He said as much through a full mouth. “Damn, that’s good!” he exclaimed before opening his water bottle to wash it down. “You can make a sandwich!”
The woman smiled at him patiently. Aish took another gigantic bite and forced Sofia to fill in the silence.
“She’s the finest bocadillo maker in Spain,” she said finally. Begrudgingly. “Aish Salinger, this is Loretta Hernandez.”
“Titi?” Truly surprised, a crumb flew out of his mouth. “You’re Titi?”
The smile of Sofia’s former nanny became real and glorious. “Sí, señor.”
This was the third most influential person in Sofia’s life—next to Carmen Louisa and her brother—a person who’d calmed the chaos created by Sofia’s dickhead parents. Without the nanny’s warm heart and firm demands, Sofia might have lost herself to her worst intentions.
Aish might have lost her before he’d gotten to love her.
He swallowed, gathered his sandwich and bottle into his arms, and then held out a hand. “It’s really nice to meet you,” he said, kissing both of her violet-scented cheeks and gripping her small powdery hand in his. He hoped she could forget the fool she’d met.
When she smiled, it made him miss his mom. “Y tú tambien. What do you think of our little village?”
“It’s fu—really beautiful,” he said, coughing away his curse. “You better watch it; you let people get a taste of your bocadillos and you’ll be overrun.” He said the word the right way this time, and he saw her dark eyes narrow on him.
It really was cool, being in this old plaza with its arches and stairways leading off to ancient streets, surrounded by these beautiful Spaniards under the stars, eating an everyman’s meal with Sofia’s people. Even with the big glaring thing that was missing—Sofia’s affection—it was kind of perfect.
Titi tugged him close. “I have one question for you, señor.”
“What?” he asked, leaning down. Had Sofia told her about him? He thought he was Sofia’s dirty secret. “And please call me Aish.”
“Señor Aish,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Do your tattoos go all the way down?”
“Titi!” Sofia gasped.
She shrugged as everyone but Sofia laughed. “¿Qué?” With the tattoo coverage over his top half, it was a question he got a lot, though never from an octogenarian.
She winked at him. “I am single.”
“Titi, I would show you,” he murmured. “But I’m not sure my heart could take it.”
She patted his cheek with a chiding “Sinvergüenza.”
“Vale, that’s enough, vieja,” Sofia said, the color high in her face as she kissed her goodbye. As she turned and walked away, Aish discarded his half-finished sandwich and hustled to catch up.
He matched her stride as her high-heeled boots—black leather that caressed her up to mid calf—cracked against the stones.
“You can ignore me,” he said, under his breath. “We can clock some #Aishia time for the interns and paps without saying a word.”
He assumed she was going to ignore him. But, as they went under an archway and out of the plaza, the group laughing and chatting behind them, she said, “We don’t have to worry about the paparazzi tonight. I paid to have the bars open just for us and Roman and his team are keeping a perimeter around us clear of tourists and the media. Everyone deserved a night off from the scrutiny.”
He said nothing as they continued walking down the winding street, aged copper street lamps glowing against the ancient granite buildings. He couldn’t say anything.
For the first time in ten years, Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos talked to him like he was a normal human being. For the first time on this odyssey, she spoke to him without a script or a plan, and without her words stinging with hatred. Energy filled him to his eyeballs. He wanted to ask about a storefront they were passing. He wanted to tell her about his boots. He wanted to find out if she’d rather be walking alongside that Texas He-Man. He wanted to wind his fingers through hers and pull her to him and whisper against her neck.
He wanted to apologize.
But thinking quickly on what doing better involved, he did nothing and absorbed the marvel of walking quietly beside her through her hometown streets.
Sofia kept her mouth shut for the rest of the short walk to Vino Secreto and was thrilled when she walked down the steps into the subterranean bar to see that its candlelit crannies and nooks were already stuffed with growers and winery staff who’d forgone the tapas crawl. The interns exclaimed at the winding brick and stone bar with its wine barrel tables and cracked leather chairs and iron-gated arches that were entrances into the tunnels. Early villagers had recognized that the subterranean space directly under the village made for excellent wine aging and storage.
Among the heat and the noise and the crush, a favorite three-piece band—gaita, hand drum and guitar—played in a little room that dead-ended at one of the gates, creating a gothic echo, and Sofia snuck through until she could squeeze in behind a high-back armchair, hoping she’d lost Aish in the crowd. The miasma of sour beer, candle smoke, and good-time sweat drowned out the scent of him, the wildly thrumming music the sound.
Aish, however, had stayed on her heels and the crowd squirmed and squished to make room for him next to her. Suddenly, she was trapped between old leather and Aish’s long body. He wasn’t pressed against her, but she could feel the open edges of his leather coat when he moved. And the smell of him, salt and sea, settled over her like a personal fog.
A strolling waitress handed her a glass of Manzanilla Pasada and Sofia grabbed on to the glass like a lifeline, downed the rich, nutty alcohol in big gulps. Aish, she noticed, didn’t take one until Sofia shot a desperate glance at the departing waitress. With a grin she caught over her shoulder, he grabbed two more glasses off the tray.
Staring resolutely at the band, she took the full glass that appeared over her
