“Oh my god,” I cried out, shielding my eyes and facing the wall. “Please, put some pants on. Or underwear.”
“Say ‘oh my god’ again, I liked the sound of it,” he said and I could hear him coming closer. “It reminds me of old times.”
“Javier, I’m serious.”
“When are you not serious, Ellie?”
I kept my eyes clamped shut until he started shuffling through the drawers. “Okay, okay, calm down. There, I have pants on now.”
I bent down and snapped up my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt then walked past him to the door, not wanting to risk a look in his direction. When I came out of the bathroom, after a long, hot and much-needed shower, he was already in bed with the lights off. This was exactly what I was counting on. I wanted to go to sleep on my side of the bed and be done with it. No thinking about the situation, no chit chat.
I carefully closed the door and eased my way across the room, my bare feet padding on the woven rugs, the moonlight outside the open window illuminating my passage. With the sea breeze coming in and the sound of the fishing boats rising and falling in their berths, the whole thing was soothing. Even romantic.
I crawled in, pulling only the sheet over my body and faced the wall. The moon was bright on my face.
After a few moments, when my heart rate had started to calm and I was beginning to forget where I was, Javier called out softly. “Angel?”
I wanted to pretend to be asleep. I wanted to ignore him. But he’d used a name I hated and I was sick of hearing it.
“Please don’t call me that,” I whispered back, pulling sheet closer around my shoulders.
He turned over in the bed and suddenly he was right behind me, causing the hairs on my neck to rise. “Why not?”
I tried to steady my breath. “I’m not your angel.”
“You’re someone’s angel. God’s.”
“God’s? How can you call me an angel when you think I’m no good?”
He was silent for a moment. Waves crashed outside.
“There are fallen angels, too. Angels with dirty wings.”
“Lucifer was a fallen angel,” I pointed out.
“You’re right. But Lucifer had no moral code. You and I, angel, I think we fell somewhere in between all of that. We made our place. Our own home.”
I closed my eyes at his words, my soul and heart and everything getting sucked back into a vortex of memories, all bright, shiny, and good. Memories of him and I together, memories I thought I’d erased.
His lips were at my ear, his warm hand on my shoulder, holding me in place rather than giving comfort. Instead of stiffening, my whole body relaxed.
“We evolved, Ellie,” he whispered, sending shivers down my back. “And we’ll keep evolving.” Then he moved away, back to his side of the bed, cozying up under the covers.
I didn’t fall asleep for hours.
The next day Peter and Raul went off somewhere in Pedro’s tiny Toyota and Javier and I took the Rover into Veracruz to meet this new contact of his, a woman called Amandine.
We had dressed appropriately for the occasion. I was wearing a long peasant skirt and gladiator sandals that wrapped up to my knee, covering my cherry blossoms even if anyone could see them. On top though I was showing a lot of skin. No bra under a low-cut and tight low-back white lace tank. I spent extra effort on my hair, styling it until it lay straight and smooth, just past my chin, and put on more makeup than usual. Nothing trashy but I knew I had the ability to stand out when I wanted to.
“That’s perfect,” Javier said when he saw me, his eyes savoring my body. “Of course, if you were still mine, there’s no way I’d let you out in public like that.”
“Good thing I’m not yours,” I’d told him.
The way I looked like an attractive American tourist, Javier looked the complete opposite of a drug lord. Jeans, a black and orange San Francisco Giants jersey, aviators and a plain black baseball cap.
Actually it was kind of weird being with him looking like that. Javier had always been a very smooth and elegant dresser and now here he was looking like any twenty-nine-year-old baseball fan, albeit one with high cheekbones. Even dressed down he still looked extraordinarily … pretty.
We cruised through the busy streets of the city, both of us taking comfort in the bulletproof glass, until we found the address. It was a café across from one of the various small lakes and lagoons that were sprinkled throughout Veracruz.
We parked across the lagoon and took the long way around, following a small boardwalk. He took my hand and squeezed it before I could take it back.
“You’re just an American girl and I’m your Mexican boyfriend,” he said with a cheery smile that made him look terribly young. “We’re the modern day Romeo and Juliet.”