For a second, it seems as though the conversation might stay on that superficial, comfortable, and safe ground. But they both know they haven’t come all this way to talk about other people’s children.
“About the other night…” Martina murmurs.
“It was a mistake,” Rebeca interrupts her, so quickly that her words almost overlap.
Martina frowns, and pain crosses her face like a shadow.
For a second she tries to find the right words, but Rebeca continues speaking before she can.
“You’re married,” she states firmly. “And to Julia, no less.” Her fingers grip the glass tightly. “I think… we just got carried away by memories. By nostalgia. By what we were in the past.”
Martina watches her. Something in her chest tightens with a mixture of frustration and sadness.
“It wasn’t like that for me,” Martina replies, and Rebeca can see in her eyes that she means it. “When I saw you that day on the landing,” she continues, “I realized something.”
Martina pauses briefly. Her heart is beating so hard she’s sure Rebeca can hear it.
“I realized I’ve never forgotten you.”
The air between them seems to thicken.
“That every time I think you’re just a few feet away from me, I feel like I can’t breathe.” Martina drowns her words in her gin and tonic. “And I also realized that I still remember exactly what your mouth tastes like. How your skin feels under my fingers.”
Rebeca closes her eyes for a moment, as if the words were physically painful to her.
“Martina, please.”
Rebeca forces herself to drink, in an attempt to stop the earthquake that has already taken hold inside her. But nothing seems to help.
“We can’t hurt each other anymore,” she says a moment later. “And above all… we can’t hurt Julia.”
Martina presses her lips together. For a moment, she watches as Rebeca avoids looking directly at her, as her fingers tremble slightly around the glass.
“My marriage isn’t as perfect as you think,” she confesses.
Rebeca looks up. Her eyes meet Martina’s, unobstructed. There’s something in that gaze. Something that truly burns. A flame she’d like to extinguish with her lips.
The noise of the bar seems to fade away around them. The music keeps playing. People keep dancing. But the space they occupy feels isolated, as if the rest of the world had stepped back a few feet to make room for them.
Martina can feel the heat radiating from Rebeca’s body at such close range. She can smell the soft perfume she had already recognized on the landing. That scent that always triggers an immediate physical reaction in her.
Rebeca feels it too. She feels Martina’s closeness like a constant pressure against her skin. The memory of that night flashes through her mind with brutal clarity: Martina’s hands sliding over her body, the kisses that tasted of years of waiting, the hoarse sound of her voice as she said her name while coming with her.
She tries to push that thought away, but her body doesn’t seem willing to cooperate. Tension shoots up her back like an electric current, and her nipples harden beneath the silk, betraying her.
Martina leans a little closer. She doesn’t touch her. But the distance between them narrows enough that the air they share becomes almost tangible.
Her eyes scan Rebeca’s face with an intensity she makes no attempt to hide, and she observes every tiny detail as if she wanted to commit it to memory.
“Tell me something,” Martina murmurs, bluntly.
Rebeca feels her pulse quicken until it becomes a runaway drumbeat.
“Really…” Martina continues, staring at her, “that what happened the other night meant nothing to you?”
Chapter 16
“We shouldn’t talk about that here.”
