“I guess,” Jamie sighed as he threw down the last card in his hand.
When Jamie picked up the cards and asked Blake if he was up for one more, Blake knew he’d better turn in.
“Big day tomorrow,” Jamie said as he gathered up the bottle and glasses to bring inside.
“Gotta get to the bus station early,” Blake said.
“Don’t forget to enjoy it.”
“What?” Blake had no idea what he meant.
“The bus ride. Argentina. Wherever you go. You’re supposed to be enjoying it, remember?”
“You got it,” Blake said. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
The last thing he thought of before he fell asleep was Kelley’s face, lips parted, eyes flying open at the sound of the door. And the anger—the shock of that anger she held in her eyes. How had he missed that she’d been so angry with him?
But no, that wasn’t the last thought. Not really.
The last thought was Julia and her lips on the straw, eyes widening in pleasure and surprise as she sucked up sweet pineapple juice.
Chapter Ten
Wednesday
The sky was turning a deeper blue when the bus pulled out of the Foz do Iguaçu station, heading east for Rio. Julia bunched up a sweater to use as a pillow and tilted her seat back, closing her eyes. She would not be nervous. Still, it was going to be a long night.
She couldn’t believe she was really doing this. She was really going to another huge and unfamiliar city by herself, this time carrying not only the memory of her loneliness in São Paulo but what was, she had to admit, the most incredible chemistry she’d ever experienced in her life. She wanted to hate Blake, to kick and scream and yell and cry and tell him off for puffing her up and then cutting her down without so much as a good-bye.
But he’d been gone by the time she woke up that morning. And anyway, she had no words for him. Not really.
It wasn’t that she was angry so much as resigned. What, did she think that after he fucked her twice, he’d want to stick around and keep doing it again? A night and a day playing at being somebody else wasn’t going to turn her into the kind of woman who didn’t find herself alone.
The bus jerked out into traffic and shuddered to a stop. She heard the clank of the door opening, muffled conversation, footsteps coming up the steps—some last minute passenger. There were plenty of empty seats. She didn’t open her eyes. A whole day convincing herself she was having the time of her life on the Brazilian side of the falls had left her exhausted.
But there were other adventures ahead, she reminded herself for the millionth time that day. The whole point of a fling was that it ended. Period. Full-stop. Poof into memory, like a drop of water spiraling away. Like a cloud.
And now it was time to move on.
As if the driver heard her thoughts, the bus lurched forward again. She settled back in to sleep, only to be interrupted moments later by a tap on her shoulder.
“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
The voice was low and close to her ear. Her eyes flew open and her heart almost stopped.
Then she frowned.
“What are you doing here?” she said crossly.
“I don’t even get a hello?”
“You’re kidding.” Was she supposed to immediately fawn all over him because he had suddenly—what? Felt guilty? Wanted another piece of her ass?
“Well then, don’t mind if I do,” Blake said like he hadn’t heard her and sat down. “Plans change,” he added as he reclined the seat and stretched out his legs. “Don’t they?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one who suddenly had to get to Buenos Aires, after acting like you were completely free.”
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t say that?” She practically laughed in his face. Julia may have wanted people to get along, but if Blake thought she was going to be some meek, mealy-mouthed pushover grateful for his dick and his non-apologies, he obviously didn’t know what it took to make a room full of tenth graders pay attention.
“No, I did, I just mean—” He was getting flustered now. It was incredibly satisfying to watch.
He tried again. “I mean that I didn’t have to get to Buenos Aires. I didn’t have to be anywhere. I don’t know why I said that I did.”
“I want to be clear, Blake. I’m not making you go anywhere. You can go to Rio, you can go to Argentina, you can go to the moon for all I care. But on Saturday I leave for Chicago, and that’s one plane ticket that’s not going to change.”
“I know,” he said. “Which is exactly why it would be so stupid of me to let you get away before then.”
Don’t do it, Julia scolded herself, but the heat was rising to her cheeks. It was like her blood vessels were completely disconnected from the rest of her. They went whooshing along for all the wrong reasons, straight from her heart to her thighs, with no concern for her brain.
“I didn’t ask you to come with me,” she tried again.
“You should have.”
“Why, so you could say no to my face in front of everyone?” This time it wasn’t hard for her to summon her irritation.
“No. So you could tell me I was being an idiot and to get over myself.”
“Yeah, like that would have gone over well,” she said, and now it was his turn to blush.
“Okay, I deserve that. I’m just not sure how to do this whole, whatever it is that we’re doing. Where it’s more than a night but in the end we still leave.”
There it was: honesty. Julia turned and looked out the window, where the last bit of light was slipping away. Behind them was the town, ahead of them nothing but dark fields and the deep purple silhouettes of the trees. Every so often the black was punctured by a beacon of light from a lone dwelling or a small cluster marking a village farther off the road.
“I didn’t think that was a reason not to enjoy it,” Julia said as she squinted at the lights whirring by. She wondered what it would be like to live in those houses—to live anywhere that wasn’t the life she’d always known.
“Yeah,” Blake said quietly. “That’s kind of what I was thinking, too.”
He didn’t need to know that Julia was never the one who talked about enjoying the moment and seeing what happened. She decided, like everything else on this trip, to just go with it.
His hand brushed the back of hers, as if trying out how her touch still felt. “How were the falls?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said, and then laughed. “No, that’s a lie. Spectacular, obviously.”
The endless chasm, the hurtling spray, the overpowering drumbeat of the falls matching time with her heart had reminded her that she didn’t come to Brazil to find a man. She’d come for this: the chance to live a few unscripted days overpowered by something so much larger than her own tidy corner of the world.
If Liz found out that she’d even thought about wallowing in the hostel dorm room eating bad melted-and-refrozen ice cream bars and reading about curriculum development, she’d drag her to the nearest Chicago singles bar and force her to dance, stat. It was only the thought of the depressing neon lights and terrible beats that had made Julia fill her water bottle and hail a cab.
And she was glad she did.
The view from Brazil emphasized the panorama of the river, crowned by the thundering Devil’s Throat. A walkway extended out over the river, and from there the waterfalls looked like slices of white through the lush green trees, piling one behind the other in a never-ending stream. Wringing water from her hair from the spray, the roar of the world in her veins, the rest of her life felt like a far-away dream. It was hard to imagine ever going back to Chicago, bundling up in warm layers, sliding on the ice, surrounding herself with stacks of papers at work, at home, in her bag, constantly reminding her of all she had to do.