La Giralda

GISELLE FIDGETED THE entire way to Seville to catch up with her cousin Victoria, wishing she’d put the brakes on this excursion as soon as it came up. She was nervous, wringing her hands and looking out the plane window.

First, she was going to have to deal with her feelings about Victoria, which teetered on a precarious edge of envy, resentment, awe, love, shame, hero worship, and wistful longing. It was easy enough to forget about it for years on end when she lived in the U.S. and Victoria lived in Spain, and rarely visited. Except for one brief conversation about the connection between food and sex during one of Victoria’s very rare visits home—the one that had guided Giselle on her first date with Bryce—she simply wasn’t part of Giselle’s life—until now.

Second, she was going to have to deal with coming face to face with a man she’d found devastatingly attractive the first and last time she’d met him, in matador’s clothes, covered in blood, after she’d watched him kill two bulls in some ring in southern France. She’d sat silent throughout the entire performance, entranced, not hearing a word Sebastian said to explain it. Sebastian thought she’d found it boring and the matador himself uninteresting, which was the impression she wanted to give both of them. She’d be damned if she’d let the stars in her eyes shine to people who’d be able to tell immediately where her hormones were.

Giselle had been invited to Victoria’s wedding to the guy ten years ago, but she could claim Decadence as an excuse to decline. It wasn’t that Victoria had married a guy Giselle found achingly attractive, but that she’d caught the most wanted bachelor in a whole country, because of course she would.

Yes, Giselle had finally found her own romance novel hero, but there was that little irritation in her soul that was turning her once-unrelated feelings about Victoria and Emilio into a pearl. And now two disparate issues were commingled.

Bryce picked up her hand and massaged it. He knew something was off. She’d told him about her teenage tussle with Victoria, how hurt she was, the letters and not knowing what to do with them because Victoria wasn’t oblivious to what she’d done but she didn’t understand why Giselle had been so devastated that her supermodel-ish cousin found her beyond help.

Giselle hadn’t been unaware of how to fix her deficiencies, except what diet would actually work. She knew how to make herself more attractive, but she was busy and her money was all tied up elsewhere. Victoria had grown up in a well-off family, so a lack of resources wasn’t something Victoria could relate to.

What Giselle hadn’t told Bryce was that she had reacted to Emilio the same way she’d reacted to Bryce—instant, overwhelming, and very painful attraction. She’d never told anybody. She hadn’t even written it down in her journal, in case Sebastian ever got his hands on it. It was so rare for her to take one look at a man and just die a little inside that he couldn’t be hers.

Her pain was compounded by the timing: She’d met Emilio not long before seeing that married man in Knox’s doorway. If that guy hadn’t been married at the time and he’d made some overture, she’d have—

Her brow scrunched. She actually didn’t know what she would’ve done.

Probably thrown up the same wall she’d thrown up when she met Emilio.

Attracted but frightened.

Wanting but still unable to let anyone touch her.

Don’t touch me, Giselle. I don’t want to catch your fat.

She was terrified that she might not be able to hide her feelings about Emilio, and she didn’t want to hurt Bryce. Their marriage was only a few months old. They were still sorting things out and it was so difficult, for so many reasons.

Victoria or the devastating matador, she could deal with, but not both at the same time and in front of her new husband— It was a nightmare, but passing Victoria by while she was in Europe would have raised more questions than she could answer, and there was no way her family—including her husband—would let her get away with “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Her third issue was that she couldn’t in any way predict what Victoria would say or do when she saw Giselle now that she’d acquired the resources she’d needed to turn into her vision of herself. Victoria was always going to be more beautiful because there was only so much clothes and makeup and contacts and braces and good hair products could do.

“What’s eating you?” Bryce asked quietly. “There’s more going on there than just seeing Victoria because no other woman can hold a candle to you.”

Giselle laughed sadly. “You haven’t met Victoria.”

She would never have said a word about it, but the second Sebastian found out Bryce was taking her to Europe for their honeymoon, he’d whipped out his phone and enthusiastically texted Victoria that she was going to have visitors, hyping Bryce up for a lovely reunion with the last member of the pack.

The only person in her family who knew how much Victoria had hurt her, besides Victoria herself, was Étienne, to whom she had gone to help her deal with her issues, and he wasn’t going to blab. He didn’t care enough. Sebastian would have no reason to suspect Giselle wouldn’t be ecstatic to see her again, and

Sometimes, a guy will catch my eye. And keep it. And I want to talk to him, but I never do.

he certainly didn’t know Emilio was one of those guys.

Emilio hadn’t “caught her eye.” He’d killed her.

Backed into a corner, then, Giselle had called Victoria and made arrangements. Victoria was shocked, but seemed happy to have the contact.

Thrilled would be more like it.

Giselle didn’t know what to do with that.

The plane touched down. She took a deep breath and stood when it was time to deplane, wondering if her choice of clothing had been wise. In the summer, she typically wore white shorts, Keds or espadrilles, and a bikini or halter top, tight tee shirt or babydoll top that turned men’s heads and made them objectify her. This hadn’t changed once she’d married Bryce. He wanted men to notice her, to lust, then see their shock when they saw the “monster” she loved.

“Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.”

She had racked her brains for the appropriate outfits to wear while visiting Victoria, but couldn’t think of anything appropriate to wear for Victoria. She didn’t need to impress Victoria (or did she?). She needed to be the best casual touristy version of herself. The best she could do was white shorts, simple Keds, and an emerald eyelet babydoll that showed some cleavage. Bryce really liked this top.

No, it was okay. She needed familiar clothes. She couldn’t do this in clothes she didn’t have a relationship with.

She fingered her elaborate wedding ring and played with her emerald and diamond tennis bracelet.

Look, you’re as pretty as you can make yourself. You’re married, which is something nobody thought you could be. You’re married to a man richer than Emilio.

None of that should matter. But it did.

They got through customs, then headed to the baggage claim, Giselle surreptitiously looking around for her cousin. Victoria couldn’t be missed.

“Giselle,” Bryce murmured, gently squeezing her hand and tugging her around to see her (drop-dead gorgeous as ever) there next to him (older but still devastating)—and they were both gaping at her as if she had two heads.

Giselle’s stomach roiled in pain and fear, so she couldn’t help it.

She bolted.

Dodging tourists, she headed to—

Who knew.

She just had to get away, away from those expressions of horror, and not even Bryce’s bellow could halt her.

Bryce couldn’t outrun Giselle even though his legs were longer. His injuries still pained him too much. If he ran Giselle’s whole route with her, which he could do, he’d be limping and in pain for the next two days.

Further, because she was smaller, she could slip through a crowd better than he could.

So it panicked her completely when he grasped her wrist and pulled her up short. She was about to capitulate, but then she realized it wasn’t Bryce. Her karate training kicked in immediately, but he was used to dodging bulls, so one small woman was no challenge to dodge.

“Giselle.”

“Please don’t touch me,” she whispered, panting, in tears, trying to jerk her wrist out of his hand. “Please.”

“Are you going to run again?”

She pulled her teeth between her lips and tugged at her wrist again, unable to look at him. “Please let me go.”

He released her reluctantly. “Why did you run?”

Because I don’t want you and Victoria to look at me like that.

“This wasn’t my idea,” she blurted.

“It was not Victoria’s idea to meet with you again, either,” he said with amusement. “She was afraid— Well, of this. Or something like it.”

Please stop talking to me.

“Giselle!”

Ah, and there came her husband, striding through the crowd easily because he was a giant here, bigger than Étienne, even, with a frightening face, and people simply got out of his way. He was the only man she could bear to let touch her.

He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into his chest and letting her bury her face into his shirt.

“Why?”

Giselle heard Victoria’s plaintive whisper, but she wasn’t necessarily talking to Giselle. She was asking Emilio. Or Bryce. Or the Lord. Or anybody.

“The looks on your faces weren’t welcoming,” Bryce said flatly. “And now I can see why she’s been so tense. We’ll take the next flight back to Paris.”

“No!” Victoria cried. “Giselle, I’m sorry! Seeing you was like looking in a mirror!”

Giselle stilled, her tears continuing to flow, but Bryce shifted.

A mirror. She’s saying you look like her.

She doesn’t lie.

She can’t lie.

She just blurts things out because she has no filter.

They were all silent for a moment, letting people flow around them. Nobody cared; airports were magnets for emotional people.

“I see it,” Bryce said slowly after a long while. “You’re taller. You don’t have any blonde, and your freckles are more prominent, but … it’s remarkable.”

“Emilio Bautista,” said that man, and now Giselle was even more humiliated.

Bryce’s body shook when he shook hands with Emilio. “Bryce Kenard.”

“Shall we get a drink and allow them to deal with this?”

“I think that’s a good idea. Giselle, go with Victoria and see what you can come up with.”

It wasn’t an order. It was a suggestion, a plea perhaps, because he didn’t like to feel her hurt any more than she liked to feel his.

She took a deep breath and turned to look at her cousin who’d devastated her so long ago. Shouldn’t she be over it by now? Now Victoria had tears running down her face, too, but she was pretty when she cried and her perfect, if dramatic, makeup stayed perfect and dramatic. Giselle preferred the natural mineral makeups because they didn’t sting her eyes, and did her face so it looked like she wore none at all.

Victoria was watching Giselle as warily as Giselle was watching Victoria.

“All right,” Giselle said low, stepping slowly away from Bryce, steering well clear of Emilio, and following Victoria’s lead.

The heat hit her hard when they emerged from the airport, and, as usual, Victoria was attracting a lot of attention. She was in white palazzo pants and a mint green tunic that was totally and completely modest.

Giselle took a longer look at Victoria’s trousers and realized she was wearing her garments.

Then again, Victoria had always been modest. No bikini tops in the summertime for her.

“I don’t know the right thing to say,” Victoria said abruptly.

“I don’t, either.”

“I never do. I try to think about what TV people would say. It’s the only way I can talk to people when I don’t know what to say.”

Giselle puffed a surprised laugh.

“I’m serious,” she said matter-of-factly. “Like, right now, I think I should say you look great, but that’s the touchy subject, right? I think it is.”

This might not be so bad. Victoria was ethereally beautiful, but she didn’t have a social grace to her name. “Yes.”

“I don’t know if we’re supposed to stand here and yell at each other or hug or calmly talk it out or— I know you don’t like to be touched, or people being too much in your personal space. I even know why. So I can’t hug you. You could yell at me. I deserve it. I wouldn’t yell back. It’s just that the variations on what TV people would do are endless yet I don’t think any of it is applicable to this particular situation.”

That made Giselle laugh again, partly because it was funny and partly because Victoria wasn’t trying to be funny.

“Your husband’s beautiful.”

Giselle stopped cold and gaped at her, for the first time seeing her, really seeing her, and there was nothing in her face but mild interest. What was Giselle supposed to say to that? “Uh … ”

“Well, he is,” she said, again matter-of-factly. “I can say that, right? Is that bad?”

“Um … no,” Giselle said slowly, still stunned, and trying to choose her words carefully. “It’s just … most people don’t see him that way.”

Victoria looked at Giselle, shocked. “They don’t?”

Good heavens. Victoria really didn’t see how awful and scary Bryce looked. It was what Giselle found beautiful about him, but Victoria—

“He has burn scars all over his face,” she said bluntly. “Did you not notice those?”

Victoria shrugged helplessly, clearly confused. “Yeah … ?”

“What about him is beautiful to you?”

Victoria scowled. “Don’t make me think about it, Giselle. It just is and it’s not important why. The last time I thought about why someone was beautiful, you ended up hating me.”

Giselle paused to think about that in terms of who said it. “So … you saw me as beautiful … ”

“Yes. And I started thinking about your real problem, which was that you needed to see yourself that way so you could chip through that block of ice around you. And then I realized that the solution to your problem required money and time, neither of which I had enough of, and I was angry at the stores for not having what you needed. So I was getting angrier and angrier at the stores and I had no one to yell at and— Well. I have no filter. As you know.

“No, I did not then nor do I now understand whatever it is you did or needed to do or find or whatever to lose weight. Your problem was never your weight because you weren’t that fat. You were chubby. Your problem was Aunt Trudy made you feel fat and because your mother was ashamed, she made you clothes that made you look fatter. Pretty sure what you saw in the mirror was triple what you really were. What you needed was to be shown how attractive you are, and then how to interact with men in a romantic or sexual way when you are attractive. And since I am beautiful, and you look almost exactly like me—although I didn’t realize it at the time—it should have been an easy thing to do. And it wasn’t. I wouldn’t go to the trouble of trying to frame you so you could see it, too, if I didn’t see it. I don’t care enough.”

“So … that— What you did. That was you being thoughtful?”

She shrugged. “Apparently I can do that, but I never notice. If I try, it always turns out badly.”

Giselle thought about that. Victoria thought Bryce was beautiful, and he was, but not in any way normal people defined it.

“How’d you meet your husband?”

Giselle narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Are you asking because you’re curious or because it’s what you think TV people should say?”

“Yes.”

Giselle blinked. “Uh … ” Oh, how to begin. Did she want to tell her, Victoria who’d always been totally there with church teachings? Victoria would never have consented to sex before marriage. Victoria knew who she was, knew her worth, couldn’t be conned, seduced, or worn down. Victoria was rock solid. It was her way or no way at all, and men complied or they hit the road.

In that area, again, Giselle felt inferior. She was uncomfortable with having had sex before marriage for many reasons, maybe some days remorseful, but if Bryce hadn’t married her, it would have been a bazillion times worse.

“I slept with Bryce before we got married,” she said flatly and waited for Victoria’s judgment.

“Mm … okay. But there must have been something there before that, right? I mean, you didn’t meet him in bed.”

“Ah … you don’t care?”

“Augh! NO, I DON’T CARE! I like listening to people’s stories. Why is this difficult to understand?”

She’s serious.

Well, why not? She was just curious. She wouldn’t care. More importantly, she wouldn’t judge. Étienne certainly hadn’t. Giselle understood how Étienne thought, but it was difficult to apply it to Victoria because she didn’t know Victoria.

So she dove in while they strolled around the airport in Seville, Spain.

Victoria just listened.

“ … and now we’re still trying to figure out how to live together.”

Victoria nodded. “We had to do that, too. It took about five years.”

Giselle gasped. “I thought—”

“I don’t know if you know this, but Emilio was very promiscuous before we met.”

“Yes,” Giselle said in a small voice. It was yet another point of hurt to her, that even such a promiscuous man wouldn’t want her.

“It’s difficult for me sometimes. He has a thing about him. It makes him irresistible.”

“I know,” Giselle breathed before she could catch it.

Victoria laughed suddenly. “So we look quite a bit alike. We’re dressed in the same colors. I’m attracted to your husband and you’re attracted to mine.”

That wasn’t funny, and Giselle could feel herself flush hotly.

Victoria nudged her with an elbow. “Laugh, Giselle. It just means we’re more alike than we are different.”

“I’m embarrassed,” she whispered.

“Why?” she demanded. Since Victoria had stopped, Giselle did too, shocked that Victoria was angry. “Why are you embarrassed to be able to feel those things? I couldn’t, for a long time. I couldn’t feel those things. Being able to feel those things and knowing what they are when you’re feeling them is a blessing.”

Giselle stared at her, utterly lost. “What … are you talking about?”

“Looking at a man and knowing right then you want to have sex with him.”

Giselle’s jaw went slack, then decided to talk to Victoria like she talked to Étienne. “Rephrase that so I can understand.”

“I was a virgin when Emilio and I got married.”

“Shocking,” Giselle drawled. “Whereas I couldn’t control myself.”

Victoria waved that off. “It wasn’t because I was trying, Giselle. It was because I am incredibly difficult to arouse. I thought I was frigid and I didn’t care. You won’t ever know what a blessing it was that you knew what it was when you met Bryce. And, like a Dunham, you took what you wanted. I could never have done that because I wouldn’t have known what I was feeling. Those feelings were there, but they were so faint, you see. Emilio had to work really hard to get me to a place you’d been for years before you met Bryce. Staying a virgin would have been easier than going where Emilio wanted to take me because I didn’t understand it. Whereas you craved exactly that, but didn’t know any men you could bear to touch you that way.”

Giselle was shocked into speechlessness.

“You had more discipline than I did, and more courage, too. I had no practice at being disciplined. You know what? We still have to use lube. Every single time. That’s how difficult it is. But you’re a natural. That’s why you didn’t want Emilio to touch you, isn’t it?”

“Um … ”

She shrugged as if Giselle had answered the question. “I feel that, but not very much at first. And you know what else? I didn’t even have the courage to tell Emilio I loved him, so much I was willing to leave Spain to get away from him if he wouldn’t commit to me. So my mind processes it like this: Being a virgin when I got married doesn’t make me virtuous. I didn’t have to work at being virtuous. Giving into temptation doesn’t make you sinful. You’d been working at it for a lot longer than you should have had to and you were tired. I was a coward for not telling Emilio I loved him and demanding what I deserved. You were courageous in taking what you wanted regardless of how it might turn out. I’m not better or worse than you are, and you’re not better or worse than I am. The problem here is that you’re still attracted to Emilio, and you didn’t want to be then, and you certainly don’t want to be now because you’re married and he’s married, so somehow acknowledging that is sinful.”

Giselle gulped. “Yes.”

“It’s not. Sinful, I mean. We’re human. Sexual attraction is part of being human. Notice, acknowledge, throw it in the back of your mind’s closet, go on with your life. There’s no sin in acknowledging reality, even if it flies in the face of what you were taught.”

Giselle bowed her head to think. Wasn’t that exactly what she was trying to get Bryce to understand? That his Mia Yoshida fantasies weren’t sinful, much less that he deserved to die in a fire for them, that four innocent children deserved to die in a fire for their father’s thoughts.

“I think,” Giselle began slowly, trying to sort it out with someone who wouldn’t understand, but who also didn’t care and didn’t judge, “maybe it’s not my attraction to them, but knowing that they wouldn’t be equally attracted to me. It … hurts.”

Victoria was silent for a moment. “I understand," she said simply. “Not in a sexual attraction context, but professionally. Yes, I see the problem. But your assumption’s flawed.”

Giselle huffed. “I was fat, my hair was beyond frizzy, and I can wear exactly four colors without looking dead.”

Victoria cast her an arch look. “How would you know if a man’s not attracted to you if you don’t have enough information?”

Giselle was completely flummoxed.

“Ten years ago, I just knew I was going to get fired, and then suddenly I’m giving a keynote address at a world conference and got tenure. I just knew I would never be able to get married because no man could stand to be around me for more than twenty-four hours, and then I’m married. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “My assumptions were flawed because I didn’t have enough information.”

“Your assumptions were reasonable," Giselle shot back, irritated, “given your history. My history was filled with boys and men who looked at me with disgust.” Except for Remington Steele. “I’m not going to assume the improbable every time I encounter a man I find attractive in case this one isn’t like the others. That’s like sitting at a slot machine for days on end shoveling nickels into it just knowing the next pull is going to hit the jackpot.”

Victoria’s mouth twitched. “Hm. Now I remember thinking that.”

“And also, Aunt Trudy.”

Victoria’s lip curled. “Yes, she planted that in your head early, but she’s not the whole reason. You don’t want men to touch you.”

Giselle felt herself flush again. “Um … well, men I, um … find … ”

“Find attractive,” she finished, stunning Giselle with the depth of her insight. Yet … Étienne was that way, too—when he thought about it. “Because you get hot and bothered really fast and you don’t know what to do with it and you don’t know how to flirt and even if you did know how to flirt, you have no patience and you want to hit the sheets right then.”

Giselle withered in defeat and muttered, “You forgot the declaration of eternal devotion, the immediate wedding, and happily ever after parts.”

Victoria looked at her in utter confusion. “Didn’t you just tell me that’s exactly how it happened for you? Or did I misunderstand? Because that is very possible.”

“Uh, well, I mean, no. It took us a year and a half—well, two for Bryce—for us to land in bed.”

“Except you kissed him the first time you met him, you made out with him the second time you met him at which time he undressed you in public, and you slept with him the third time you met him.” She waved a hand. “What was in between was you trying to figure out how to get this done.”

Giselle’s mouth dropped open. “Like a chore?”

“No,” Victoria drawled, “like seeing that what you need is in reach and finally saying, ‘Damn the torpedoes.’” She paused. “You ate the apple.”

That forced a little laugh out of her. “No. He called me Lilith.”

Victoria cast her a sly smile. “She didn’t do anything wrong, either, until her partner turned out to be a whiny little man-baby throwing a tantrum.”

Suddenly, Giselle felt a whole lot better.

GISELLE AND BRYCE didn’t stay long, only enough for a quick tour of Seville and a few awkward meals with Victoria and Emilio. Bryce and Emilio had absolutely nothing in common and therefore, nothing to talk about but polite What do you do for a living?s, which they had done while Giselle and Victoria stayed up most of the night dissecting the Fall of Man and feminism, beauty and truth, literature and linguistics, sex and food. Anything else Giselle and Victoria needed to say had to be done in private, so meals with both couples were stilted. At breakfast the second morning, Emilio kept his distance from Giselle, so she knew Victoria had informed him of their conversation, which embarrassed her further.

Finally, Bryce claimed tourist obligations and dragged an exhausted Giselle around Seville, astounded at how much the Country Club Plaza was modeled after Seville, and, further, that Seville had a major thoroughfare named La Avenida de la Kansas City. She’d already been here and she was too wrung out to enjoy anything.

“Talk to me,” Bryce said softly on the flight taking them away from Spain, hopefully for forever. “It doesn’t take two days to work through a few hours of teenage-girl drama.”

“I … can’t.” She sighed and returned the words Bryce had given her about his children: “It hurts too much.”

Her tears started up again when they landed at Heathrow and she checked her phone. One single text from Victoria: I love you, Lilith

Giselle hesitated over her phone, her eyes stinging again, then texted, I love you, too, Eve

★