Chapter Text
“You cannot be serious!” I told my friend and snorted with laughter, trying to pick up the remaining three glasses of coke and turning on my heel to rejoin our group of colleague friends, I bumped into a tall dark-haired man in a worn leather jacket. He huffed and stood his ground making me shuffle around him while he was trying to get the barman’s attention by holding up a whiskey tumbler and pointing at it with the other hand. I rolled my eyes and squeezed past the man who took in the three cokes and smirked, before he grabbed one from the counter and took a sip. “Hey!” I complained, and the stranger grinned, “Javier Peña. How do you do?” I shook my head at the audacity, but he just emptied the glass and signaled for another, “Ice? This actually tasted like piss. Ice might make it less so.” I tried not to find him funny, and he noticed. “Look,” he offered, “I’m sorry. I had a shit day, and I really needed some coke.” At that, I gave him a chuckle. “I’m glad that this qualifies as coke in your book,” I said. Lots of people I had met in Colombia would have referred to cocaine. Javier Peña shook his head, ready to protest, and I said that I was totally fine with that, “I’m sick of drugs and all that talk about it!” His features darkened, and then he shrugged. “I’m sorry for stealing your drink. Here,” he single-fingeredly pushed the replacement coke towards the other two glasses, “Enjoy your night out, Hermosa.” I smiled and turned to go, but something about the dark stranger was holding me back. The man seemed nice. Except for the neat little mustache, he was clean-shaven, and his tousled hair was full and wavy and practically screaming to be touched. His plump lips looked soft and kissable, and his puppy dog eyes were the colour of chocolate. His trousers looked incredibly tight and didn’t leave much to the imagination. “Antonia Filip,” I smiled, and the man’s eyes sparkled. He bit his bottom lip in a cute and almost shy way (that I was sure he had practiced on dozens of women) and took his wallet from his jacket. He rummaged in it, paying cash for the drinks, then fishing out a business card. He stared at it, then handed it to me with another self-conscious shrug, “If you ever need to come clean, give me a call.” I took the card and frowned at the pick-up line. “I’m a janitor,” the man gave me a dimpled smile, “cleaner ... at the US Embassy.” I smiled back at him and put the card in my handbag, before picking up my drinks. “You?” he nodded at me, and I made him guess. “Teacher,” he heaved a sigh and pointed out that my schoolbag was a dead give-away. “Colegio Andino. The German school,” I said, and he seemed genuinely surprised. “Whereabouts is that?” Suba, I said, and he nodded wistfully. Not exactly around the corner. “Well, call me anyway, Antonia Filip,” he nodded and winked before swaggering away, and I couldn’t help admiring his firm little ass.
To be honest, I’d almost forgotten Javier Peña. Well, not the man (I had definitely not forgotten the lingering looks and the little smiles – nor those super-tight denims, and the thoughts of what might be underneath had haunted my dreams) – but the person. Not that I knew anything about him except for his name and his job, and so Javier Peña had become Javier, just Javier, a fantasy. And then everything went to shit, and I found myself desperate enough to pick up the phone and call him.
At 9AM.
On a Sunday.