Just One Kiss

Chapter 14

The whole flight back to Cape Town, China could not stop thinking about her time in Spain so far. She had never felt so free, so happy and so adventurous in all her twenty six years of life, especially when she was with Nico.

She reminisced over how he smiled at her, hand in hand as they drove down the Barcelona streets. She remembered the smile on her face as she stepped in the cold grapes, looking through her pictures and videos that he took of her, jumping up and down, his deep rumble of a laugh behind the screen. She remembered how he kissed her in that garden, at the Grand Prix, and in the shower.

The more and more she thought about it, the less and less she remembered that Charles was waiting for her at the terminal with flowers in hand.

"Welcome home" he said giving her a big hug and she set her bag down next to him.

"It feels good to be back" she said, taking the flowers from his hand and smelling them.

"I feel like I haven't spoken to you in so long, how was your trip?" He picked up her luggage for her as she gave a kiss to Duke, who ran off to his wife and daughter, who was taking her first couple of steps towards towards him, still adjusting to moving on her own two feet.

"The trip was really fun" she said. She wanted to be careful not to go into too much detail as the most she thought about it the more guilty she felt. "How has it been adjusting to the new house and all?"

"Other than my sports cast tapings and getting ready for the closing meeting of the new center I've been working on, I spend most of the time at home so it's given me a lot of time to get used to it."

They continue talking as they made the route to their shared home, which before today, China looked at as an achievement. However, as she entered the foyer of the bungalow and made her way to the sliding doors of the beachfront, all she saw was a prison. She struggled to understand why the life that she had worked so hard for was starting to turn into a definite mistake right before her eyes.

"I missed you" Maya said as she held Nico. They were watching a football match on the couch of his Madrid home as he stroked her hair, not listening to her stories of her latest photo shoot and the drama that came along with it. 

"I missed you too" he said, though his mind was not focused. He continued to look from the television to the carpet where his heart was still back home, his true home in Barca, where he was holding China the whole night in his embrace, breathing in unison.

His mind wandered further, remembering all the places he kissed her, all the times he held her hand and laughed as they sat and drank their wine, our wine. All the moments he wish that he could be like that forever.

"Are you listening to me" Maya said, snapping her fingers in his face, taking him out of his fantasy.

"Of course I'm listening. You said something about my father" he guessed, only hearing the last few words of his sentence.

"I said your father should be here any minute" Guzmán had called his son the day before insisting that they speak urgently. "Did you forget?"

"Not at all" he said; it was the furthest thing from his mind.

Within minutes there was a ring at the door. Maya got off the couch, and Nico could hear her and his father greeting each other, talking about how she had missed him and brought him a gift from her trip abroad.

Leaving the two men alone, Maya went to her and Nico's shared bedroom as his father entered the living room. Nico gave him a loving embrace and kiss on the cheek, welcoming him in.

"It's been a while since we last spoke" he settled into the couch as Nico walked over to the corner of the room to pour him a glass of whiskey from his cabinet. 

"Have you thought about my words" his father asked him as he handed him the glass. 

"No" Nico replied, but it was a lie. From the moment his father entering through the door, he replayed his words on finding love over and over in his head. 

He thought he had found love with Maya when he first saw her and as they planned their future. He had gotten used to the life of walking down the street with her, hands clasped as cameras snapped pictures of them, waiting for the next tabloid headline. He thought he could do that for the rest of his life, but the more time he spent with Chi, the more he realized he was wrong. Nicolas wasn't ready to face that reality yet.

"You're lying" his father said, "You're in love. I can see it in your eyes."

" I am in love" Nico said, grinning as he remembered the way China squealed and laughed as her body bobbed up and down in the waves of the Mediterranean.

As he reminisced, Maya walked back into the room, handing his father a box, which he opened to contain gold cufflink with his initials on them

"Remember, you said you wanted to add to your collection that you started when you were on your telenovela" she said, smiling as he opened the box

"You know me well child" he laughed, giving her a hug and thanks and a kiss on the cheek.

She asked Nicolas if he wanted anything, to which he just looked at her with a wave of sadness washing over him. He said no, after which she kissed him on the cheek and left the room.

"It's not her" he stated as a matter of fact, closing the box of cuff links.

"No" Nico said rubbing his temple with his hand. "What am I going to do?"

His father said nothing, sipping on his glass of whiskey as he watched his son go through the motions of realizing the true destiny of his path.

"I don't know but I think I know where you should start" Guzmán removed an envelope which has been lying beside him on the couch and threw it to his son.

In it, Nico cursed as he opened, were pictures of him and China, her face hidden behind his blue hoodie that she wore, lips locked outside her hotel.

"You don't have long until the rest of the world sees this. I was only given these in advance as a curtesy, but there's not much I can do."

Nico said nothing, still gripping the photo in his hand, his knuckles now white.

"Is it her" Guzmán asked after a few moments. Again, Nico kept quiet, but nodded his head.

"Good to know" he chuckled as he sloshed the brown liquid around his glass. "Good to know."