26: A Swimming Pool

Marta could finally feel at ease with what her daughter had misread — though Felisa still wasn't entirely sure she had followed it all.
"My, how things have turned around!"
"I'm sorry?"
"You go from wanting to get into his bed to thinking he's trying to manipulate your mother into falling for Manuel?" Felisa crossed her arms. "Sweetheart, that makes no sense whatsoever — they're already married."
Marta glanced at her phone and smiled. She turned to Melisa and, with the last forkful of salad poised, gestured towards Felisa.
"Manuel has already arranged a viewing at an estate agent's tomorrow. Would you like your aunt to come with me, so you feel more at ease?"
Melisa nodded without a word, but with a smile that gave rather a lot away.
They finished dinner, cleared the table, and Melisa went home looking fairly satisfied.
Marta and Felisa washed up the salad bowl and managed to get to bed early.
Sitting on the bed, taking off her slippers, Marta checked her phone again — two messages.
Message from Manuel: "I've called a friend and he's arranged three viewings for us. Tomorrow at eleven we have our first one — I hope you like it."
She replied with a brief "fine" and asked for the address.
The other message made her heart race to the point of feeling a faint tightness in her chest. And though it unsettled her, with every reading she needed to read it again, savouring each word of the sentence.
Message from Mario: "This blockhead — cork for brains and all — misses tasting your scent, losing himself in your perfume, running his hands over every inch of your skin, lingering over the lines of you and letting your voice hold him spellbound."
She forced herself to stop reading it over and over, because her temperature was beginning to rise.
"You have no idea how dangerous it is that I receive a message from you at all — let alone one like that. Melisa thinks your attentiveness towards me is to make me notice your father. She's picked up on your gestures."
Three dots appeared and disappeared on Marta's screen up to four times, as though Mario couldn't settle on what he wanted to say.
He ended up calling.
"I needed to hear your voice."
Just hearing him again and her world came undone.
"It's a dangerous game." Marta lowered her voice to a whisper so Felisa wouldn't hear. "Tomorrow your father and I are going to look at properties."
"No."
"Yes, Mario — life goes on."
"If you go with him, I'm coming too."
"Does that bother you?" Marta held her breath — she wanted an answer, and desperately hoped for exactly the opposite of what was sensible.
"Of course it does!"
"Why?" Marta longed to hear out loud what her heart already knew.
"I don't like you spending time with him. Something eats at me from the inside."
"I—" Marta looked up at the ceiling, the tightness in her chest trying to escape through her eyes as tears. "—I'll say it if you won't."
"Say what?"
"Is it jealousy, Mario?"
"You give me no grounds for jealousy — but I want to be the one going with you, not him."
"I honestly don't know whether to feel offended or flattered."
"Wait — why would you be offended? For the jealousy or the envy?"
"There's a thin line between envy and jealousy." Marta was no longer holding back as much. "And I feel like you're walking right along the edge of it."
"The answer comes down to one simple question." Mario sounded very certain. "Do you think I have any doubt about what you feel for me? There's your answer."
A quietly peaceful smile spread across Marta's face — she understood the truth in what Mario had said.
"How am I supposed to manage this, when every interaction with you makes me want to be with you every moment, Mario?"
"Is that a declaration?"
"I don't know — perhaps I'm not quite as cold as I want to seem."
"Do you mind if I go first?" Mario brought out his most playful side. "I like you from every angle—" he was laughing between the words "—I want you without pretence, I desire you completely, and I love you without remedy."
"Mario — how do you expect me to sleep after that?"
"The same way I will — dreaming of you!"
"Goodnight. Sweet dreams." Marta waited for Mario's reply.
"With you — always. Same." And Mario hung up.
Marta lay looking up at the ceiling with a warm glow, but little by little, unable to stop her thoughts from moving, she ended up exhaling in pure frustration.
Just as Mario had predicted, Marta dreamed of him — of the weekend together. When she woke, she resolved to leave things as they were, deciding it would be easier to manage if she kept physical contact to a minimum.
Marta went to the office for a while to plan the company's marketing moves with Julián. And before leaving, she called Melisa in to contribute her perspective as head of PR.
She left them with a lively debate and went home to pick up Felisa.
They arrived at the agreed location to find the Ruiz men waiting outside the house.
Manuel tried to approach Marta and put a hand on her shoulder, but the kiss on the cheek never quite materialised.
Everyone went inside when an estate agent opened the door.
He showed them through the rooms one by one — but Marta had already been distracted by the garden and a large swimming pool on one side.
Mario watched from inside as she took off her shoes and stepped onto the clean grass. Seeing her distracted, taking pleasure in something as simple as feeling the ground beneath her feet, struck him as utterly charming.
At a certain point, Marta ventured towards the pool and hesitated over whether to put her feet in. When she did, her smile spread wide — and after a small shrug, she went down another step and sat on the edge with her legs in up to the calf.