“You shower first,” he said, “while I set this stuff up.” He plunked a large duffel bag on the motel room table.
“Thanks.” I grabbed my shopping bag, relieved to have a few moments to myself and to get out of my grubby, dirty clothes. I turned on the hot shower and let it wash away the film of sweat and smoke stuck to my skin, trying not to think about what would happen to my life. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin felt clean and new, but the worries only made me feel heavy, tired. Sadly, there was no one to really turn to. Paolo had made it clear that I was…his work. And if he truly had lost the woman he once loved because he’d gotten too close, well, what could I say? I’d keep a distance from me, too.
I dressed in the bathroom, blow-dried my hair, and brushed my teeth to a pristine shine. When I finally came out, Paolo was staring at me like he’d just seen an alien.
“What?” I asked.
“One hour. How is it humanly possible to shower for one entire hour?”
“I was dirty?”
He smiled. “Well, I’m pleased to see you have skin left.” He glanced at the table, which had a laptop connected to several cell phones and a small black box. “Don’t touch that, got it?”
“But what if ET comes by and wants to call his mother?” I asked.
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“Noted. But what is all that stuff?” I asked.
He scratched his whiskered chin. “Well, that,” he pointed to the black box, “is a kind of phone hacker device. If I have someone’s cell phone signature, I can program my phone to tell me what calls they make and receive, or even block them from calling certain numbers.”
Grrr…“Like the police, for example?” I remembered my call being blocked in San Diego after I’d booted Paolo from my car. Then there was the time back at my house when I couldn’t call anyone except my parents.
“Maaaybe.” He flashed a mischievous grin. “But right now I’m using it to scramble my signal. Only data can get through, so the cell tower thinks it’s a WiFi device like a portable GPS or an iPad, but not a phone. It makes it harder for anyone to trace—if they’re trying to find us via a cell signal.”
“Can I e-mail my mom?”
He shook his head. “I said ‘harder,’ not impossible. And we definitely don’t know who’s watching your mom’s e-mail.” He looked at his watch. “Just don’t touch. I’ll be right back.”
Paolo disappeared into the bath, and I plunked down on the bed, resting my back against the headboard. My notebook was on the nightstand next to the remote for the TV. How sweet. Santiago—ugh—Paolo must have put it there for me. I opened it up and found my favorite beautiful pen inside.
I skimmed the leather binding and admired the beautiful thick paper of the pages. It was almost a shame to write it in, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Everything about the prior week came pouring out—my first days at school, thinking I’d lost my mind when I saw Paolo, realizing he was real, and knowing that there’d be no chance in hell of my forgetting him. I wrote about how looking at him made me feel, how his body felt next to mine, how he made me feel safe even though my world was falling apart. Before I knew it, tears streamed down my face. The stress and heavy emotions I’d been carrying around, including the anger I had for my father who’d hid so much of himself from me, exploded from the confines of that invisible space inside my head where all dark thoughts resided. I didn’t even know who my father really was. And my mother? How could she have hidden all this from me?
“Dakota?” Paolo stood there staring at me, wearing faded button flies, a white towel slung over one should, his shirtless chest expanding and contracting rapidly.
“What?” I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand.
“I heard you crying. I thought…” He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor for a moment before looking at me again with his hypnotic, deep brown eyes. I noticed then, as the light of the lamp on the nightstand illuminated his eyes, that they had flecks of bright gold around the irises. So beautiful. Just like the rest of him. His smooth olive skin, his thick arms and ripped stomach, everything about him was so addictive, so masculine.
He suddenly leaned over and kissed me. It was a soft kiss, at first. The kind a man might give a woman to comfort her when he’s unable to say how he feels. But what did I know? I’d never been with anyone. Nor did I truly ever want to be unless it was Paolo, which is why it was impossible for me not to react to his touch, to his hand moving to my cheek, to the smell of his clean skin flooding my nostrils.