Page 87 of The Hotel Nantucket
“All I Want Is You”—U2
“In My Feelings”—Drake
“Lay Me Down”—Dirty Heads
“Sunshine”—World Party
“Crazy Love”—Van Morrison
“Stand by My Woman”—Lenny Kravitz
It’s late on the night of the twenty-fourth, so late it’s the twenty-fifth, and Mario slips between the sheets of Lizbet’s bed and starts the ritual of unbraiding her hair. He likes the way it looks all kinked and long, so she indulges him. Lizbet isn’t fully awake but her desire stirs at the feel of his hands in her hair, his front pressed against her back. Because she’s in that liminal state between waking and sleeping, her animal instincts emerge, and she loses all inhibition. Their lovemaking is a storm—and this night, she hears the tapping of rain on her cottage’s roof, then the tree branches swiping at her windows, then a sharp crack followed by a grumble of thunder. Lizbet’s and Mario’s bodies move over the bed in a darkness that’s briefly illuminated by flashes of lightning. It’s cinematic, she thinks; how beautiful they are in those split seconds when their bodies are silvered by the electrical charge in the air.
Afterward, they lie flat on the bottom sheet, the duvet kicked to the floor, and Lizbet wonders if she’s ever been this happy. She has focused all of her energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new, just as the sign at the end of her bed has been urging her to do for nearly an entire calendar year. She wishes that back on September 30, she could have somehow known that one day she would be lying in bed next toMario freaking Subiacoafter having impressed the hell out of the new owner of the Hotel Nantucket, where she was the general manager. Would she have believed it?
Mario expels a breath. “I love you,” he says.
The rain has stopped, the wind has died down, the lightning and thunder have rolled past.
“What?” Lizbet says, though of course she heard him perfectly.
Mario faces her. “I love you,” he says. “I’m in love with you.” He starts laughing. “I honestly can’t believe it. I’m…what? Forty-six, almost forty-seven, and in all those years, I’ve told only three other women I loved them. One was Allie Taylor in sixth grade, and yes, that was real love, the purest kind, awkward and unrequited. One was my mother, of course. And the third was Fiona. I loved Fee, but that was different because, although I would have lain down in traffic for her, we weren’t romantically involved.”
Lizbet’s heart feels like an exploding star in her chest. She realizes it’s time for her to say it back, but she wants to hear more.
“How can you be so sure with me?” she says. “Explain yourself.”
“Working backward?” Mario says. “When you ended things a few weeks ago, I thought,Okay, she’s not ready, no problem.Things had gotten serious pretty quickly and I knew you were coming off this other relationship, so I told myself I understood. But I was hurt by it, which was a new feeling for me, or new since sixth grade when Allie Taylor went to the Valentine’s Day dance with Will Chandler instead of me.” He grins.
Lizbet touches his face. He loves her.
“Before that? I wouldn’t say it waslove at first sight,but when I saw you in the parking lot that first day in those sexy heels telling JJ to leave you alone even though the dude was down on one knee proposing, I thought,That poor guy blew it but I’m not going to.”
“Stop,” Lizbet says, though she’s grinning.
“Beforethat…” Mario says.
“There was no ‘before that,’” Lizbet says. “That was the day we met.”
“Before that, Xavier told me that he’d hired a lioness named Elizabeth Keaton to manage the hotel. He said you used to run the Deck with your boyfriend but that you’d parted ways and you were looking for a fresh start.”
“Lioness?”Lizbet says.
“Direct quote. You don’t forget a description like that. I was so intrigued that I did some stalking. I saw the feature about you and JJ inCoastal Living,then I checked out the Deck’s website, and I developed a little crush on you.”
“You did not!”
“I did,” Mario says. “You reminded me of Allie Taylor.”
Lizbet swats him and he says, “I’m serious. She had blond hair like yours and pale blue eyes and that sweet-but-tough thing going that I haven’t encountered in any other woman until I met you. I always said I was going to find Allie Taylor someday and marry her.”
Lizbet is starting to feel a little jealous of Allie Taylor.
“But when I checked Facebook, I saw she was married with four kids at private schools in Manhattan and I also realized I was happy for her in that life. The magic was gone. But when I look at you…” Here, Mario traces his finger from Lizbet’s shoulder down her arm. “I feel like I’m twelve years old again and everything is shiny and new and colorful and full of wonder. And that’s how I know that I love you.”
“I love you too,” Lizbet says.
“There’s a reason why I’m telling you tonight,” Mario says, “even though I’ve been in love with you for most of the summer.”
