Walking Heartbreak (31 page)

“Soccer,” another cousin specifies in case I thought they played American football in Argentina. The new cousin lifts a hand, pinching her fingers together like she’s grabbing a small fruit. “Soccer!” she repeats.

“Ah yes.
Sí-sí-sí.
Soccer.”

The fans flood into the small reception area backstage. In the beginning, everyone is polite, sweet, swooning over autographs above belly buttons and on CDs. But when the crowd thickens and shoves to get to us, I loosen Mariana’s hold on Nadia and tuck my girl under my arm; there’s no way I’ll allow frenzied fans close enough to put her in danger.

In a repeat from a show in the US, the scuffle starts at the door. Only the pushing is more violent. Fans shout to get in, and it’s not venue staff guarding the door—it’s police with guns and batons on their hips. A stagehand translates when I ask what’s going on. “Someone has reproduced backstage passes and sold them on the black market. There are at least a hundred of them out there, waiting to come in. The fans thought they bought real passes, and they’re very upset.”

“Troll!” I yell over Nadia’s head. He’s onto the situation and already speaking with the venue director. At my call, he makes his way over to us, bushy brows drawn with concern. It flashes through me how lucky we are to have him; he’ll do anything to keep us comfortable.

“Bo, we’ve got a situation on our hands,” he begins.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Okay, we’ll have an escape van ready at the emergency exit in five.”

“No, let’s make Buenos Aires happy,” I say and feel Nadia’s gaze on me. “Here’s what we’ll do. Is everyone out of the main venue yet?”

“Well, except for the hundred or so with fake backstage passes.”

“All right. Let’s move this party back out.”

Troll gets it and instantly runs with my idea. “Okay. I’ll keep you guys on stage. The fans can come up and meet you one by one—doesn’t matter that the stagehands are working around you—and we’ll bring the leftover drinks out so they have something to hold onto while they wait their turn.”

“Perfect,” I say. Salvador arrives in time to catch Troll’s logistical input.

“
Perfecto
!” he chimes in.

“Ah you are sooo lucky!”
a blonde teenager with black eyes exclaims to Nadia, beaming. “He wrote that song about youuuu?”

Nadia has that pink tint to her cheeks, the one I love to make crawl down her chest. She fidgets, unsure of where to keep her hands, so I take one of them and pull it to my mouth for a kiss. “
Sí
,” I say in Spanish, making the girl giggle. “She’s my inspiration for everything.”

“No-no-no, not the sad song?” the girl asks, jutting out a pouty-lip.

“True, not the sad song.”

“I hope you never, never write sad songs about her!”

“I won’t let him,” my shy girl pipes up, adding in her mother tongue,
“Nunca,”
and I think I know what it means.

“I will tell you what love is in Spanish,” the small blonde declares.
“Te amo.”

“Te amo?”
I say to be sure I pronounce it correctly.

“Sí!”
She claps her hands together and holds them there expectantly. Her gaze flicks from me to Nadia and then back to me.

I turn to my sweetheart and say, “
Te amo
,” and somehow that’s bigger for her than all the times I’ve said it in English and Swedish. Nadia’s eyes well with liquid emotion, and her cheeks take on a darker shade of pink.

“Siempre?”
Nadia whispers, and I look to the girl for help. She squees and claps her hands in small flutters, dragonfly-style.

“She ask you if always! Will you
always
love her?” Then she holds her breath on Nadia’s behalf.

“Sí,”
I say.
“Siempre. Te amo siempre.”

“Siempre te amaré,”
the girl specifies, but she nods so she must be okay with my version too. Nadia nudges a bashful kiss to my shoulder, but I lift her chin so the second kiss lands on my mouth. Exactly where I like it.

BO

My love,
she nibbles on two fingernails, a rapid blink of dark eyes revealing how worried she is. Hired help shoves furniture into a moving truck, while two others upend her couch and push it through the doorway.

“Darling,” I say, pulling her in under my arm. “It was time.”

“I know, but still…” She covers her mouth with the hand that doesn’t rest around my waist. I kiss the top of her head, nudging her closer, the need to protect her enveloping me in now-familiar ways. “I’ve lived here for so long.” She pauses, swallowing her emotion. “So much history.”

“We’re making new history.” I turn her enough to kiss her temple. “New memories.” I kiss her again. “
Our
memories. He’d approve.”

She laughs softly at that, a relieved laugh that tells me I am right. “Yeah, he would. He wouldn’t want me to live the way I did.”

“No, because apparently he wasn’t a bad guy,” I add. We’ve played this game for a while now. Me bumping up against the comfort zone of her grief, and Nadia tolerating it a little better with each jolt.

“You’re so weird,” she says. She tilts her head back and gazes at me, irises moist. “No one says the stuff you do. You’re supposed to, like, not talk about it that much. Definitely not almost make me cry all the time.” She smiles though, knowing my head-on approach is working.

“Right, because shutting up about it worked for you before.” I fake a stern expression to keep Nadia’s attention; I want to keep her from registering the huge cardboard box noting
Jude’s photo gear + clothes
being half carried, half dragged out of the apartment.

“Anyway,” I continue, “you’re not burning any bridges. If you get sick of me, you can make up rules your new tenants have broken, evict them, and move back in.”

The giggle she emits is as beautiful as water lapping over stones in Swedish mountain brooks.

“Meanie,” she says. “I’d never do that. And you can’t throw me out either. Have you thought about that? We’re moving in together, Bo. It’s a lot different than just staying at each other’s house,” she warns me, her voice boasting belief in our future.

“All the time,” I say.

I release her. Link our pinkies and start walking toward my car. As we pull out of the parking lot, I ask, “You know what your name means, right?”

“Yeah. Hope,” she says and smiles, guessing where I’m going with this.

“Hope.” I stroke a stray lock of hair away from her face. “Hope wasn’t there when we first met. Now, it’s written all over my darling. Every day, it peeks out at me, and I think—”

“Let me guess. You think you’ve got something to do with it?”

The last traffic light before our new apartment flashes red. I stop, drop my head back against the seat, and put on a show of being indifferent, aloof, and “rock-star cool” as she calls me.

“You’re silly, Bo. I see right through you, you know,” she hums before she leans in and plants a kiss on my lips. “Unfortunately, you showed your true colors that very first night in the dressing room. Since then none of your stone faces trick me.”

“Really now?” I feel myself smirk. Her confidence is sexy as hell. “So little Nadia thinks she’s got me all figured out?”

“I do,” she murmurs, suddenly close to my ear. Faintly, I register the traffic light sliding from red to green, but I remain under her spell until cars start honking behind me.

I jack the Saab into gear so fast, she lets out a squeal. “That’s the sound I plan to elicit from you in about, hmm—thirty minutes,” I say.

“Yeah? Because you’ll be speeding? Watch out for the L.A.P.D. First night in our new home and my boyfriend is locked up for being a traffic criminal,” she jokes.

“Not exactly what I had in mind.” I husk the words out and let my stare smolder at her. And from the pink marks appearing on her cheeks, I’d say she gets what I have in mind.

BO

I want her abandon.
I
crave
her abandon. Sweet and molding to me, she’s softness and warmth, slick moisture and all perfection. This girl has given me love and made me love. She has squeezed and wrung my inexperienced heart on a rollercoaster ride to this moment.

And now, here we are. She’s mine, all the way mine.

Our place is a mess of boxes, furniture, guitar gear, clothes, and pillows. The new bed is not set up, but the brand new king-sized mattress I surprised her with is at the dead center of the living room. We’ll be renting storage space for the things we don’t need anymore, where reminders too painful to keep in sight will be brought to rest.

For now, all we’ve unpacked is Nadia’s candles. Not her old tea lights but the new stash of big, scented ones from some home décor store. They paint our home with glowing orbs of green and orange.

Skin alive in the shifting glow, she’s beneath me, eyes hooded and expectant at my touch. “All mine,” I whisper, and I revel in the smile she responds with.

“Yes, all yours,” she answers. I sigh with contentment as I let my lips travel down her stomach. I lick fragrant folds and make her jut up against me. Tonight she’s not shy when she lets her legs drop open. Tonight she doesn’t press her lips together holding back the moan in her throat.

With one hand under her ass, I lift her into me. With the other, I press against her abdomen while I lap and hasten her pleasure.

“No,” she whimpers, wanting to take her time. I don’t allow it. I want her to come fast and hard. Then she’ll be slow and delicious with me afterward.

“Let go, darling. Be lovely,” I rasp out. I’m hard and needing her soon.

Her eyes open slowly, and I find no shame in them. They’re void of guilt, of worry. Tonight there are no anxious concerns.

In the pocket of my jeans, on the floor, next to her crumpled-up dress, there’s a ring that would sparkle if the sun hit it. But I’m not rushing things. Nadia just removed Jude’s band. I won’t present her with my ring on the first night in our own home.

It’s there though. It makes me happy that it is. I’ll carry it with me—for months—for years—however long it takes to read in her eyes that she needs our bond to gleam in gold and diamonds as much as I do.

Love exists. Love is patient. For some, love lurks, waiting for that single woman who can ignite a man’s love muscle. And when that beautiful person enters his dressing room, love strikes hard.