“She’s the best. When I have kids, if my wife is half the mother my mom is, my kids will be lucky as hell.”
Tessa’s face flushes. “You want kids?”
“Hell yeah. You?”
She nods.
“How many?” I ask, my heart racing all of a sudden.
“Two or three, probably,” she says. “You?”
“Four or five, in a perfect world.”
Her eyes widen.
“But everything’s subject to negotiation,” I add quickly. “The most important thing is to find their momma first—the woman I wanna spend the rest of my life with. Everything else will follow naturally from there, I figure.”
There’s a long beat.
Oh my God, I’m falling head over heels in love with this woman.
“Tessa, I’m not the lying, cheating scumbag you think I am,” I say softly, stroking her arm. “Will you hear me out for a minute?”
She nods, thank God, and, finally, for the first time, I’m able to tell her chapter and verse about the night we met, beginning with what actually happened at the restaurant with Olivia and the blonde with the note, and moving on to explaining exactly why I truly believed my relationship with Olivia had ended before I met her (though, I concede, I knew having one final, confirming conversation with Olivia was certainly in order).
When I’m done talking, Tessa looks at me thoughtfully. “I remember, right before Psycho Barbie came in, you said you had something to tell me.”
I exhale the longest exhale of my life. “I was gonna tell you about Olivia, just to make sure we got off on the right foot.”
She bites the inside of her cheek.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“That your explanation makes perfect sense and sounds incredibly sincere.”
I exhale with relief.
“And also that, in my past relationship, my boyfriend had quite the knack for telling me explanations that made perfect sense and sounded incredibly sincere.”
I rub my face. “Oh for the love of fuck, you’re exhausting. At some point, you’re gonna have to trust somebody again, Tessa—you do realize that, right?”
Tessa opens her mouth to reply, but before she says a word, there’s a loud knock on the door. “Room service!”
42
Ryan
“Ooooh, try this mango,” she says, feeding me a piece.
“Amazing,” I say. “I didn’t even think I liked mango. Did you try some of this pineapple?”
She nods. “Amazing.”
We’re sitting at a table on the little patio just outside her room, overlooking the moonlit ocean, the warm night breeze wafting over us.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, Argentina,” I say. “What do you say we fuck each other’s brains out every night this week, totally on the sly—nobody ever has to know—and after this week, once we get back to Seattle, if one or both of us doesn’t want to keep going, then, no problem, we’ll both agree to move on, no hard feelings, and pretend this week never happened.”
She takes a bite of food and chews it slowly, considering the idea.
