Page 33 of Slanting Towards the Sea

THIRTY

THE NEXT MORNING IS deceptive in its calmness, a quiet anticipation building beneath the surface of our polite exchanges as I drive us to Lovorun.

Asier is pensive, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s focused on the scouting job he’s here to do, or because of that near kiss that still hovers between us like a specter.

I fight the urge to bring it up, to apologize for my clumsy move.

Maybe it’s best to pretend it didn’t happen.

Maybe he doesn’t think much of it at all.

When we arrive, I tour him through Lovorun, show him every nook and cranny, lead him behind the reception desk made of smooth olive wood, its grain wavy and curved and irregular.

It is rare, I tell him, because olives are rarely harvested for wood in the Mediterranean.

They’re much too valuable. He slides his palm across the lacquered surface but doesn’t say anything.

I take him through the dining room with its ten tables; the kitchen in the back, small but equipped with shiny, state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances.

He says nothing, his face reveals nothing.

Then upstairs through the rooms, one by one, beds bare, mattresses covered in plastic, curtains shielded with wraps so as not to catch dust.

“Want me to tear one open?” I ask, and he shakes his head.

He takes note of everything, though: the beige carpets, the double vanities in the bathrooms and claw-foot tubs.

The crystal chandeliers, the art decorating the walls.

He stops by each painting, and I’m dying to ask him what he thinks of the choices I made, my small contribution because everything else reflects Dad’s taste.

I commissioned the art from a local painter who uses colors and shapes so simple they tease the eye, to depict the typical Dalmatian motifs: fig leaves, piers, church towers.

We make our way out of the main house and into the small cottages surrounding it, their terraces ensconced behind crawling jasmine and rosemary hedges. “These have finished exterior, but still need some work on the inside,” I say.

From there, we proceed to the main yard, where we stand side by side, all without him saying a single word.

Asier crosses his arms at his chest, lost in thought.

I want him to love it, to be in awe of it, and I also want him to say he won’t take it, and then it scares me he’ll say he won’t buy it, that it’s not on par with the gorgeous hotels they already have in more sought-after places like Porto, and Pisa, and Crete, and Corsica, which will mean I’ll have to find some other way out of our financial conundrum.

When I can’t take the uncertainty anymore, I draw nearer and ask, “So, what do you think?”

He takes a while to turn to me, as if I’d summoned him from the depths of spreadsheets and calculations. “Hmm?”

“Do you like it?”

He inhales slowly. I can tell he knows he’s keeping me on edge taking his time with the answer. “I don’t know…,” he says, and just as my legs turn to liquid, he breaks into a grin. “Are you kidding me? It’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

“Show me the olive grove,” he says after I’d recited all the legal details about the hotel.

Showing him the house wasn’t hard. Over the years of renovations, it has morphed into something I don’t feel as connected with, something alien.

But showing him the olive grove—as a selling point at that—feels no better than offering your child up to a potential kidnapper.

It’s been a faithful companion throughout my life.

A place where I lay in the grass as a child, watching the cottony clouds amass on the horizon.

A place where I followed Baba around, hearing her grumble as she picked dandelion leaves for salad between the trees with her gnarly hands.

A place where I let all my sorrows leak out of me once I’d found out I was barren.

A place that taught me that even though I was infertile, I still had the ability to make something grow and thrive.

I extend my hand over the small iron gate. “You can see it from here,” I say.

He gives me a pointed look. “No. I want you to show it to me.”

He’s serious, and when he’s serious, his face can look almost cruel.

“Not much to see,” I concede, walking through the gate, not wanting to make a thing out of it.

Gnarled old olives lie beyond, forming three neat rows, sleepy in the sunlight.

“The terrain that belongs to the hotel stretches all the way to the end of the peninsula over there,” I point southwest, “and upward to that dry wall.”

I walk with my back to him. It’s only a grove, but the care I’ve put into it shows.

Every leaf and blade of grass in its place, the ease with which the trimmed branches sway in the wind.

It is beautiful in an unspoken, quiet way.

There’s a hush in this place that has a way of seeping into your soul if you make yourself still enough.

Midway through the grove, I falter to a stop, as if saying, There, that’s it, you’ve seen it all .

Asier saunters past me before returning to stand right in front of me, close, past the line where a business partner or a friend would stop.

He’s not as tall as Vlaho, so our eyes are almost level, but despite that, he has a way of taking up space and occupying attention.

“What’s the one thing you like most about this place? ” he asks.

He reaches for my arms, crossed at my chest, and starts playing with the loose thread on the hem of my sleeve, as if it’s perfectly normal for him to be doing that.

But I can sense his alertness, his whole body’s sharp vigilance that mirrors my own.

I stop breathing when his fingers trace over the fabric and onto my skin.

It is so soft, his touch. Human.

It’s also a door.

I can’t make myself look at him, because if I do, something will happen. A recognition, an acceptance. Here, in this place, of all places.

Pressure builds behind my nose and eyes, burning hot. I uncross my arms and move past him. “Why do you want to know?” I look out into the distance. My face is aflame.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just do.”

He’s prying into a part of me that’s too personal to share, and from the tone of his voice, he knows it. “What’s the point? It’s not like I’m keeping it.”

“Indulge me.” Side by side, we face the sea, the place where it opens between the mainland and islands, onward to infinity.

I take a deep breath, and when I let it out, I tell him, “Okay, close your eyes.”

“Me?” He asks, puzzled.

“Yes, you.”

“All right…” He spreads his legs for balance and shuts his eyes.

“Now, what do you hear?”

The sound around us is as clean as the vitreous air, uncluttered, unpolluted by civilization. Atop silence, only birds gossip, flying in and out of branches as they build their nests. The sea laps the nearby shore in murmuring hums. Receding, it disappears between rocks, blooping and whimpering.

“What do you smell?” I ask, before he’s even answered. I focus on the scents now, the smell of juicy grass, the scent of earth after yesterday’s rainstorm, now evaporating in the warm sun, sweet like baby breath.

“What can you feel on your skin?” An enveloping of air cleansed by rain. The sun, hot as it kisses the skin. The brine of the sea.

Asier’s eyes are still closed. “Spring,” I tell him.

“In summer, everything changes. There’s a relentless hum of cicadas, smell of wild oregano and fennel.

Soil parched, too hot to stand on barefoot.

In fall, the dry smell of immortelle and rosemary, dampened by dewy, foggy mornings.

Windless calms binding the sea in place.

And in winter, sharp chilly winds, piercing through however many layers of clothes you have on, the skin on your hands chapped and red until you can’t straighten your fingers.

Salt lifted off the sea, filling your nostrils, purifying you. ”

He opens his eyes, a drowsy look lingering in them as he orients himself.

“Seasons,” I say. “That it’s forever changing, but always stays the same. That it makes you feel alive like nothing else can. That’s what I love the most about this place.”

It happens so fast afterward. When we get into the car, we’re kissing.

It’s urgent and hot, and necessary. The gearshift and handbrake form a barrier between us, not allowing us to get closer.

It’s all futile grabbing, inability to hold on to anything, always at odd angles, never in a complete way.

The drive back to Zadar is both agony and a heartbeat.

His hand on my hand, my hand on his knee.

His kiss in my hair, his murmur in my ear.