Move to Spain? Jesus, what did she want? To make me lose my shit?
My cousin continued, “You see, Lina had to leave to America all those years ago because of everything that happened and—”
“Charo,” I cut her off, my breathing growing heavy. “Déjalo ya, por favor,” I begged her to drop it.
The doorbell rang again. And I muttered a not-so-quiet curse under my breath.
“Oh! They are here!” my cousin announced.
What? Who?
Then, she proceeded to link her arm with her mother’s, and they slipped out of the kitchen together.
Aaron’s hand squeezed my arm gently, and I released all the air in my lungs.
I was on edge after that. And I was going to ignore—no, forget—his comment about marriage and kids and dogs because it was completely irrelevant.
And I did as soon as his fingers trailed down to my wrist. The touch—the caress—so featherlike, so brief, but so very powerful that it created a riot of shivers to spread across my whole body.
“Relax,” he said in my ear. His fingers started moving in circles over the skin of my wrist. The brush of his fingers was lazy, calming. “That’s it,” he whispered as his fingertips kept flicking over my skin.
My shoulders gradually relaxed until my back settled completely against his front.
Aaron’s chin rested on the top of my head, and then he said, “We’ve got this.”
I wanted to believe him, to believe that we could fake date our way through this improvised family reunion today and then tomorrow. But as I finally surrendered and let my body fall into his, it felt like way more than just that. I realized a part of me didn’t want to believe in just that. Because it felt right to be in this kitchen, sitting on his lap, while he brushed his fingers over the sensitive skin of my wrist as we en
dured my family’s inappropriate antics.
We felt like a we, Aaron and I.
And when it was my mother’s head coming into view, followed by my abuela, my tía, and Charo, that realization solidified somewhere in the middle of my chest. Like a brick or a block of cement. Heavy, firm, and really hard to ignore. But it was when Aaron briefly peeled himself off me—just long enough to introduce himself to my abuela—that I felt the brick click into place, inserting itself like a Tetris piece in a nook that had been waiting to be filled. And by the time he returned his arm to my waist and my body to his lap, just after he looked down and smiled that smile just for me, I knew with certainty that I’d never be able to get that damn brick out of there.
It was there to stay.
Chapter Twenty-One
Surprisingly, everything was going smoothly. So far, no awkward or embarrassing moments had made me regret all my life choices, and no one had dropped any inappropriate questions that made me want to open a hole in the ground and plunge myself in.
With a little luck, I would even be able to get through this one dinner, unscathed. And I really thought I would.
I hoped this sense of contentment humming satisfactorily under my skin wasn’t a by-product of the food I had inhaled. Because that was what a Spanish feast could do to you. It could cloud your judgment.
We were all sitting around a round table on the terrace of a restaurant that faced the sea. The sun was setting on the horizon, about to reach the thin line where the ocean and the sky met, and the only sound filling the air around us besides the low chatter was the crashing of the waves against the rocks lining the coast.
To put it in a simple way, it was perfect.
The soft touch of a hand on my arm sent a handful of shivers rolling down my spine.
“Cold?” a deep voice I had come to anticipate in ways that made my breath hitch asked close to my ear.
Shaking my head, I faced him. Only a few inches separated us. Our lips.
“No, I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. I had learned that when Aaron came this close, I was everything but fine. “Just full. I might have overdone it.”
“No place for dessert?”
My eyebrows bunched at the audacity. “Don’t be ridiculous, osito. I always have space for dessert. Always.”