felt him pressed into my stomach, still diamond hard between us. He put himself between my legs and flexed his hips back and forth, and both of us groaned.
“I want you to come again,” his voice rumbled in my ear. “I want to watch you.” He turned me onto my back and I watched his brown head descend my body, licking my nipples and biting gently, then harder as I pressed up into his mouth. He held my hips and licked lower, and lower. I felt his tongue inside me and I lost control. I was moaning and begging him. I called his name as his teeth grazed my clit. I came before I knew what was happening and when I opened my eyes I saw Iván smiling as he watched me.
He was busy with the condom. “R-r-r-ready?” I smiled too, dreamy and sated with pleasure, and pulled him to me as he nudged inside.
“It feels…”
He pumped his hips. “Tell me. Tell me how it feels,” he panted.
“More. More.” I repeated the word and he rocked harder into me, my hands grasping his butt and my legs wrapped around him, urging him faster and deeper. I looked into his eyes and watched the pleasure overtake him. He kept moving against me and when he took my nipples between his fingers I shook with another little orgasm. I called his name again.
“I didn’t know,” I said later, spooned against him, cradled in his arms. “I didn’t know it would be like that for us.”
“I did.” He kissed my neck.
“You waited for me for a while.” I turned to look at him.
Iván bent and kissed my lips. “It was worth it. You’re worth it. Always.” He kissed me more, longer, and I found that it was even better the second go around.
∞
We went to dinner with the team that night, but we were late and we barely made it there at all. I felt like I was walking on clouds. On feathers on clouds. On feathers on bubbles on clouds.
Iván kept me latched to his side. He hadn’t stopped touching me yet. He always liked to hold my hand, or put his arm around me, but now it felt intimate. Like we had a secret together.
I shivered in the car and he scooted me closer. The driver had pointed out that I could sit behind her in a real seat rather than in the middle of the back seat with the hard hump under my butt. I told her I was good where I was.
“Cold?”
“No,” I answered, and Iván’s eyes blazed up. He looked at my neck and I shivered again.
“Maybe we should skip dinner.” He spoke directly into my ear, then took my ear lobe in his teeth. I shivered a third time.
“We should go but leave early. And stop at a drugstore on the way back to the hotel.” We needed more condoms. A lot more.
He laughed softly against my neck. If he didn’t stop soon I was going to start taking off his clothes and this poor driver was going get quite an eyeful. It was a really big, thick eyeful. Or a handful. I looked over at Iván’s pants. Or a mouthful…
“Maura, you’re blushing.” I glanced up and saw his smile. “I know what you were thinking.” He broke into his laugh. “I was thinking it too.”
Christos’ mother lived in Chino, near where I’d attended part of my junior high years. The whole team was there, already eating, of course. I got drawn into a conversation with Christos’ mom about southern California and how it had changed. She told me about all the orange groves that used to fill Orange County, instead of the cookie cutter tract homes that packed the land, side by side with only slivers of space between them. “I miss the oranges,” she sighed.
I was refilling my plate when I heard some of the swimmers talking to Iván.
“She’s smoking hot.”
“Excuse me?” Iván asked, turning and doing his looming thing over the guy who said it.
The kid backed down. “I mean, your girlfriend is beautiful. I always admired your skill with the ladies.”
“Lady,” Iván emphasized. “Singular. Only one.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, coming to his side and nudging him.
“I can’t remember her name,” he told me, pulling me to him and kissing my cheek.
Christos watched us. “Iván says you graduate this semester, Maura. What are your plans?”
“I’ve gone in for interviews, and I’m on my second round at two companies.” One had been on the 21st floor at a building in Oakland, which had been a real peach for me in my cute interview shoes. “I’m planning to take the next year to do the CPA exams and then I’ll be an accountant at wherever I’m hired.”
“You and Iván seem very different,” he said. “Yin and yang. Loud and quiet.”
“No,” I told him. “We’re similar in a lot of ways. You guys see how serious he is about swimming. He’s like that about everything when he needs to be.”
“Maura isn’t loud, but she isn’t quiet. She’s full of life and emotion. You should see her dance,” Iván said. I shook my head and hid in his chest a little. No one was going to see me dance but him and Anouk.
“I stand corrected,” Christos said, and laughed.
We stopped at the drugstore after we left and Iván practically bought out the condom section.
The next day, we got to test out the one-woman theory Iván had espoused the night before. I was there early at the outdoor pool and got a great seat near the tented area where the coaches and swimmers were sitting. I pulled my—Iván’s—baseball cap down and put on my sunglasses, but I was soaking up the sun on the beautiful winter day. I liked where we lived up north but it was so damn cold!
I watched as a striking, statuesque, redheaded coach approached from the other team’s bench. “Iván!” she called.
“Kirsten, hi.” He stepped forward, smiling, and kissed her cheeks.
I kept watching as she stood close to him, speaking too low for me to hear what she said.
Then he called to me. “Maura!” He was pointing me out, and I waved at both of them. The woman, Kirsten, got a big frown and shook her head. Iván waved goodbye to her, too.
“Is he your boyfriend?” the woman next to me in the stands asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
She fanned herself. “Good grief, he’s handsome. You two make a beautiful couple.”
“Thanks.” I blew Iván a kiss, then laughed as he acted stunned.
“You’ll have gorgeous children.” I turned to stare at her and she laughed. “If your mind is already going that way!”
“He’ll be a wonderful father,” I said confidently. He had such a good heart. He wouldn’t leave his kids, I was sure. I wondered how I knew this with so much certainty, and suddenly realized that I didn’t think he would leave me, either. The light feeling increased. When Iván looked up at me, I blew him another kiss and mouthed, “I mean it.”
The meet was fun again, and I emailed pictures to Benji. I thought he would enjoy coming to one and keeping track of everyone’s personal bests and time adds and drops. When the swimming was over, we headed back to the airport, and I steeled myself for the trip home. I had no idea how I was going to get to Georgia, flying alone, but I had to do it. I stared hard out of the tiny airplane window, wishing I was one of those animals that could hibernate. Maybe a woodchuck. Benji had told me about the process in excruciating detail.
Iván took it upon himself to distract me. “What do you think Anouk should do with the studio?”
“Well, she should stop risking it by gambling and start paying her taxes.” The plane made a series of noises and I felt the walls close in. “Iván…”
“It’s ok. Let me put it this way. If you were in charge of Dance by Anouk, what changes would you make?”
I had thought about this a lot. “There are so many things. On the financial side, I would completely reorganize the billing system and update our accounting procedures. Anouk is still keeping shoeboxes of receipts. Or just wads of them in her pockets.” The more I talked and focused, the more the claustrophobia receded. Eventually I was able to let go of Iván’s hands so he could type notes into his phone. “I would remodel, for sure. The bathrooms are a disgrace. Even a new coat of paint on the door would make a big difference, and the awning is so ratty and dirty. I would think about more classes in the day for adults, not just for dance, but for exercise, too.” I went on and on. I’d had plenty of time to think about how Anouk could do things better as I struggled to patch up how things were.
“It sounds like you should run the business,” Iván said.
“Sure, but the whole world would be a better place if I were in charge.”
“Maura, I’m serious. What if you and Anouk were partners?” he asked me.
I stared at him. “She wouldn’t go for that.”
“No, I think she would. I’ve managed to impress upon her how close to bankruptcy she is. Also, her friend Toby just got arrested in Vegas.”
“No!” I thought. “Actually, I’m not surprised.”
“Talk to her about it. The three of us can talk about it. But it would mean not taking jobs that you’ve been interviewing for.”
“Iván, this studio is never going to print money.”
“What? Are you talking about counterfeiting? Did Anouk—”
“No, it’s an expression. I mean, it’s never going to be a huge money-maker.”
“That’s ok,” he told me. “I don’t have that expectation. Do you? Is that what you want from your career?”
“I want to be able to support myself and my children.”
“I may have something to do with that, too,” he told me. “It was four, right? Four kids?” He took my hands again. My heart swelled up.
“I was saying today what a good father you’d be,” I said, my voice a little shaky.
“You’re right,” he told me. “I will be.”
“The one thing you struggle with is confidence. We’ll work on that.”
Iván leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “Sex therapy,” he said. “I have a few ideas.” He proceeded to tell me, and the temperature in the plane seemed to ratchet up a few degrees.
We made it back, and in spite of everything I did to calm myself and Iván did to help, it wasn’t an easy trip for me. But it was better than the way down. Then we were home, getting into bed together, and that made me forget. “You seem happy,” Iván said, watching expectantly from the bed as I pulled off my sweater. Sadly for him, I had on another shirt and a tank top underneath it.
“I feel good. Lighter,” I tried to explain. I ripped off the shirt and dove into bed. “It’s like ice in here!”
“You’re going to love Extremadura in the summer,” he told me. I put my feet on his thigh. “Ay! Maura, my grandmother is right. Your blood is too thin.” He removed my feet from his leg and rubbed them. “What do you mean, you feel lighter? Like a weight is gone?”
“Like that, yes, but also…kind of like I feel a glow inside. Does that make sense?”
He nodded at me. “I think this was a good trip.”
“I think so too. Where are your hands right now?”
“Removing those terrible pants that you’re wearing. I already took care of my clothes.” He smiled. “I like the feel of your skin. Our skin together.”
I helped pull the tank top over my head and pressed closer to him. “Me too.” I ran my hands down his chest, lower, to stroke between his legs. Iván made a noise like a growl and leaned his face into my neck, biting me softly. His leg hooked over my hips.
“Harder,” he said, and his hand gripped around mine. I reached lower and played with his soft sack and he moaned.
“Maybe my mouth,” I whispered.
“Yessss…” he drew out, eyes closed.
I moved down his chest and he turned onto his back. I pressed my breasts around his shaft, feeling my nipples tickle against him. He started muttering under his breath, something about leche and hostia. I licked the little drop of liquid that emerged from the head and his body shook. His hands came to my shoulders, not holding me there, but gently guiding me. I took as much of him into my mouth as I could and his hips rocked as I sucked, using my tongue to trace all the ridges and veins. His head turned from side to side on the pillow and he whispered my name. “Maura. Maura.”
Iván turned on his side and pulled me up, my back to his chest. “We’re doing it like this,” he told me, teeth on my neck again, harder so that I gasped. “Ok?”
“Yes. Again, please.”
He bit again, using his tongue to soothe where he was nibbling, using his hands to play with my nipples and the sensitive undersides of my breasts, then reaching between my legs to play there as well.
“Come inside me,” I begged him.
He reached for a condom and then eased in, holding me steady as I tried to push back against him. “Let me,” he said. I couldn’t keep still. I wanted him more, deeper. I reached between us and cupped his sack and he swore and thrust hard.
He pushed the breath from my lungs. I chanted his name as he thrust, and he took my hand and put it on my own breast. “Feel yourself there.” My fingers rolled my nipple and he brought the heel of his hand between my legs. When he drove himself inside me, I rubbed hard against it.
“I’m—I’m—” I came and he shook too, so deeply seated inside me. I was still trembling in the afterglow as he slowly pulled himself out.
Iván held me, his chest heaving up and down. “Maura.”
“Yes?”
“You said your mind went somewhere else. Is that happening?”
I picked up my head from his shoulder. His face looked so worried. “No,” I told him. “I’m right here, with you.”
His expression cleared. “I’m here too. Always.”
I believed him.