“What is that, like your ritual?”
“It’s just something I like to do. So what are you doing here? Does it have to do with your boyfriend? Some kind of spiritual journey to mend your broken heart?”
I looked away. His gaze was too penetrating.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected him. “No, he doesn’t have anything to do with it. We broke up, so now it’s done. No drama. I mean, what’s the point of feeling bad or of doing something stupid over a person who hurt you on purpose?”
“There’s no point, but it’s also normal to suffer when someone hurts you. Maybe even inevitable. And that is a thing people do, even if you call it stupid: running away somewhere, getting as far away as possible, with no plans, without reservations.”
I had the feeling he wasn’t just talking about me. I looked down the street and thought about Antoine in the shower with Sofía. It had hurt me bad. I’d felt abused and betrayed, even if it had just lasted a moment. Then that pain became muffled, like an echo, losing intensity over the following days.
Something suddenly made me uncomfortable. Did this mean I’d never really loved Antoine? No, that couldn’t be. You can’t be with a person a whole year, sharing as many things as we’d shared, and not love them. Or can you?
I realized I was holding my breath and let it out.
“How did you end up here?” I asked him.
Turning his head, he began, “I helped out someone who was in a bind. She invited me to have an ice cream and then…she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. That was two years ago, and here I am.”
To judge from his smile and the gleam in his eyes, thisshehad to be someone very special.
“Someone in a bind the way I am?” I asked. And I immediately regretted doing so. I didn’t even know where that question had comefrom, or why I’d asked it. I felt something strange: goose bumps, butterflies in my stomach, racing heart. We stared at each other a moment in the eyes.
“No, not like you,” he replied, which made me blush.
Then the meaning of his words hit me: There was someone in Lucas’s life. “Hey,” I told him, “now that I think about it, maybe it’s best if I don’t stay at your place.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, but since you mentioned a woman… I guess it must be your girlfriend, right? Or wife, or friend with benefits, I don’t know… Maybe she won’t like you showing up with a stranger in the middle of the night.”
He grimaced.
“Thewomanyou’re talking about is my landlord, and I’d marry her in a heartbeat, but she refuses. I haven’t given up, though. She told me that at seventy years old, with two husbands in the grave, she’s not interested in burying a third. It stung, but I understood.”
For a minute, we seemed to be staring each other down, and he was especially serious. Then we both burst out laughing until we could hardly breathe, and when we were done, all the tension was gone.
A few streets further on, Lucas stopped in front of an old red car. He took out his keys, opened the trunk, and stashed my suitcase inside. Then he opened the door for me.
He needed to crank the motor three times, and the way it shook and rattled, I worried the entire vehicle would fall apart. The vibrations worked their way down into my bones, almost like in one of those massage chairs.
“Where’d you get this piece of junk?” I asked.
“Hey! Don’t be nasty. This is a 1975 Fiat 128 Coupe. I traded a watch for it. A rather expensive watch, if you’re wondering.”
“For real?”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“I don’t know,” I responded, “but you must have your reasons.”
For a few seconds, he struggled with the gearshift before finally getting it into first and starting to pull out. It was stuffy inside. I tried to roll down the window, but the lever wouldn’t budge.
“Wait, there’s a trick to it,” he said, leaning across me, and I tried to lean back to give him space and to ignore how close he was to me—close enough that I could smell the scent of coconut in his shampoo. “There you go. That’s as far as it will go down.”
“Then I guess that will have to work,” I said.
“Cool. Off we go.”
