Page 69 of Deep In Love
Her discovery of a worm is much cooler than my previous update, which was to tell her the soil smells like farts. She gave me a disgusted look, unscrewed the cap to the sampling tube, and promptly gagged from the horrendous scent.
I tried to warn her. She should have listened.
She mutters to herself as she continues to subsample, and I pause my task to admire her beauty. As she digs through the soil, she tucks her lower lip between her teeth, the hair pulled out of her face. Her breath hitches when she finds a shell, and I’m an insect stuck in her web as she carefully cleans her treasure and sets it to the side.
Our conversation this morning was heavy, and Charlie was quiet at breakfast, but when she slipped her hand beneath the table and intertwined our fingers, my heart soared.
It gives me hope—hope that we can make this work if we both try.
“Good find.”
I resume extracting DNA from the water samples, lost in my task. We work in silence for another hour before Charlie says, “You hum a lot.”
“Huh?”
She begins to hum. It’s unrecognizable at first—her humming skills need some work—but as she reaches the chorus, I recognize the song she’s mimicking, the one my abuela loves to sing at the top of her lungs when she’s in the kitchen. The song I’ve apparently adopted as my tune.
“It’s always the same song. You hum it while you work. What is it?”
“‘Tuyo.’It’s the theme song ofNarcos.”
I never realized I hum—not to the point that she not only notices but can repeat the tune. Maybe she pays more attention to me than I give her credit for. I might be crazy, but the idea sends a tingle down my spine.
“Ah…” I draw out the word. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing is that you’resoobsessed with me, you can identify the song I hum.”
A flurry of emotions flashes across her face. Confusion. Realization. Annoyance.
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s implied.”
“No it’s not.”
“Admit it, you’re obsessed with me.” I tug a strand of her hair and raise the pitch of my voice. “Mateo is sodreamy.He smells like a summer breeze and looks hot while shaving.”
Her face scrunches like she ate something sour. “I am never going to live down my summer breeze comment, am I?”
“Not a chance, bruja.I will hold that compliment close to my chest until the day I die.”
She huffs, pausing her digging through the soil to cut me a glare. God, I love that glare and the conviction that takes hold of her when she’s ready to debate something. It does something wicked to my insides.
“Fine. But if you’re going to keep calling me bruja,” she grunts, “then it’s only fair you have a bad Spanish nickname.”
“It’s only fair?”
“Isn’t that the rule? If you’re dating, you give the other person a nickname?” Her voice softens like she’s shy. “I’ve never given anyone a nickname. How do you say ‘annoying asshole’ in Spanish?”
Her question hangs in the air before I keel over in laughter. I was anticipating a vulnerable moment where she asks if she can call me babe or honey, or hell, she finally asks why I gave her the nickname bruja,but instead, Charlie throws me a curveball, asking the question with the seriousness only she’s capable of mustering.
She’s fucking incredible.
I mull it over, pretending to hesitate offering her the answer. If I’m too quick with my response, she’ll grow suspicious about the true meaning of the word I want to offer her, but if I act like I don’t want to give it away, she may not ask any questions and take my word at face value.
“Well?” she presses.
I sigh, more deeply than I probably need to.
“Cariño.”
