Next Year in Havana(61)

Beatriz shrugs, flashing us an enigmatic smile. “If telling yourself that makes you feel smug and superior about your own choices, then sure.”

She leaves us without a good-bye.

“She is impossible,” Isabel mutters.

She can be. She also can be too perceptive by half.

A minute later Isabel leaves the room and I am alone with my thoughts, not an entirely welcome place to be. It’s been a week since I’ve heard from Pablo, since I received that last letter, a week of uncertainty and nerves, a week of missing him terribly. Has he simply tired of me or is there something more at play? Has danger befallen him?

I can’t help but think of Beatriz’s words to Isabel now; is she correct? Once passion fades are we left with compatibility, and if so, will Pablo and I forever be at odds, viewing the world from distinct—and opposing—beliefs?

One of the gardeners walks into the room, his hat in his hands, a look of discomfort on his face. He’s one of the staff members I’ve been bribing for weeks now, using them to carry letters back and forth between Pablo’s messengers and me. I’m fairly certain Beatriz does the same thing with our brother.

“Miss Elisa, there’s a man to see you. He’s in the backyard. He’s—”

I leap off the couch, mustering what little decorum I can in the face of overwhelming relief and excitement.

He’s home.



* * *



? ? ?

In the end, I can’t resist the impulse to follow Pablo through the city to the house where he’s been staying.

The residence is in the Vedado district, a few streets from Guillermo’s home, the site of our first meeting. It’s a nondescript place filled with generic furnishings, sparse decor, and a faintly stale scent that suggests it hasn’t been aired out in a long time.

“Are you the only one staying here?” I ask when he closes the door behind us.

“For now. I live here from time to time.”

The floor plan is fairly open, room leading into room, and I follow Pablo as he walks into the kitchen, my gaze running over his appearance. He looks leaner, and at the same time, more muscular than when I last saw him, as though he’s been shaped and molded, chiseled down to the bare essentials during his time in the mountains. His skin is darker than it was when he left, his hair a touch longer than is fashionable. His face is once again freshly shaved; wearing a scraggly beard in Havana these days is tantamount to testing the limits of Batista’s self-restraint.

I can’t stop looking at him, wanting to pinch myself. This isn’t a dream. He’s been gone for a month, I’ve missed him for a month, and now we’re here and we’re alone.

“Can I get you a drink? Or something to eat? I have a few things in the cupboards.” He grins. “I warn you, I’m not the most domestic.”

I shake my head.

“Do you want to sit?” He walks out of the narrow kitchen and gestures toward a faded couch shoved into a corner of the tiny room.

To the left of me, Pablo stands in the doorway to the kitchen. To the right of me is another doorway. I can make out the edge of a mattress covered in a navy blue spread, a pair of trouser pants draped across the foot of the bed, this intimate view of his domestic life sending a flutter to my stomach.

I could rationalize my decision by saying there’s an uncertainty thickening the air in Havana these days, that each shot, each explosion, each act of rebellion pushes us closer and closer to the edge and I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there. I could point to my own lack of control in my life, the match that was lit months ago burning strong and bright inside me. I could use so many excuses to justify love, but in the end none of them seem to matter much anymore.

He is here. I love him.

There’s nothing else.

I leave Pablo standing in the doorway to the kitchen, my heart pounding as I walk toward the bedroom. My knees tremble beneath my dress.

His gaze heats my skin.

Perhaps this is foolish—it most likely is—but what is there in life if not the ability to indulge in the occasional foolish moment? How many of these indulgences do I have left?

I stop a foot away from the bed, its outline mottled by the dying daylight. I take a deep breath, then another, my back to him, my fingers shaking as I pull my hair forward, draping it over my shoulder, fumbling with the buttons at my nape.

The sound of his feet against the carpet, each inhale and exhale of breath, fills the room.

Pablo stops.

I already gave him my heart, but I can’t deny that there’s something equally momentous in this, too. Or that I’m more than a little nervous.

His lips ghost across my nape, followed by his fingers at the back of my dress, his knuckles brushing my spine, a reenactment of that first night in the yard behind Guillermo’s house. Pablo undoes the line of buttons, the air hitting my back with each one. When he’s finished, he kisses my skin, turning me in his arms.

“Are you sure?” Pablo asks, his voice taut.

“Yes.”

He leans into me, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders, stroking between the blades, reveling in the feel of him, the scent of him. He rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed.

“I love you,” he whispers.

My eyes slam close. It’s silly, really, that saying the words out loud gives them so much power, but it does.