“Sure.” As I removed the camera from my pocket, he walked around the coffee table to sit beside me. I was aware of his closeness, aware of him reaching for the camera, aware of the brush of our fingers as I placed the camera on his palm. We were sitting so close, it’d be easy for me to lean into him, angle my head nearer to his, as I supposedly looked at my photos.…
A scuffle broke out in the walkway outside: shouted words, a few choice obscenities, pounding footsteps running back toward us. Then, my dad’s voice, loud and authoritative: “Hey! Stop!”
Without hesitating, I leaped up and rushed out into the cobblestoned courtyard, Quattro at my side. Clearly, Dad had no problem with being a hypocrite, ignoring his own warning to stay safe inside.
“Hey!” Dad shouted again at two brawling men with stubbled faces and dirty clothes that reeked of days-old sweat. Dad stepped between them. There had been reports of fighting in town, especially with food running out and no further word on the helicopters returning. Fear clogged my throat, but as I tried to join Dad, Quattro placed a hand on my arm. On the opposite side of me stood Mom, her eyes watchful, but she looked calm, almost expectant.
“Let go,” I hissed, trying to shrug Quattro off. What if they had knives and Dad couldn’t see the weapons? What if—
Then a familiar confidence emanated from Dad, the calm that soothed countless people who were scared of their rat-infested attics and cockroach-filled kitchens. The authority he had to stop my twin brothers from bashing each other. With quiet assurance, Dad said, “It’s time for you to leave.”
The moment was taut, the same knot of tension I’d felt at the helipad and the train station. Dad stood firm. He wasn’t giving off menacing vibes, just ones that said he meant business. Whatever the guys mumbled, they left docilely.
“Wow, your dad’s good,” said Quattro, nodding his head.
“He is.”
After a long moment, shivering out in the cold by ourselves, Quattro nudged me. “Head inside?”
I nodded even though I should have slipped back to the casita, safe and sound without any possibility of making a fool of myself with a boy who so obviously didn’t know what he wanted. If this were Ginny, I’d have lectured that she deserved a Chef Boy who knew with a thousand percent certainty that he never wanted to cook in anyone else’s kitchen.
But did I leave? No, I walked back to the deserted lounge with its dim lights and fire banked low. A room couldn’t have sparked with more romance. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, where he’d left his backpack.
“So,” Quattro said from his side of Siberia, “your photos?”
I’m not sure what I loved more: how he had tracked our conversation, remembering exactly where we had left off, or how he actually wanted to see my work. I fished out the camera and cued it to the photos I’d shot today. Our hands brushed each other, and I could have sworn that Quattro swallowed hard at the touch. I know I did.
“These are awesome,” he said after a while, his voice deep and gruff. If I closed my eyes, I could easily imagine him sounding exactly that way after hours of kissing. What was I thinking? Luckily, he just cycled through the photos without noticing my discomfort. Finally, he reached the series I’d taken of the soccer game. “You really captured… I don’t know, real moments.”
Pleased, I smiled at him. “That’s what I was hoping to do.”
He handed the camera back to me. “Like this one. Those kids had moves.”
“The best thing is,” I said, then cleared my throat to shake out its huskiness. I tried again. “The best thing is, none of them are letting the flood bring them down.”
“You aren’t either.”
“You must be going deaf.” I thought guiltily of my grumbling earlier that night about having to down yet another PowerBar for dinner.
“You’re still having an adventure.”
Was I? I’d preached at the pulpit of girl power with the best of them, bragging to my friends that I was going to travel the world, enjoy an amazing career or two of my own, and never settle down until I was thirty. I’d reminded Dad that he’d always wanted a shake-your-soul kind of adventure. But I had let one bad breakup scare me off relationships and allowed a bad attitude to drag me down here in Peru, when, really, Quattro was right: I was in the middle of an adventure.
“We are,” I said slowly, then grinned at him.
“So did you fulfill your purpose on this trip?” Quattro asked, smiling sheepishly at his question. “You know, Stesha’s tours and all that?” He shrugged and ducked his head. “She told me that people always come on them with a purpose.”
Back on the morning I’d encountered Quattro slipping out of the cathedral in Cusco, Stesha had told me as much: Figure out why you yourself are here.
“Did you?” I countered, because it was easier to hear his answer than to be aware of the silence in my own. “Fulfill your purpose?”
“Not yet, but I will,” he said, nodding his head firmly as though making a pact with himself. He angled a cautious look at me. “I’m going back to Machu Picchu.”
“But it’s closed.”
“I know.”
“Isn’t it dangerous? I mean, the trail looked like it was going to be washed out.”
“But it hasn’t been.”