Her gaze shifts over me. I breathe out, trying not to tense too much. I like how it feels, just watching her watch me. Letting her take without trying to win anything back for once.
“What’s with all the muscle, then?” she asks, dealing the cards on the duvet between us.
I’m about to respond with something sharp—all the muscle feels so dismissive. But I swallow it back. What she said about me raising my voice struck me hard, because that’s how discussions happen at my uncle’s house. Everyone is always snapping and shouting. I hadn’t realised quite how much of that I had absorbed.
“I get wound up sometimes. The gym is where I go to lose the heat.”
She gives me a quick grin. “You get wound up sometimes? Who knew!”
I’m glad to see that grin again. I check my cards—ace of diamonds, jack of diamonds. Ai, cara . . .
“I started exercising hard when I was a teenager.”
I swallow, wondering how much I can give her. Remembering Camila walking out of my flat saying I didn’t have a heart.
“It was about my dad, I think. The fear that I had some fatal disease inside me, too. It made me feel safer, knowing I was healthy and looking after my body.”
Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry, Lucas. That’s so horrible. I wish your mum had told you what happened to your dad.”
I shake my head. “She struggled to talk about it. It wasn’t her fault. Anyway, it made me realise how good exercise feels. How it helps you calm down. So—not all bad.”
“Hmm,” Izzy says, still frowning. “Fold,” she says, setting her cards down. “That was a rubbish hand.”
“What do you do to cool off when I’ve wound you up, then?” I ask her. “No, let me guess. You ring a friend and complain about me?”
She smiles slightly. “Yeah, sometimes. Or curl up with something wholesome on Netflix if I’m not seeing anyone. Remind myself that the world is full of warmth and fuzziness as well as grumpy Brazilians.”
I let her have that one. She deals the cards again. For a while we just play poker, only speaking when the game requires it. I should fill the silence, but I don’t quite know how to talk to her now. Too much has happened today. Everything feels esquisito, as if someone’s knocked my life askew.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” Izzy says eventually. “If I’d known all I had to do to make you go quiet was kiss you, then I’d have done it earlier.”
She looks down at her cards, letting her hair shield her face. I want to push it back and lift her chin. Tell her not to hide from me.
“I called you grumpy and you didn’t even snap at me,” she says, still looking down at her cards. “It’s weird.”
“It’s not the kiss,” I say. “I am trying to be less . . . short-tempered. After what you said about shouting.” I take another deep breath. “My uncle raises his voice a lot. I don’t want to be like that.”
Opening up like this feels as if I’m bending something the wrong way—it’s not natural. My body grows more and more tense with the effort. She watches me through her eyelashes, uncharacteristically still.
“He’s not bad,” I say. I suddenly feel a lot more naked than I did twenty seconds ago. “He’s just . . . forceful. He only respects strong people who stand up to him. He was a big part of my childhood, so I got strong.”
“And your mum?” Izzy asks quietly. “What’s she like?”
“She’s strong, too.” I smile. “But strong like you. She holds her own but still gives a lot to other people.”
Izzy swallows. I’ve surprised her, I can tell. Her eyes drop to my chest for a moment, gaze hovering over my tattoo, the single word just below my heart.
“I didn’t expect that,” she says, nodding to it. “You don’t strike me as the tattoo type.”
I’m not, really. But when I made the choice to move to the UK, I suddenly understood the impulse people have to mark something permanently, to say, This will never change.
“What does it mean?” Izzy asks. “Sow . . . da-day?”
“Saudade. Sow-da-dee.”
Izzy has another go. She doesn’t quite get the final syllable right, but still, I like the sound of Portuguese on her tongue.
“It means . . . missing. Longing. There’s no English word like it. I got the tattoo when I knew I would be moving away from my family—my mum, my sister, and my grandmother. And my grandfather, too, who passed away not long before. That side of my family are very close, and I knew I would miss them so much. I wanted to mark how important that is to me—how important they are.”