Fatal Pursuit

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At Alcalá Aventura, pulsing bass thumped through the air. The vibe was out of this world. I wasn't worried about things that didn't matter. I could enjoy myself, dance freely, and loosely mumble the lyrics to foreign songs.

I leaned over the bar, my elbows planted into its marble surface as the bartender shouted something sweaty yet audacious into my ear. I didn't quite catch what he was trying to say between his heavily-accented English and the loud music but I giggled either way because the look on his face whenever I began to talk and he fixated on my lips, drinking me in whilst trying to understand my English was terribly adorable.

Our eyes would catch afterwards and we would share a knowing chuckle. He whipped the small towel off his shoulder and dabbed the sweat from his brow.
He was quite handsome. A charismatic Portuguese man with a nice smile, and so tall that he had to bend over the bar with me so as to not tower over me.
His jet black curls fell abundantly at his broad shoulders and he had that mustache-beard combo that I like, and that deep olive skin tone that's particular to men from the Iberian peninsula. A sleeve tattoo that was still in the works crept up his bicep and ran under the sleeve of his t-shirt.

My intrusive thoughts got the better of me and I grasped his arm, my hand seemed so small in comparison. He kept his eyes on me with a look of anxious perplexity like a child watching someone else unwrap a toy that they had been wanting. He was confused but wanted to see where it was going.

To be desired like this is such a powerful feeling. When someone wants you so bad that they'll let you do anything to them just to continue the interaction, just to feel your touch.

I slid my hand upwards, dragging the tail of the sleeve with it and revealing the rest of the tat. It was a confused swirl of a snake and lion intertwined into tropical flowers.
"Like it?" He asked with a cavalier smile that gave me flashbacks to the crusty, old men from the clubs back in Miami. Ick.

I dropped the sleeve and smiled back tightly, "I have to go to the bathroom."
I scurried off and texted Genevieve, my best friend and resident translator, to know her whereabouts, for I hardly knew any Spanish other than the bits and pieces from grade school and the Duolingo course that I half-heartedly (and half asleep) knocked out on the plane.

My messages kept bouncing and for some reason she decided to turn her location off. As I dig through my purse, someone comes and bumps into me so brusquely that one of my heels slip and I lose my balance. I feel the stranger's hand on my back as they catch my fall and stabilize me. Their palm feels like a big, warm catcher's mitt on my bare back. Once he sees that I'm okay, he scowls. The disgruntled stranger snaps at me in Spanish that's too fast for my fledgling knowledge to comprehend. From his tone I imagine it was something along the lines of hey, don't you watch where you walk?

"Sorry, I don't speak-" he grimaces and before I can finish my sentence, he makes a 'just forget it' signal by waving his hand at me and he walks in the opposite direction.
My first rude experience. Couldn't even be mad for real, it was my fault and I was partly left tongue-tied because he was admittedly fine as hell.

Ding!
I look down at my phone, a text from Genivieve.
2:37am: Sory bae he ading back now x

2:37am: luv u so oooo muxh <3

It wasn't uncommon for her to run off with some guy and leave me stranded and sick with worry. And by the way she was texting she was clearly drunk.

Okk lmk when you get here I replied.

I made my way back over to where I had left the Portuguese bartender, mentally preparing my script about how I liked his bizarro tattoo only to find that he was no longer there and my seat had been filled by the guy I had just bumped into.
I figured this was another chance to practice my newfound flirting skills.