We'd had sex in my kitchen, which I had just carefully cleaned the day before. I had been inhaling the scent of bleach on my counter, while he fucked me from behind, pounding into me.
Now he had found a clean dishtowel, was running it under the warm water, wiping us both up.
"You know more Spanish than I thought," he finally remarked.
"Yeah. And you called me a whore."
"I called you a goddess, first," he reminded me. "You called me an asshole."
I almost told him that he was an asshole. We were pulling our clothes back on, and I felt a small bit of desolation when he pulled his boots back on. As if he was getting ready to leave.
But he and I sat on the sectional, drinking iced tea, flavored with peach and mint.
"You have a lovely house," he told me.
"No, I don't," I smiled. "I hate this place. I hate the textured walls, and I hate the eggshell color. I hate the ants and the mice, and I hate the lack of storage. It doesn't just lack soul. This place is soul-crushing."
"You could sell it."
"We're renting," I sighed. "Mr. Baseball doesn't want to own anything, if he has to move suddenly for his imaginary job."
Juan studied me.
"Do you consider yourself rich or poor?" he asked me.
It was one of the things we had never discussed.
"I don't know," I confessed. "I've been working class, or lower, most of my life. Raised by a single parent with personal issues and the inability to hold a job longterm, lots of government cheese and school lunch programs. I never starved, though. And I went to Stanford, so I can't really whine about a lack of opportunities."
I had hated Stanford. I'd worked abysmally hard to get there, and it was so difficult, an unexpected challenge, and I barely made it through even with a couple of semesters on academic probation. I was also so lonely and isolated, I had latched onto my future spouse, who was there on a baseball scholarship and felt a lot of the same sadnesses and desperations that I did. We got each other through. I had thought he was my soulmate at the time.
"How much is your car payment?" he asked.
I was a little offended, but I let it go.
"I own it outright. I bought it at auction. It was a repossession, and I had to pay through the ass to get it rekeyed, but it was still a bargain, barely more than a year old and very low miles, since the prior owner hid it to keep it from being repo'd," I explained. "I decided when I turned forty-one, that I needed a decent car for once in my life. I was actually shopping for a Toyota or Volkswagen at the time." I paused. "Are we having the money talk?"
