I stay put right there because he tells me to, and when he returns a moment later with another T-shirt for me, I lift my arms dutifully.
“This needs to be burned,” he growls with a playful edge, pointing at the ridiculous red tube top Simone and Annika picked out for me.
“It’s a nice shirt.”
His eyebrows lower in mock anger. “It’s abra.”
Well, he’s technically half right since it has a built-in bra. I slip it off and cover my chest as Cristiano helps slide the shirt on over my head. Somehow, nothing about him seeing me partially naked feels sexual, not tonight. I shimmy out of the skirt and let his soft T-shirt cover me, hug against my body.
“Open” when he wants me to brush my teeth. “Drink” when he hands me a cup full of water. “Take these,” he says, gifting me two ibuprofen.
Then Cristiano goes into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and I crawl up toward my spot, diving beneath the sheets. I close my eyes and think of Winnie and the first time we got drunk together after sneaking into a USC frat party on her eighteenth birthday.
“Winnie, you have to be quiet! You’re going to wake up Mom and Dad!”
She riffles through the refrigerator, shoving soda cans aside and banging the bottom crisper drawer open and closed. “I’m trying to find the milk for my cereal! I know Mom just bought some!”
“You’reholdingthe milk, you dummy!”
She looks down at the jug of milk in her left hand and bursts out laughing. “How long have I had it?”
I can’t talk. I go sliding down the cabinet to the floor, laughing so hard tears spill down my cheeks. Nothing is funny andeverythingis funny. Winnie looks at me—one glance—and I know we won’t be coming up for air for another five minutes.
The memory sears.
I sit up with a sharp gasp and blink the tears from my eyes. Cristiano steps out of the bathroom in his boxer briefs, turning off the light behind him. He stills when he sees me sitting there trying to steady my breathing.
He comes to the edge of the bed and draws me against him, smoothing my hair.
“Are you okay, nena?”
No.
He doesn’t have to be kind; he’s already done enough tonight. He could tell me to roll over and go to sleep, tell me I’ll feel better in the morning. But he holds me until the sharp pain from reliving the memory starts to dull to a throb. He promises me it’ll be okay.
I don’t think I ever tell him I’m upset about Winnie, but he must know.
“Cristiano?” I murmur sleepily.
“Hmm?” The noise rumbles in his chest.
“I wish you could have met her. Just once.”
“Actually, I might have…”
I open my eyes and tip my chin up, my arms tightening around him imploringly. “What do you mean?When?”
He studies my features as his hands smooth down my hair again and again. It feels so nice I shiver.
His brows furrow in thought. “I’ve tried to rack my brain about it. I must have met you and your sister at least once before. Youweren’t at Dolores’s funeral, I know, but I remember a birthday party for your grandmother in France years and years ago… at that bistro in Paris. Do you remember? I was sixteen at the time, so you would have been really young still, but I was there. I went with Dolores.”
I gasp, suddenly remembering the party he’s talking about. “I WAS THERE! Winnie, too! That was my first time in Paris, for Lita’s sixtieth birthday! Oh my god—” My immediate jolt of excitement reshapes quickly into acute relief so overwhelming my nose stings with emotions as tears slip free. “Youwerethere.”
It’s silly the way the shared memory feels significant—the knowledge that one time, at least, Winnie and Cristiano were in the same room at the same time. Maybe they even talked.
I squeeze him around the middle and he hugs me back, leaning down to kiss my hair. I pull him onto the bed with me and for a moment my world tilts and my head aches, but he settles us together and I’m asleep in his arms before the tears are dry on my cheeks.
For the next few days, I’m never far from Cristiano. I’m in his bed every night, and in the mornings when he drops me back at my apartment, he lingers, kissing me, making me promise I’ll stay another night.
