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“A couple.”
“A couple is two. You’ve already admitted to Italian, German, and French. And English.”
“So that’s four.”
“Do you speak more?”
“Would you be impressed if I did?”
She laughs softly. “Perhaps.”
Our trail forks, the left side veering toward the little lakes I ran to a few times, the right tilting up into the fog. The sun is rising, but we can’t see it through the heavy cloud cover. It’s turned the darkness gray-blue, but it doesn’t offer any warmth yet. The air feels thick and cool around us.
“What about you?” I ask. “What ones do you know?”
“Only French and Spanish.”
“I like Spanish,” I say as we skirt a patch of muddy ground. She looks down at her boots, and I admire her profile. In the burrow, she looked beautiful—and more so because she was so fucking nice—but I couldn’t see her clearly due to how dark things were. Now that I’ve got a good view, I can’t pull my eyes away from her smooth, freckled skin, her wide, expressive eyes.
“You ever read Pablo Neruda?”
I watch as her mouth falls open in what looks like happy surprise. “Pablo Neruda? He’s my favorite!” She swings my hand. “You like him?”
“No,” I deadpan. “I just said the name to mess with you.”
“You’re smirking.” She laughs. “Why are you smirking?”
I swing her arm again. “I don’t know. Just had a feeling you might like that stuff.”
“And why is that, pray tell?”
I smirk down at her. “Because you say pray tell.”
She ducks her lips up like she’s pissed, even as she’s fighting a smile. I tug one of her braids. She swats me.
“How do you know of him?” she presses.
I shrug. “Poetry class.”
She wiggles her eyebrows and waves her arm dramatically. “No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo, porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el día, y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.”
“Don’t leave me,” I continue, “even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together. The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart.” I wink. “I learned this one in English.”
Despite my recitation in the wrong language, her mouth is open.
“Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach,” I recite, suppressing a grin. “May your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest, because in that moment you’ll have gone so far, I’ll wander over all the earth, asking will you come back. Will you leave me here…dying.”
She gives a little squeal and drops my hand so she can clap hers. “Bravo, you! I couldn’t be more surprised.”
I laugh. “Should I be insulted?”
“Absolutely you should not. I’m impressed. What woman doesn’t love a man who quotes romantic poetry?”
I watch her face twist up in horror as she realizes her faux pas. She blushes tomato red as she covers her eyes with her hands.
“Pardon me.” She stops walking. “I can’t walk with my face covered.”
I step in front of her, laughing as I try to pull her hands down. She fights me, so I let her leave them…but I pull her up against me. “I can’t see your face now,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around her soft back.
