Hector and I hop out from the back seat. A light snaps on near the front door. Natalia appears in that same fur-lined parka, just in a different color—a sensible olive green. I didn’t notice how short she was before, the two of them having been sitting and no one to compare her to when she walked by the café window. A big smile takes over her face and her prominent cheeks puff out.
“Twice in one day, huh, Hector? Just can’t stay away from me, can you?”
Hector shifts. His hands dig further into his pockets almost in search of something that I know isn’t there. Something that doesn’t exist. Tangible closure.
“Thanks for loaning us the truck,” Hector says like a shy schoolboy. I can’t blame him. This girl has a strut that could rival a supermodel on a catwalk. Must be all that time spent onstage.
“It’s no problem at all. We’ve had absolutely no use for it since we sold the horses. Plus after Matthew agreed to get his mom to come to the college, my dad would do just about anything for that family,” she says before turning to me. “Matthew, it’s so good to meet you. I’m Natalia, in case you didn’t catch that.”
As if I haven’t been thinking about her incessantly since Noelle gave me the inside scoop.
She doesn’t offer a hand, so I smile and nod.
“Sorry for being the rudest little thing this morning. Hector didn’t say that was you at the counter. Otherwise I would’ve introduced myself.” She nudges Hector as we walk around the back of the house, off the driveway. I expect to see two or three vehicles, but they’ve got seven, all scraped off and shoveled out after the latest storm.
Now, I’m not one to talk when it comes to excess, but being a city boy my whole life, and only learning how to drive on Dad’s Mercedes at the Rhode Island house as a rite of passage and sheer formality, I’m a little taken aback.
Natalia hands a gray and red Havensmith College lanyard over to Hector. “Take care of Perdy. She’s an older gal, but she runs good. My dad doesn’t care when you have her back by, just vacuum out the bed before you do.”
“You got it.”
They catch each other’s gaze, and in that instant, I’m a voyeur. Whatever’s coming to pass between them is both intense and almost melancholic. It’s the kind of look I might share with my married exes, should I ever dare lay eyes on them again. I’m still reeling from our last run-in, the loaded encounter that spurred the island purchase.
A honk comes from out front. Gramps wants to get on the road. We are under a time crunch. He called Arthur at the farm to let him know we were coming, but he has a strict closing time. No exceptions. Not even for old friends, apparently.
“Thanks again.” Hector leans down to give her a hug. When Hector pulls away, before he’s out of reach, Natalia presses her glossed lips to his cheek.
Suddenly, I’m jealous. Irrationally so. I wonder what his stubbly skin might feel like under the weight of my own lips, how he might react should we share something so intimate.
But we won’t. Not even that—we can’t. Not under my grandparents’ roof. Not with my circle back in New York privy to anything and everything that goes on in my life. Not with my heart still on the mend.
His green eyes flick over in my direction, perhaps to see how I’m reacting. After years of dodging paparazzi, I’ve learned to put on an expression that is stone-cold, unreadable.
Natalia wishes us a good night with a cute shiver before skipping up the back steps of the wraparound porch and into what seems to be the kitchen. She’s like a pixie, there one minute, vanished the next, leaving behind a cloud of sparkles in her wake.
The inside of the truck has a weird smell, like it’s brand-new even though it’s at least six years old. Hector seems to know the layout by heart, and I wonder how many times he’s driven Natalia around town in this rigged-up ride.
I imagine her bare feet on the dashboard, midsummer, the radio on full blast. It’s like a Taylor Swift song come to life. I bet the back bed even makes a good place to lounge during a movie at a drive-in. My mind runs rampant with visions of the two of them together.
I fall into infatuations easily. And I know that’s what I’m doing here. I’m overanalyzing Hector’s every move to somehow save myself from thinking about the real shit going on in my world: Mom and Dad sending me here and the secret thing between them that Grandma seems to be in on but I’m being excluded from.
To avoid thinking too hard on that topic, I launch into conversation.
“How long were you two together?”
We begin our ride to the Wind River town line. Twin taillights cut through the night up ahead.
“Like, ten months, almost a year.” The way he sayslikesounds as if he’s trying to remain casual when really he knows how long the relationship lasted down to the nearest minute. “I went back to Texas this past summer to help out my dad—right after everything blew up with his business—and she was leaving for Vienna in August, so we broke it off. Or she broke it off and I agreed it was the right thing to do.”
“Did you really think that it was the right thing to do?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, dude.” His voice is bogged down, almost soupy. “I knew my dad was in a lot of trouble and my sister was calling every other day crying. For some reason, I couldn’t confide any of that to Natalia. Her family is just so…put-together? I was afraid she’d judge me and my family and it seemed like the easy out, not to have to drag her into it.”
His grip tightens around the gearshift, veins fanning out on the back of his hand. I’m tempted to use the pads of my fingers to chart them each like tributaries flowing into the river of his heart. Does it still beat for her?
“Do you think you’ll get back together?” I don’t even know why I ask because I know I’m not going to like the answer. I plunge my hands underneath my thighs to keep them from shaking.
The grandiose homes fade away into farmland. We stop at a red light just beyond Havensmith Hollow. His profile is a display of uncertainty in the illumination. “No. We’re friends now. She met a guy while she was at her program. Another opera singer. He’s all over her Instagram.”
