When she opened her footlocker to stash her shower kit inside, Aish walked around her unmade bed to pick up a book half hidden among the covers.
“Is this in Spanish?” he asked, pointing at “Munduaren euskal historia.” His hands made the hardcover book look small.
“It’s Euskera,” she said, closing her footlocker. She walked toward him and pulled her long, damp hair over her shoulder. “It’s the language of the Basque people in Spain.”
“Is that that area above Portugal? Like...” He screwed up his face. “Like west of where you live?”
“No.” She smiled, looking up at him. He really was very tall. “The Basque Country is below France. Above Portugal is Galicia. They speak Gallego. I speak that, too.”
He looked at her sharply. “How many languages do you speak?”
“Enough to know that Aish means fire in Hebrew.”
As his grin grew devastating, she helplessly asked, “Why? How many do you speak?”
The bunkhouse was huge and cavernous. But their voices grew quieter and quieter. His eyes were warmer than a campfire.
“Let’s just say Aish is one of the few words I know in Hebrew.”
“Como un Americano,” she chided gently.
He stepped closer to her and there was hardly room in her chest for breath. “And you’re a gorgeous nerd,” he said.
She wondered if she was glowing in the reflection of his dark, sparkling gaze.
They settled on his bed at the foot and the head, facing each other and separated by the pizza box. Sofia and Aish used the torn lid as plates and his bath towel as a napkin and they passed the wine bottle back and forth, the glass growing slippery with the grease from their fingers. The rich smells of tangy sauce and spicy sausage helped to block out the cloying odor of John’s cologne. He was always heavy-handed with it, and his bed was next to Aish’s. Aish, an only child, loved John like a brother, he said unabashedly.
Sofia had to cover her mouth to prevent a piece of meat from flying out when he got her laughing. He drew a picture of what it was like growing up wealthy, handsome, the only child of adoring parents in the California sun. He painted it with family dinners and surfing before school and two people telling him he was capable of whatever, whenever.
Sofia planned to stay quiet about her own family. But then she found herself telling a story about her next-door neighbor, Carmen Louisa, who’d found Sofia when she was hiding in the grower’s vineyard. Carmen Louisa had lain down with her in the dirt, taken apart an ugly grape flower that looked nothing like a flower, and explained why it was the most beautiful sight in the Monte del Vino Real.
“Why were you hiding in her vineyard?” Aish asked her.
Again, despite herself, Sofia described how the queen had been roaring through the vineyard in a golf cart, screaming Sofia’s name because the ten-year-old had hacked into the queen’s computer and broken up with all of her lovers over email.
Aish laughed so hard she had to grab his knee to keep him from tumbling to the floor.
She told him, shyly, about her plans to be a winemaker and he told her, reaching for his guitar, about his dreams to be a rock star.
She watched him test the strings. “You could be a winemaking rock star.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked as he adjusted a knob.
“Your uncle admires you very much,” she said. While she’d been able to avoid Aish this week, it had been impossible to avoid her boss and his constant references to his talented nephew. “He’s built something he loves; he probably would like to know that, once he’s gone, it’s going to continue to thrive in the hands of someone he loves.”
Aish strummed his fingers over the strings while he looked at her. Finally, he said, “I never thought about it that way. About...legacy.” His mother, father and uncle had started their own businesses in California, the land of fresh starts. How freeing it would be to grab for the opportunity in front of you without the pressure of history guiding your hand.
How directionless.
Aish pressed his fingers to the fret and strummed a beautiful note. “I wrote a song for you.”
Surprise sparkled through her. “You did?”
“Actually, I wrote three.” He bit into his full lower lip. “This is the best. I hope.”
Once, thirty male coros sang to Sofia from the top of a Semana Santa float. It had been embarrassing. Now, with Aish’s inescapable gaze, this had the potential to be excruciating.
But when he began to play, he wasn’t looking at her. He looked down at his strings, his dark hair trailing over his cheek and jaw, and picked out an evocative melody that floated through the bunkhouse. Still focused on his guitar, he began singing.
Make a map and show me
Where you want to be
Make a map and I’ll show you
Where you can find me
I’ll always be there
Hanging around
You won’t need a compass
Not lost, just found
Sofia loved music, loved the fast percussion of Galician music and the scratchy moan of old American blues albums, loved David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days and the folklore tunes that girls still sang in her village as they walked arm in arm to school. She had strong opinions about music, knew what she liked, and had decided at twelve that the last great year in music was 1988, when Jane’s Addiction released Nothing’s Shocking. After that, music died.
So while she was predisposed to hate all modern music, she knew her massive pounding crush on Aish worked in his favor. Still, she was overwhelmed by how delicious his voice was. It was like flan, warm and smooth and soft. She wanted to bathe in it. She wanted to smooth his voice over her skin. His voice
