11: The Little House (3)

Sunday at the little house felt peaceful — but neither of them wanted to get up.
Getting up meant accepting that they would have to go back to Madrid.
Their stomachs spoke for them, growling.
"I refuse to be hungry." Mario complained.
Marta smiled faintly. So did she.
"What was the point of asking the neighbour for that last night?"
"Exactly." Mario pressed his hand to his forehead. "It's not fair."
"We can't dodge our lives and our responsibilities because of—" Marta traced a zigzag on Mario's chest "—this."
"I'd do it with my eyes shut."
Mario looked at her with conviction. He meant it.
"You put it very well yourself — this is a slip. A beautiful, luminous slip, but a slip." Marta lowered her head and buried her face in his skin. "This ends here."
"I don't want to let it go. 'Let It Be' is not my style."
"We can stretch the day out as long as we can, but tonight we won't be together, Mario." Marta lifted her head and tried to smile at him steadily, her eyes glistening.
"Don't cry, Marta." Mario asked softly.
"Oh, come on, Mario!" Marta tried to make light of it, but what showed was a raw, brutal internal struggle. "Crying helps clear the toxins from your nasal passages!"
"But don't cry because guilt is stopping you from living, Marta!"
"Can we not think about that?"
"Then let's have breakfast." Mario took her hand, kissed it, and glanced at Marta's watch. "It's gone ten."
"Fair enough." Marta dragged herself over Mario until she could kiss him.
They both put on a little clothing and poured themselves a glass of milk in the kitchen.
Mario looked at her and pulled her close, his arm around her shoulders.
"You were shaking."
Marta held out her hand and saw that it was trembling.
"I think I have an electric heater in the skirted table." She said, pointing to it.
From the embrace, Mario noticed the cold of late February for the first time.
"They said on the forecast it was going to freeze today." Mario clicked his tongue, put out. "It had completely slipped my mind."
Mario left his empty glass on the table and wrapped his arms around Marta. She noticed he was trembling slightly too, and reached up to kiss his cheek.
"Either I switch on the electric heater," Marta nestled further into Mario's arms, weighing up the alternative, "or we go back to our monotonous lives where we at least have central heating."
They crouched down together and managed to turn the thing on.
"Something like this is what my mother-in-law used to offer when we visited her in a little village in Gredos." Marta said, lifting the skirted table's flap to put her legs underneath.
"If you're going to talk about your ex-husband, I'd rather you didn't." Mario followed suit.
They ate the small sponge fingers the neighbour had given them and huddled together.
"I really love the quiet of this little village." Mario stared out of the window at nothing in particular.
"What won me over was how far out it is." Marta stretched her arms across the table and tucked them under the skirt onto her lap. "I could sit here listening to the silence of the hills forever, if we stayed like this."
The time spent warm beneath the skirted table passed in a heartbeat, and five o'clock in the afternoon arrived before they had even eaten.
"I don't want the day to end, but I thought we could stop on the way back to Madrid—" Mario had his eyes closed, brow slightly furrowed, testing the ground "—and you can take it however you like: goodbye, or a last chapter."
"It will be a beautiful dream to remember." Marta got up from her chair. "Since there won't be any more."
"I'd want to see you every day for the rest of my life." Mario laced his fingers through the hand he was holding and pulled Marta towards him, kissing her deeply. "But I want to have memories with you as a couple — those small details that bring a smile when you think of them later."
Marta stood up from his lap and exhaled.
They went to the bedroom and found they had never straightened the sheets. They dressed, and tidied the kitchen.
By the time they got into their cars, it was quarter past six.
A couple of villages to the south, they turned off to look out over the Pedrezuela reservoir and stopped for a late afternoon snack.
"I refuse to forget you." Mario said, watching the water.
"There's something I haven't told you yet." Marta did not want to look at his face, and she avoided letting him catch even a corner of her eye, in case she was already crying.
"If it's about your life, don't bother — I only want to hold onto the feeling of having you in my arms."
"I'm getting married in two days."
Marta turned to look at him, her eyes flooded and on the verge of spilling over. Mario turned towards her and held his breath.
"That's not true." He pleaded, his voice breaking.
"I wish I could say it was a joke — but it's true." Marta broke into tears. And Mario followed.
With renewed determination, Mario said the two words Marta had ordered him to keep to himself.
"I love you."
"And I love you. That's what makes saying goodbye so hard."
"Don't marry him, Marta. Please."
"It's business, Mario. And I will always think of you — never doubt that."
"I couldn't blame you, because I would do the same in your place — and it cuts deeply."
"There's nothing to regret about something so beautiful and fleeting."
The embrace held the dusk as though it had always belonged to that feeling.
With nightfall, and from their cars, they wished each other sweet dreams and drove back through the streets of Madrid towards their cold and familiar homes.
"We'll always have El Corcho" Marta received on her phone when she reached the entrance of her building's car park.
She smiled, realising Mario remembered the name of the street where the little house stood.
"You will always be in my heart" she wrote back, and got into bed, ready to let the tears expiate her guilt so she could wake the next day wearing something close to normal.