Page 24 of Slanting Towards the Sea

TWENTY-ONE

I NEVER EXPECTED TO meet anyone after Vlaho, never attempted to date after we’d divorced.

Not just because my heart still belonged to him, but because I couldn’t see the point of starting out with someone new only to come to the same miserable end once the man realized I couldn’t give him a family.

And this is the thing about Asier. He’d tiptoed into my life so softly that he was already in it before I could ask myself, What’s the point?

If he’d been any louder or pushier, I might have jolted and fled, but he entered gently, his influence visible only as it accrued.

And by the time the question emerges, I don’t let myself dawdle on the answer, because it’s so hard to resist this newfound aliveness.

Not that Asier and I are together . Neither he nor I have said anything that could be unequivocally interpreted as more than friendship.

But there is more. In the focus we’ve put on each other, in the fact that we talk and text every day, even if it is about things of little importance.

It’s in the words with delectably hidden meanings, and the fact that my day feels unremarkable until my phone lights up. Until I light up with it.

When he texts me at night, he asks, “How was your day, Gorgeous?” A simple question, but it makes me spend my days scouring for things worth sharing, the appreciation of life that had long eluded me once again making everything around me more meaningful.

One glorious morning that I’m off work, I put on a lighter jacket and head to town on foot, with no plan, nothing to do except absorb the beauty and promise of the season.

The road snakes along the seafront, where wooden ships sleep in small coves.

The sea is calm, smells of seaweed; iodine and salt.

Cormorants stand on small piers, their black wings stretched wide as they dry, their heads turned up to the sun, as if saying, I am here, I embrace you .

I walk by the Italian villas that I mentioned to Asier when we were in Split and take a photo of each one as I pass.

“i would drink coffee each morning on this terrace if i lived here,” I write, sending him the one with the balcony resting on high columns, from which I’m sure one can see the entire Zadar Channel.

“or sleep in the room on the second floor of this one,” I send with another, “with this big french window open to the sea.”

Asier doesn’t answer, he must be busy or asleep.

I don’t know, and what surprises me is that I don’t fear not knowing, like I used to, with Vlaho.

I walk over the bridge and settle in one of the coffee shops on the town’s main square.

The sun is warm on my face, painting everything behind my eyelids in gleaming red.

I’m like those cormorants. Here, embracing.

A pair of hands closes over my eyes from behind. “Look what we’ve got here. A lizard!” Marina says in her boisterous tone. She removes her hands and bends down to kiss my cheek before she eases herself into a chair next to me. “Waiting for someone?”

“No,” I tell her. “The seat’s yours.”

She takes out her phone. “Let me just tell Vlaho we’re here, he’s doing some grocery shopping at the market.”

It’s Monday. “Shouldn’t he be at work?”

“He took the day off. I needed some help with the sailboat. Prepping it for the season.”

The waiter comes and Marina orders a latte for herself, and I ask if we should get Vlaho his macchiato. She nods, and I order it for him, tell the waiter to hold the foam, because Vlaho hates when he has to dig through it for his coffee.

“So, how was Split? Was it nice to wag your tail elsewhere for a bit?” Marina asks.

“It was all right,” I say. I think of Asier, and it takes some effort to suppress the grin that escapes me. I tell Marina about the scientist and her project instead, and how she said I might get a job in Florence someday, if the money from the EU funds goes through.

“Ma dai,” Marina says, with a fling of bunched fingers, so even though the words sound exactly the same in Croatian, I know she’s speaking Italian. “Ma che successo epico,” she adds with her over-the-top accent. I laugh. We met while learning Italian, and hers is as awful as ever.

She pushes my shoulder. “I told you a long time ago that you should get out more.”

“I know,” I say, and that’s when our coffees, and Vlaho, arrive.

He bends down to kiss my cheek, and the warm smell of his skin, the realness of it, flips my stomach. It’s a small failure each time, this reminder that I’m not over him, but today it hits differently. For the first time, someone else is on my mind, and it softens the blow.

Vlaho settles into the chair opposite me, easing plastic bags with sardines and Swiss chard to the floor.

“Guess what. Our girl here got invited to work in Florence with some Italian hotshot scientist,” Marina says.

I give her a look. “You’re telling it like it’s a done deal.

And even if it were, it’s not like I can go anywhere, not with Dad in my care.

” I wince at my own words, because I don’t want them to think I’m resentful of my role as my father’s caregiver.

“But I might have a potential buyer for Lovorun,” I say, turning to Vlaho.

“Tara’s husband connected me with this guy, this investor.

” I become self-conscious, telling him about Asier, for acknowledging that I met someone else, even though I’m not exactly owning up to it.

It’s almost imperceptible how he tenses up.

“Anyway,” I continue, in a quieter voice.

“He—his fund, the fund he works for, I mean, runs a chain of heritage hotels and they’re acquiring new property in Croatia, and it sounds like Lovorun might be a good fit.

They were looking at an estate on Vis, but it didn’t check out, legally.

” I’m rambling now, so I turn to Marina, hoping she’ll pepper the conversation with one of her wisecracks, but she too is eyeing me with suspicion.

I’m hyperaware of my body, it moves with exaggeration. “Anyway, chances are they’ll buy.”

Marina glances at Vlaho as she takes a sip of her coffee. “And this investor. Is he… our age?”

“He’s about…” I start, but then stop myself. “What does it matter, his age?”

Marina shrugs. “Just asking, I guess.” But I can tell she isn’t just asking, she is asking , and Vlaho is too, with his tumultuous eyes.

Their reaction to something I haven’t acknowledged even to myself, let alone said, gets under my skin.

All these years I’ve watched the two of them together.

I saw their kids get born, celebrated their birthdays and christenings.

I’ve seen them exchange hugs and warm looks, inside jokes, and language loaded with the shared familiarity that had once been reserved for him and me, and I endured it all.

So what is it they’re calling me out on, exactly? For flirting with a man I should be professional with? For believing that I still have a chance to meet someone new? Or for failing Vlaho? For not being true to him—or at least to my feelings for him? Him, looking at me with those turbulent eyes.

I straighten in my chair. The thing about feeling too much is that sometimes you have to force yourself to feel less.

That in order to preserve your heart, you have to close it off, deliberately deny it its main function, and reduce it to a mere pump.

The first time I did this was after the boot incident, when Mom sent me to the psychiatrist. Her dismissal had drilled a hole so deep, so angry, that I couldn’t stand it.

Shutting myself off was the only way I could manage to share the same space with her.

And I had to do it countless times since, with Sa?a, Vlaho’s mom, even Tara. I’m an expert, really, by now.

So I look at Vlaho, straight into his eyes, and steel myself against the wounded look he has no right to.

Then I turn to Marina. If anyone should be happy that I’m moving on, it’s her. But what startles me is that her face looks even more dismayed than Vlaho’s.