Crashing into Her Read online

  I slip the phone back into my pocket, pop the trunk open, and reach for her bag, wearing a conspiratorial grin that I hope will distract her from exacting any mean-spirited retribution. “You must be dog-tired. Let’s get you to your hotel. Which one is it?” For a minute, I prepare myself for a bit of resistance or a curt response warning me of my impending doom. Instead, she rams the bag into my stomach; says, “It’s the Marriott in Windsor;” and slides into the front passenger seat, leaving me with the impression that nothing about the past ten minutes was funny to her. Maybe I’ve gone too far, and if that’s the case, I’ll apologize.

  The first thing I notice when I climb into the car is Eva’s hair, which is piled on top of her head through some force of magic; from here, it looks like a thick band of it is holding everything else in place. The second thing I notice is that she’s resting with her eyes closed, the smooth brown skin on her neck and shoulders that was previously hidden by her curls now on full display. Technically, that’s more than one thing. Which is why the final thing I notice is that I shouldn’t be noticing anything about Eva. Move on, maldito.

  I strap myself in and use a phone app to map out the hotel route. It’s only five miles away. She’s buckled in, too, so I start the engine and ease into traffic, and still, she doesn’t budge. It’s no hassle to drive her the short distance, not when it means I get to spend a few minutes with a woman who makes me smile as much as she does. And that reminds me . . . “Listen, I’m sorry about that stunt. I didn’t mean to piss you off, but I obviously did.”

  Her eyes flutter open, and she turns her head in my direction. “I’m not mad at you.” She opens her mouth, hesitates, and then says, “If I’m being honest, I was just irritated that you one-upped me.”

  The pleasure I feel in hearing this admission is way out of proportion with what’s at stake, which is to say, not a goddamn thing. Still, it feels like an accomplishment for some reason. “Oh, I see. You’re having a hard time accepting that you’ve finally met your match.”

  “Settle down, big boy,” she says in an amused tone. “I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s just say that you’ve dampened my urge to snarl at you. Anyone who can catch me off guard like you did back there can’t be all bad. Truce?”

  She caps the offering with a wink. It’s all . . . too easy. And nothing about this woman strikes me as easy. My prank antenna goes up, but I’ll play along, because whatever she’s planning will be good for a few laughs. “Didn’t know we needed one, but yeah, truce.”

  We arrive at the hotel within ten minutes of leaving the airport. Her mouth drops when I pull into the circular driveway. “We’re already here? God, what a waste of your time.”

  I wave her off. “It’s no big deal. I was at the airport. Plus, my flight doesn’t leave until morning and all my family’s gone, so it’s not like I have tons to do.”

  Eva lays her fingers on the door handle, her brows pulled in as though she’s carefully weighing what she’s about to say, and then she blows out a long breath. “So, would you be interested in joining me for a drink at the bar?” She peers out the passenger window. “Assuming they have one.”

  My brain knows this routine by rote. A drink at the bar leads to a hookup somewhere else, after a frank two-way discussion about what precisely this is and isn’t. I stop myself from running through the usual preliminaries, because that won’t be happening here. Not with Eva. Besides, chances are high this is the first step in an elaborate revenge scheme. I don’t care, though, because Eva’s fun to hang with. If I remain alert around her, I should be okay. “Sure. Since you need to check in, let’s meet there in ten minutes? Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  Again, too easy, but I’m interested to see how this’ll turn out. I give her my cell phone number in case she’s delayed in her room.

  “I can get a tab started,” I tell her. “What’ll you have?”

  She shrugs as she opens the door. “I’m partial to drinks with cranberry juice. Surprise me.”

  Her grin grows in stages, starting small and secretive and ending wide and welcoming. Maybe this is just my overactive imagination, but a split second along the way it appears devious, too, and now I have a hunch that if anyone’s doing the surprising tonight, it’ll be her.

  “So, how’d you meet Tori?”

  Eva waits for our second round of drinks to be placed in front of us—a rum punch for her and a Corona for me—before telling me how she met my favorite cousin. We’re facing each other in a sparsely populated bar, her feet resting on the bottom rung of my wood stool. After thanking the bartender, Eva places an elbow on the counter and leans in. The top of her sweater falls from her shoulder, and I catch a glimpse of the yellow tank top underneath. As much as I’d like to enjoy the view, I force my gaze to hover around her face. It’s a safe zone, both for her comfort and mine.

  “We were in the same physiology class our sophomore year,” she says. “After midterms, the professor assigned a class project and posted the group assignments outside the lecture hall. I was standing behind her trying to locate my name, but her cloud of hair was in the way and I told her so.”

  I cover my mouth, shaking my head and easily picturing their first meeting as a battle of wills. Eva takes a long sip of her cocktail and flicks her tongue out to lick away a drop of moisture at the corner of her mouth. Unfortunately, I stare too long and she catches me. If she calls me on it, I’ll fess up, but as she assesses me, I silently pray she’ll ignore my lapse in good judgment and finish the story.

  “So Tori’s standing there, her back to me,” she continues with a smile, “and for a few seconds I’m thinking she didn’t hear my comment. But then she turns around slowly, shields her eyes like she’s peering out over the horizon, and says, ‘Is someone out there? I could have sworn I heard yapping.’ And I said something like, ‘Bitch, you know you see me down here,’ but I couldn’t keep the laughter out of my voice. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

  I throw my head back and slow clap my approval. This is the perfect beginning for them. Explains why they’ve been inseparable for so long: instant chemistry. “Yeah, Tori caught a lot of grief about her hair growing up. One Thanksgiving, my parents and I were visiting Tori’s family in Philadelphia and she came home crying about the kids in the neighborhood calling her Chia Pet. My father wiped her tears and told her, ‘Tu cabello es tu corona.’”

  “Which means what?”

  “It means, ‘Your hair is your crown,’ and ever since then I’ve called her princessa.”

  Eva smiles as she swirls the straw through her drink. “That’s sweet.” She opens her mouth—to pose a question, I think—but then she takes another sip of her rum punch instead. Until now, the conversation’s been flowing, so I’m not sure what I could have said to make her hesitant to ask me something. I rewind the last minute and snag on the obvious. My mother and father. “They’re both alive, if that’s what you were afraid to ask. My parents, I mean.”

  She drops her shoulders and gives me a shy smile. “Sorry. I know your father’s alive. Tori’s mentioned him a few times. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard her talk about your mother. And, well, since neither of them was at the wedding, I wasn’t sure what to think.”

  Honestly, I wish we could move on to another topic. Not that my father’s an issue. My mother, though, is a different story—a long, drawn-out one—and I’d rather not talk about it. “I can see now why you’d wonder about that. They’re not together anymore, and she lives in Puerto Rico.”

  She nods in understanding. “So where’s your father? I expected him to be here.”

  Now there’s a man who has no chill. He’s pining for a woman who’s been out of his life for more than a decade, trying to convince her they still belong together even though she finally asked him for a divorce three weeks ago and wants him to foot the bill. The more he begs, the more my mother pulls away. “He’s on the island helping her with the house. Hurricane Maria ripped through her steel roof. The governme
nt’s given her a blue tarp to cover the gaping hole, but hurricane season is about to roll around again and that’s not enough.”

  She grimaces. “What’s happening there is criminal, and the way some people here are acting—like our government doesn’t have a duty to help—is ridiculous.”

  And watching the destruction on TV, knowing there wasn’t much we could do until the storm passed, was a nightmare. My mother managed to let us know she was okay through a Facebook message, but only after charging her phone with what little gas she had in her car because the power had been out for days. She and I may no longer be close, but I want her to be safe, and the people who call the island their home deserve better. It’s a relief to know Eva’s on the same page. “Half of the people here don’t even realize Puerto Ricans are US citizens, so most discussions about giving aid start in a bad place from the get-go. It’s frustrating, to say the least.” Why the fuck are we talking about this? Bar chatter isn’t supposed to be this deep. “Anyway, I was the person designated to represent our side of the family this weekend. Good thing, too, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss Tori’s wedding for the world.”

  “She adores you.”

  “And I adore her.”

  Eva shifts on the stool, leaning in another fraction. “You know, Tori’s suffering from a bit of hero-worship when it comes to you. She described you as this larger-than-life guy in LA doing stunt work for TV and film. Honestly, I pictured you as someone who’d always have a person hanging on their arm, so I was surprised you came alone. Couldn’t find a date in time?”

  My eyes snap to hers. Oh, we’re going down this road, are we? “Fishing for information about my relationship status?”

  She pulls back and huffs at me, swinging her legs back under her own stool. “Excuse you, it was a simple question. You don’t have to answer, makes no difference to me.”

  I steal a glance at her profile, amused by the stubborn tilt of her chin. If someone asked me to describe her on paper, I’d probably answer like I was filling out a government form: “Let’s see, she’s African American, twenty-five to twenty-nine, brown hair, brown skin, brown eyes, less than average height.” Eva in 3-D is more than those basic traits, though. Her brown skin glows with vitality, and the apples of her cheeks always look like she’s just tweaked them. Until I met Eva, I would have laughed in someone’s face if they told me a person’s eyes twinkle. But I swear, hers do. And that hair—it frames her face like a heart. She’d probably clock me if I told her how adorable that feature is to me.

  I straighten once I notice that she’s giving me a narrow-eyed stare. “Okay, okay, I’m not seeing anyone, if that’s what you wanted to know.”

  Her chin cranks up one more level. “It wasn’t.”

  “Fine. But let’s say, hypothetically speaking, we were exchanging that kind of information for no reason at all, and I was interested in finding out who keeps Eva warm at night. You’d say . . . ?”

  She turns toward me again and leans in close, her eyelids falling to half-mast. “My down comforter does an excellent job. It’s plush. And soft. And decadent. I highly recommend the brand. Let me know if you want info on where to buy it.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever envied an inanimate object, but suddenly I want to be the comforter that keeps her warm. Wrapping myself around those curves would be a spectacular experience. For tonight only, though. And . . . that’s my cue to break the fuck out of here before I make an ass of myself and ask her to take me upstairs. “Excuse me a minute. I need to use the restroom.”

  She smirks at me. “Sure.”

  I don’t sprint out of the bar, but I come damn near close to a jog. And when I return a few minutes later, my face freshly splashed with water, she’s gone.

  The bartender lightly bangs her fist on the counter to get my attention. “Your friend wasn’t feeling well. Said she was heading up to her room.”

  I stand there like an idiot, massaging the back of my neck. Right. That’s so Eva. She must have been humoring me the whole time.

  “Said to give you this,” the bartender adds, handing me what looks like a hotel room key card.

  I drop back onto the stool, clutching the card like it holds talismanic power over me. What am I supposed to do with this now? I have no idea what room she’s in. Suddenly I hear everything. The laughter on the other side of the bar. The clank of the dishes being bussed in the adjoining restaurant. The pounding in my chest as I consider my next move. I will apply myself to the task of finding Eva in the same way I committed to solving the Rubik’s Cube last year. Then my phone dings.

  Eva: I miss my down comforter. Care to replace it? For one night. JUST one night.

  It’s the text message to end all text messages. I’m framing this beauty when I get back to LA. And yes, I should probably pause and think this through, but I don’t want to. Simple as that. Instead, I text her back.

  Me: I can be the best fucking comforter you’ve ever had.

  Eva: Literally?

  Me: I’ll make it my life’s mission.

  Eva: Cum to room 308 then.

  Eva: Oops, typo.