She places her napkin on the table. “I think it’s getting late. I have another long day at the fair tomorrow.”
Nothing. She’s inscrutable. I feel like I have twenty keys to open a single lock and not one of them works. “I’ll go with you,” I say, changing the subject.
“I have to get a taxi; my hotel is far.”
“Precisely.”
“We said this wasn’t a date.”
“Indeed, but this is a question of manners. I never let a woman travel alone after midnight.”
“Is this something that happens to you often, then?” she asks knowingly.
“Not lately. Don’t make me beg you,” I reply, getting up. “I care.”
In the end she gives in but on her own terms. The taxi ride is heavy with a silence so dense and cumbersome it’s suffocating. Elisa keeps her gaze fixed on the window, lost in the darkness. I’d give my right arm to know what she’s thinking.
“I believed in it,” she says out of the blue.
“In what?”
“Us.”
“You don’t believe in it anymore?” Suddenly I’m so anxious it feels like someone is holding my head under water.
“I can’t feel it.”
“Do you want to try?” How is it possible to start such an important conversation just as we’re pulling up to the hotel?
“I’ve learned that I can’t allow myself to have everything I want.”
As soon as the car stops, Elisa unclasps her seat belt and goes to open the door.
“Don’t go,” I stop her. “There are things you’re not telling me, but I need to hear them.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” The tremor in her voice contradicts the assertiveness of her words.
“Is that why you came out with this now? Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
Finally she deigns to raise her eyes and meet mine. “Michael, what kind of game are we playing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m tired of playing it.” I can’t help but raise my hand to her chin. “If you feel nothing, tell me now, and I promise I’ll go. You won’t ever have to hear from me again, and in no way will I interfere between you and Linda. But if you have feelings for me, there’s no point in us both suffering.”
I expect a reply from her, but instead I receive a kiss. Elisa leans toward me, taking me by surprise, pressing her lips into mine in a gesture halfway between relief and desperation. “I love you,” she whispers into the kiss. “And I hate loving you because I can’t stop. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”
“Then don’t stop.”
The kiss lasts a long time and says all the things we didn’t. It is not a sensual, instinctive, physical kiss, the kind that starts on the lips and ends in bed; it’s a strange kind of kiss, one I’ve never experienced before. It goes straight to the soul.
She’s the one who pulls away, leaving me dazed. “I have to go,” she says. “I’m here another four days. I leave on Tuesday morning.”
“Is this an invitation to come find you?”
“Let’s just say if you did, I wouldn’t mind.” She kisses me again, this time just a peck. “Good night.” And she gets out of the car and walks into the hotel.
I wait until the sliding doors close behind her and reach for my phone.
Do you have plans tomorrow evening? I’d like to see you again.
