Kira Luz came undone, filling his space with her sound, her scent, her absolute pleasure. Santi could get used to this.
“Did I do it?” he asked, knowing full well he had, crawling up the bed to catch her lips on his, and Kira lazily kissed him back, licking the bottom of his lips. He took the discarded cover and threw it over both their heads, and he listened to her catch her breath.
They were going to need breakfast.
“This is so unfair,” Kira announced, as she watched Santi assemble breakfast. From across the countertop, Santi grinned and sprinkled Parmesan cheese over his own bruschetta before he took a bite. To be fair, it was delicious. He had slightly old ciabatta he’d made, added olive oil and salt before he toasted up the slices and rubbed a clove of garlic on each. Then he added tomato sauce, a fried egg with a still-runny center and a bit of Parmesan. “You bake bread,and you cook?”
“I own a restaurant, and a bakery.” Santi shrugged, pouring Kira a glass of water.
“Neither of which you cook or bake for,” Kira pointed out, and rightly so, leaning over the counter. She seemed comfortable in his space, and Santi wanted her to be comfortable. It made his heart warm in his chest to see her in his kitchen. “But I did wonder why you decided to open an Italian restaurant, of all things.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I went backpacking along Western Europe?” Santi asked. Here was another story he hadn’t really told anyone else.
“Is that...are you trying to get me to sleep with you again? You can just ask me,” Kira said, taking a bite of her food and making a little noise of delight (Santi mentally filed that away, because it was the same noise she made when he first put his mouth on her). “I’ve seen theFriendsepisode.”
“I’ve never seenFriends,” Santi admitted, and he knew very well that was a source of shock for a lot of people. Really, the more shocked people were that he hadn’t seen it, the less he wanted to watch it.
“You haven’t?” she asked, and if she was shocked, she didn’t let it show. “Tell me about Western Europe, then. If I suddenly come on to you, know that it’s your story’s fault.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Santi agreed, a little confused, but not at all unhappy with the idea. “When I was twenty-five, my family went to Rome to take a cruise along the Amalfi Coast. On our first day, my passport was stolen.”
“What!” She gasped, and he had to admit, it was nice having a captive audience. “How?”
“I was the idiot who left it in his back pocket at the Trevi Fountain.” He grinned, shaking his head. It was okay to laugh at it now that he was back home, but it certainly hadn’t been funny at the time. The police had been very little help, telling him to look in trash bins, and the Philippine Embassy’s list of requirements changed depending on whom he was talking to.
“Long story short, my family went on to join the cruise, and I managed to get a provisional travel permit, but had to travel by land by myself. Because I didn’t want to fly home right away, and I didn’t want to stay in Rome, I asked the concierge where I could go, and he suggested the Ligurian region. That’s how I ended up spending the next eight days living above an Irish bar in La Spezia that served the best Italian food I had ever had.”
“Is that why La Spezia is La Spezia?” she asked, but interrupted Santi’s affirmative when she took another bite of her food. “Mmm, sarap. My god, Santi, you’re killing me with a sandwich, I hope you’re proud.”
“I am a little,” Santi admitted, grinning. “And yes. Calling it Irish Pub would have been confusing. But it was eight days where I was by myself, with no other obligation to anyonebutmyself. That was how it all came together. I realized something was...amiss with my family because I had experiences like that outside of them. Things happened to me that they couldn’t or didn’t want to help me with, so I learned. I realized that we weren’t fine when I met other people who had money but weren’t completely heartless, people who knew how to love other people. Because of people like you, and Gabriel, and Sari and everyone I’ve met here in Lipa.”
He paused while he was eating as he thought about it. Did the rest of his family have connections to a world outside the Santillans? Miro did, but social media surely had its limits and pitfalls. Tita Joyce had her amigas, but she never really allowed herself to have deeper connections that Santi saw, or at least none that she showed them. Lolo had cut off his parents from the Villas, and they had decided to isolate themselves in Canada. There was Tita Ria and Johnny Marbella, but surely that came after she left the family.
Lonely existences, all of them. But Santi was starting to learn that he didn’t have to be alone. At least, not here.
“Is it as beautiful as I think it is?” Kira asked. “Cinque Terre.”
He looked across his kitchen island at her, at the lovely person who made him feel less lonely, the person who made him laugh and made him see things a little more clearly. He was thinking about them together again. He could picture them in Monterosso drinking limoncello slushies, holding hands and looking out at the ocean. He could imagine them in Osaka, huddling together in the cold, their path lit by the brilliant billboards and shops. He could imagine them in Lipa on New Year’s Day, saying goodbye to the year that passed in the loudest way possible.
Now that he’d said what he wanted, it felt a little more real. Like it was possible, if he stayed on this path. All this time, he’d been so focused on what he wouldn’t be able to have if he left Manila that he didn’t even start to consider what he would gain if he stayed in Lipa. And these little fantasies were all part of what he stood to gain.
His heart leaped in his chest, and he placed his hand over it, counting out each and every second it beat for her.
“We can go someday,” he said, still counting out the beats. “You and me.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes wide. “You and me. It sounds good.”
“Good?”
“Better, best,” she clarified, smiling. “Do we still have time to make out? Just a little bit?”
They did not. But they did anyway.
“I am so going to get caught,” Kira groaned, thirty minutes later. They had made a detour to the corner panaderia outside Haraya. It was already eight thirty, and Cassie was probably aware that her aunt had not, in fact, slept in her own bed the night before. Kira was, in short, dead.
Normally, Kira had a lot less shame about where she went, and didn’t tell her family unless it was outside the city limits. But with the Luz-Angs leaving for Singapore today, she hadn’t wanted to mess up the family dynamic by saying, “by the way, I have a new boyfriend!” hours before they departed.
So they snuck around. It was just easier that way.
