I didn’t know what to say back. I was too lost in watching her smile, a shy twist of her mouth that made me suspect she was uncomfortable.
I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. I wanted that real smile back, the one that told me she knew exactly who was in control here, and it wasn’t me.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” Her eyes grew impossibly bigger.
“Why would you want to have coffee with an old guy like me?”
Her hair swayed as she shook her head. “Why do you think you’re old? Especially on Ibiza. No one is ever old here. Everyone’s going to live forever.” There was that smile that was almost a little sarcastic, as if she wasn’t afraid of poking fun at some of the people who stayed here.
She turned around and forced a hand into the crook of my arm. “Coffee. I owe you a drink after all the cocktails you’ve made me.”
I wanted to shift her arm away, to cast it aside and hurt her feelings. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow no matter who you are, but I couldn’t do that to her.
“You paid for those cocktails.”
“True.” She nodded just once. “But I’d like to see someone make a drink for you that you don’t have to pay for. My treat.”
If wealth was a competition, she’d win. I had no idea of how much she and her family were worth, but it was more than mine. Just maybe not as much as she’d think, not that she’d be paying for this, no matter how hard she tried.
“Only if you drink normal coffee and not a gingernut spiced half non-fat latte with cream and a squirt of some tooth-rotting syrup.”
“You’re in luck. That’s Lala’s order. Not mine.”
We wentto a small coffee shop two streets away from the market and found a table outside, shaded by a canopy that had seen many better days.
I wasn’t paying much attention to what I’d do to sort the place out though. I wasn’t considering making an offer to the owner to invest and carry on building the empire I’d started.
I was trying not to look too much at her. She was too young, too slim, too clever. The night atBohemiI’d noticed the way she carried herself, the calm measure she took with every decision she made. She was tense and held herself too tightly, and I’d watched how she took everything in, having a quiet grasp on whatever was about her.
She’d learned that and there was a reason why.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know it.
“Do you often accept coffee from strange women?” She sat down so her back was to the building, and she could see exactly what was coming. I sat next to her. Maybe for the same reason, or maybe because I had too many family members who would be happy to stab me in the back as they walked past.
“Always. Do you make a habit of asking strange men to go for coffee?” I glanced at her side profile. She was looking directly ahead, away from me, and there was that slight smile there again.
“Always. The stranger the better.”
“I probably fill that category well.” I didn’t bother looking at the menu the waiter gave us. I knew what I’d have, just like I knew she would laugh when I ordered it.
“Why are you here on Ibiza?” She did look at me now, her pretty eyes searching for answers to questions she was never going to ask.
“Why do you think I’m here?”
“You came by one summer to party and never left. The usual story. Or, you were enchanted by the mermaids on Es Vedra; they put a spell on you and you can’t leave the island.” She was deadpan; her tone making it sound as if she really did believe in those mermaids on Ibiza’s iconic rock.
“It was the mermaids.”
“I knew it.” She tapped the table with a tidy nail. Her fingers were slim; her hands delicate.
My head went straight there. Imagining what her hands would be like running over my body, digging into my back while I fucked her.
I could say that posh pretty girls like her didn’t fuck men like me, but they did. To a certain type of woman who wanted a bit of rough, I was catnip. I was what they wanted in the bedroom, or by the pool, or on the beach, but not what they wanted as a permanent fixture.
I could lie, and say I’d never wanted to be a permanent fixture, but I had. I had been, for someone. It would’ve been forever too.
I wasn’t my uncle, fucking anything apart from the woman he was married to. I wasn’t my father, hating his wife and never doing a thing about it apart from act passively aggressive towards her. I wasn’t anyone but myself and I’d never tried to be.
