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“Huh.”
Valentina took in a breath that exhaled on a very shaky laugh. “He’sentirelyinappropriate, Mama. He’s younger than me, for one thing. He’s just signed a big deal that will keep him out there, and now that my debts are paid off, I have nothing to do there anymore. And he…well, he doesn’t want me.”
Even as the words came out, Val heard how unconvincing she sounded. Her mother’s raised eyebrows seemed to agree. She forged on. “He took me to the airport, and I gave him the ring back. He didn’t stop me.”
“There was aring?”
“It was part of the ruse, Mama. Trust me. We both knew it couldn’t work.”
“Did you give himanyindication that it was a possibility? That you wanted it?”
“Why are you being so hard on me?” Val burst out, and then began to cry huge noisy sobs, all the emotions of the past weeks breaking through the self-imposed walls she’d put up.
“All I know,” her mother said, “is that you come home after nearly a decade, tell me this fantastic story about a man who cared for you when you didn’t have anyone else, and you looked as if I’d punched you in the gut when I asked if you loved him. It’s not unreasonable to think that maybe you do.”
“Mama,” Valentina managed to say through her tears. “I think… Ithink…maybe I do love him.”
* * *
The heat of the Louisiana summer came as it always did with the bitter, oily smell of exhaust from the road and the heavy damp smell of rain that always threatened to fall. Summer brought a hum of mosquitos at night, hopping frogs, fireflies illuminating the sky and the slow creep of warm, swampy air that left a sheen on the skin and encouraged the mouth to hang slightly open to aid in breathing.
Valentina wasn’t ready for it at all. It was different from the heat of the dry Gulf, and it caught her off guard. She spent many mornings on the front porch, sipping iced peach sweet tea and applying listlessly for local teaching assistant jobs. It was too hot to sew, too hot to go to Armstrong Park and too hot to trail behind her mother where she worked painstakingly on her roses and magnolias in the little garden at the back of the house, the old jazz standards her father had recorded years ago playing out of the scratched boom box she’d had since the early nineties. They’d been alone all these weeks; her stepfather, Russell, was away, visiting family with his daughters, and for that, Valentina was grateful.
Valentina brooded and dabbed at the perspiration trickling between her breasts.
“You’ll stay here,” she said to herself, “until you decide what you want to do.”
She still hadn’t told Desmond. She would, of course, but processing it all and thinking about what this new stage in her life meant took priority.
Part of her was grateful for this new beginning—making up with her mother, being free of debt and of Malik. The freedom to start a new life, on her own terms. But a part of her also mourned the loss of thebeginningof something withhim; the beginning of something she felt like she’d abandoned, despite wanting it very much. It was nothing like how she’d felt when she fell under Malik’s spell back in the early days. Then, she’d quickly been overwhelmed by the force of his personality, coupled with her desire to be swept away somewhere that wasn’t NOLA.
She pushed aside her laptop and sat up straight, taking another slug of iced tea. It seemed to pool in her throat, tightened by a nervous tension she couldn’t explain. She pushed away her tumbler and picked up her mobile. Aside from a couple of texts from Hind, one from Sheikh Rashid’s office about her severance pay, notifications from a food delivery app she hadn’t read and a couple of responses from job-hunting websites, there was nothing. It was unsettling, seeing such stark evidence of her isolation over the past several years.
Enough of that.
She scrolled to Desmond’s number. Their last exchange was the morning she’d flown back to the US. There was no acknowledgement in the messages of what had happened between them only hours before.
As if she had summoned him by thought alone, a bubble suddenly appeared under his name.
I’m in Louisiana.
Valentina stared at the phone, stunned. She didn’t drop it, but she was close. Before she could gather herself together enough to call, he was texting again. Then she did yelp, because the phone rang, startling her so badly her hand jerked out, spilling the tea precariously close to her laptop. She snatched the machine out of the way of the expanding puddle and answered. “Hello?” If she’d had any doubt about her feelings for him, it dissolved as her core heated and her heart pounded.
“Valentina.” His voice was low and restrained. They were both silent for nearly a full minute before she spoke.
“You’re in Louisiana.”
“Yes.” He paused. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to show up on your front step. Not without your permission, anyway. It was impulsive flying over without saying anything to you, but I’m happy to go home unless…” He stopped. He sounded so unsure of himself. “Unless you’d be willing to see me.”
She closed her eyes.
“Valentina?” He hesitated. “Sorry. Val. You’re just always Valentina, to me.”
Being back home, where she had always been known as Valentina, had shifted something inside her, and that included the use of the name she’d rejected for so long. Perhaps it was part of her admitting that she was still vulnerable to love.
“Valentina is fine. Yes, I’m here.” The hand gripping the phone was now incredibly sweaty. “And… I’m willing.”
“I’ll be real with you,” Desmond said, and his voice was now so quiet she had to strain to hear. “I’d like us to go out, maybe to dinner, and…talk, I—” His voice broke off. “Sorry. I’m doing a terrible job at this.”