Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad #2) (18 page)

I feel like that now—that sense of lightness, of relief. Surrounded by the hum of the engine and the scent of Javier’s cinnamon Altoids, I relax for the first time in what feels like forever. No forest fires to worry about, or warring parents.

It’s really nice.

I let go of Javier’s leg. “Sorry,” I say. “That was definitely weird of me.”

“What? The groping?” he replies with a grin. “Not weird at all.”

“It wasn’t a grope. It was more of a squeeze.”

“A squeeze. Wouldn’t that be worse? Or better. Probably better, right?”

I level him with a mocking glare. “Okay, Uncle Pervy, back to the controls.”

He laughs, a sound that fills the tiny cockpit; a sound that makes what’s left of my anxiety evaporate. I melt into my seat, the warmth from the sun seeping through my jacket.

“It’s so beautiful.” I sigh, turning to look out my own window. “And so big. You really appreciate how huge Madrid is from up here.”

“I am from Madrid,” Javier replies, “born and raised, and I still don’t know half of it. There’s always a new neighborhood to explore.”

The sky is poignantly blue, a striking contrast to the rainbow of reds and creams and yellows that make up the city below. I pick out Retiro Park; it’s a large green square, the water of its enormous artificial lake glittering in the sun. And there, one street over from the park, is my señora’s apartment building.

Javier guides the plane in a long, low swoop, giving me an even closer view of the building. I can’t see its signature blue door—we’re too high up for that—but I can see people, tiny, slow-moving ants, making their way up my street. Couples holding hands, a woman pushing a stroller, children racing in front of their parents. All these families—they look so happy from up here. So connected, so engaged in a way I haven’t seen before.

“Who knew that people watching from five thousand feet was so fun?” I say, turning around to grab my camera out of my bag.

Javier turns his head, nodding at my window. “Over there—do you see the steeple roof of the church? That’s the monastery.”

My heart skips a beat when, looking out the window, I see a familiar roof glinting in the sunlight, its spire no bigger than a toothpick from up here. I aim my camera at the rambling group of connected buildings that compose the monastery and begin clicking away, each frame telling a different story, a new story, one I don’t know yet.

“It looks so much bigger from above.” I squint through the viewfinder. “Much more medieval, with the irregular angles and all the different buildings. There are no straight lines!”

“Not back in the fifteenth century, anyway,” he says.

I keep clicking. “This is unbelievably cool, Javier. I mean—look at the layout of the different courtyards. I wonder what they were all used for? Perhaps some of them were kept private. You know, for the nuns’ private meetings.”
 

“You’ve got quite the imagination.”

I look at him, still grinning. “I do.” Turning back to the window, I take a few more photographs. “You can really see the progression of architectural styles as they added on to the original medieval structure—see the dormers there, and the domed roof of the gatehouse? Be still my beating heart!”

Javier laughs. He circles around the monastery a few more times. Assured that I’m done taking pictures, he asks, “Do you want to lose gravity?”

I tuck my camera back into its case. “Lose gravity?”

“Yes. Like this.” He makes a swooping motion with his hand.

“Um,” I say, stowing the case behind my seat. “That sounds…interesting?”

“Let me try it just once. If you don’t like it, I promise won’t do it again.”

“Is that what you tell all the girls you hang out with?”

“Only the pretty ones,” he says with a wink.

“I’ll let you try it if you promise never to wink at me again.”

“I promise,” he says, and does it again anyway.

Javier pulls the yoke towards him, the plane nosing up, up, the blue sky filling the windshield as the blood gathers at the base of my skull. I grip the seat on either side of my legs, holding on for dear life when Javier guides the yoke back down.

The plane rolls forward, like we’re cresting a big hill.

Then it plunges down, my stomach pressing against the back of my throat like a fist as the seatbelt cuts a fiery sash across my torso. My hands dart above my head, pressed to the ceiling as if I can slow our fall. I scream, I curse, I make garbled drowning noises; in my headphones I hear Javier say
wooohooo!,
followed by deep, gleeful laughter.

We keep falling, and I keep screaming. There’s a rush inside me, a great gust of feeling that scatters my thoughts in a thousand different directions. For a minute I feel weightless, suspended in time, my mind a blessed blank.

Javier pulls the yoke back toward him, and we are suddenly level again, cruising pleasantly through smooth air.

And then something strange, and wonderful, happens.

I burst into giggles. Careless, skipping giggles, the kind that make you feel light as air; the kind that make your ribs hurt.

“You all right over there?” Javier says, ducking his head to look at me.

“That was terrifying,” I wheeze. “And fucking awesome. Can we do it again?”

He grins, the light catching on his stubble, burnishing it red. He pulls the yoke toward him, and the plane starts climbing.

Chapter 13

Maddie

By the time we land, I can barely breathe my face hurts from so much smiling. We flew until the plane was practically out of gas, talking and laughing and losing gravity the whole time. The late afternoon sun is dimming, our shadows long and dark as Javier and I walk across the parking lot. His is taller than mine, broader. The flaps of his bomber jacket, unzipped, move in a small breeze. His aviators are hooked into the collar of his shirt.

Good
Lord
is he sexy.

I bite my lip. Look away.
 

“I hope you enjoyed yourself, Maddie,” he says. “I was starting to feel a bit queasy at the end there, but it was worth it, don’t you think?”

“Totally worth it. Really, thank you for taking me up with you. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. The losing gravity thing—oh my God, I loved it. ” I focus my gaze on my feet. “I bet María Carmen loves it, too, doesn’t she?”

Javier’s boots strike sharp notes on the concrete as he walks. “She doesn’t, actually. I took her flying once, back when I first got my pilot’s license—I was twenty—and she never wanted to go back up with me again.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says.

He opens the door of his truck for me. It’s a simple gesture, but warmth fills my chest nonetheless. Why does he always have to be so excellent?

“You know, I can open doors for myself,” I say. “I’ve been doing it for twenty years now. I think I have the hang of it.”

“Of course you can open doors for yourself. I’m sure you do it all the time when I’m not around.”

I bite back a grin.
 

“Which means when I
am
around,” he continues, grasping the edge of the door and leaning over me, “you should let me do it for you. If only so I can make you uncomfortable with my kind and gentlemanly ways.”

“I’m not—” I roll my lips between my teeth. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

“Yes you are. Do guys back at Mertyon not hold doors for you?”

I scoff. “Yeah freaking right. I mean, there are definitely exceptions. But no. Guys are not that nice.”

He holds out a broad, blunt-fingered hand. “Some of us are.”

Without thinking I take it, stepping up onto the baseboard before I climb into the truck.

Tus manos
, he says and steps toward me, brow furrowed.
Your hands.
He clasps the offending appendages in his and squeezes them, gently.
They’re shaking. Are you all right?

I shake harder now that he’s touching me. Now that he’s speaking in that sensual Spanish of his. It makes me think of that morning in his flat, when he took my hands in his and held them over my head and moved inside me with ardent, patient passion.
 

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, just, um. Just the adrenaline. Falling through the air will do that to you, I guess.”

Javier meets my eyes. Their warmth is so honest, so inviting, I am sinking into it—into
him
—before I can think better of it.

“You need a drink,” he says. “How do you feel about grabbing a copita or two on the way home?”
 

I blink.
 

I should say no.

I should go back to my señora’s and lock myself in my room and work on my thesis until I go cross-eyed so I can forget Javier. Everything, everything Javier.
 

He’s getting too close, I’m letting him in when I should be pushing him away. Letting him in is only going to hurt in the end. He’s only going to hurt me, the way my dad did. Javier may seem perfect right now, but so did dad—and we all know how that turned out.

Besides. Javier wants Carmen. I’ve already done the love triangle thing, and I have absolutely no interest in revisiting that particular nightmare.

I should say no.

But I don’t. I can’t.

Not when Javier’s looking at me like he is now, the kindness in his eyes tugging at my heart. There’s something else there, too. Something bold.

Want
. Only he wants Carmen, so there’s no way that he’s looking at me like…like that.
 

But he is. And I love, I
love
it.

“A drink,” I say. “One drink.”

“Vale,” he says, and smiles.

***

Javier steps into the restaurant behind me.

“This is one of my favorite places in Madrid,” he says. “The wine is good, and the food is even better.”

“Awesome,” I say. “I love trying new places.”

The high ceilinged place is bustling, long-stemmed glasses of tempranillo and albariño wine lining the clean-edged bar. People sit, they stand, their laughter and chatter echoing off the stylishly weathered wooden walls and ceiling.

Javier helps me with my coat—of course—and we check our jackets with the hostess. I’m inexplicably nervous as we belly up to the bar. Maybe because Javier is blazing handsome-hot today. He’s wearing a black sweater over a white button-down shirt, his hipster wave slicked back from his forehead in a devastating swoop. His stubble is on full sexy-mechanic display.

Dear Lord. I need a drink. Now.

“Would you like a cocktail?” he asks, passing me a menu. “Or are you in the mood for some wine?”

“Wine, definitely.”

“You like red, right?”

I blink. “Yes. How did you know? Didn’t we drink gin and tonics at Ático?”

Color creeps up his neck as he looks down at the menu. “When I picked you up from that restaurant, you know, the one where you were chatting up your girlfriends—you said you had a red wine buzz.”

I try to squash the rise in my chest before it gets out of hand.

But it overwhelms me anyway. He needs to stop. Stop making me feel like everything I do or say is important. Interesting.

It’s not.
I’m
not.

“You remember,” I say.

He looks at me for a long minute. His eyes darken, flash with that
something
again. “Of course I remember.”

The bartender appears, and Javier looks at him, ordering a bottle of Rioja—one of Spain’s more famous red varietals.
 

“A whole bottle?” I say, arching a brow. “I agreed to
one
drink.”

Javier digs a money clip out of his back pocket. “I think I can convince you to stay for a few more.”

“No, wait,” I say, scrambling for my bag. “Let me treat you to some wine. It’s the least I can do for helping me with my thesis—I mean, the gas alone for today’s flight—”

But he’s already passing the bartender a few bills. When I try to offer him money—“Please, Javier, take it!”—he gently curls the Euro bill into my palm.

“Perhaps next time,” he says.

His fingers are still curled around mine. They are warm, and calloused. Threads of heat unspool inside my skin, releasing the tension in my shoulders, loosening the stubborn knot of worry in my head. He’s looking at me, I feel it, even though my eyes are glued to our hands. He’s waiting for me to pull away, but I don’t.

Something about his touch makes my throat contract.

“Thanks,” I say, swallowing.

“You’re welcome,” he says. He holds up his glass. “I admit, I wasn’t thrilled about bringing you to the monastery the first time.”

“Really?” I grin. “I didn’t notice.”

“Sorry for being surly,” he replies. “But now—now I’m glad I brought you along. Really, really glad. It’s worked out well, don’t you think?”

I touch my glass to his. “I do.”

Javier grins, too. He stands, scooches his stool closer to mine to make room for another couple. He sits.