A thick drop of sweat rolled down the side of my face. Sharp and cold, it traced down my neck like an icy finger with a pointy nail.

The air turned heavy, suffocating me like a cloud of tarry fumes. I wasn’t sure whether it was the nerves or the hot weather, but it felt horrible. Like one of those summer days that are so warm you can’t breathe, and know for sure they’ll end with a nasty storm.

I could feel my blood boiling in my veins, my veins throbbing beneath my skin, my skin melting off my flesh, and falling in droplets from my clammy hands.

I needed to get out. I needed that passport, and I needed to talk to Juan. If it wasn’t a matter of life or death yet, it would be in a short while.

All it would take was a reason for Pablo to blame me. Maybe Oscar would convince him I knew what was in that drink. Maybe they’d find out I tried to run away, or the worst betrayal of all, that I’d slept with Juan.

They’d find proof to back it up–my shoes in a gutter, three blocks away from the club, or they’d look under my bed and find the tiny corner of that condom wrapper that Juan bit off. Security footage from the bar, where they’d see me watching that guy pour something in my glass. A hair of mine stuck to the collar of Juan’s shirt.

Not that they needed much anyway, just enough for Pablo to understand that he’d lost control and it was time for me to go.

My thoughts were racing, and my feet couldn’t follow. Stumbling like a drunk and heaving like a smoker, I headed out onto the patio.

I felt even worse under the midday sun, and I couldn’t even pass it off as me just suffering from the heat. I was dripping with suspicious amounts of perspiration, and nobody who’s unbothered should have struggled this much to catch a breath.

The fact that my anxious demeanor could attract scrutiny from the others made me panic even more.

Juan threw a nervous glance my way as I walked up to him.

“Geez, Em,” he mumbled. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, but his attention had already shifted, and his gaze scoured across the empty garden instead.

“Can we talk?” I whispered.

“Not now, Em, I’m in the middle of–”

A splash of icy water slashed through his words, drenching us both from head to toe, and Andrea let out a high-pitched squeal of laughter.

“Oh, I’m going to kill that bitch,” Juan spat, as he shook the water out of his hair.

“What?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Not literally, you sociopath.”

He grabbed a half-empty glass of soda from the table and tried to throw its contents at Andrea, but she was already too far, and most of the liquid hit me instead.

Without skipping a beat, I retaliated. I grabbed a bottle from the table, brandished it like a sword, and hit Juan with a well-aimed spray.

“Hey!” he groaned. “Whose side are you on?”

“I’m not–” I mumbled.

“When she goes to fill in her glass in the pool, I’ll go on that side, and you on the other, and then we scissor her,” he said, clasping his fingers together.

“Wait, what?”

“You know, we sandwich her,” he sighed. “Eiffel Tower her, whatever. You get it.”

“No, I don’t,” I replied with a shrug.

“Oh my God, Em, you’re the worst partner ever.”

Andrea darted out from behind a column, and Juan abandoned me to go chase her in circles around the patio. I gritted my teeth as I watched them run around, blissful and mindless.

Was this water fight really more important than planning our escape? Sure, it was a warm day, and we all craved a little fresh air, but Hell was a thousand times hotter than this, and that’s where we’d end up once we were dead.

I heard the plastic bottle in my hand crunch as my fists clenched. All we wanted was to live the good life, at least we had that in common. The difference was that his was right here, and mine was as far away as humanely possible.

With a loud, childish screech, the trill of a seven-year-old pretending to be a Barbarian warrior, Juan ran around the corner of the house, holding a garden hose he swung and wielded like an oversized nunchaku.

“Will you please stop soaking the patio?” huffed Hernan, as he caught the hose mid-whip. “Somebody is going to slip and hurt themselves.”

Juan turned to a young maid who’d been cleaning up the table, stuck his hand out to one side, and spoke with a loud, fake Southern drawl. “Put Dad in a chair before he breaks a hip.”

The poor girl turned to Hernan, looking so confused it bordered on genuine concern for Juan.

Juan kept on goofing around, doubling down on the obnoxious silliness every chance he got. It was as if he’d forgotten I was in constant danger here, and that ‘We need to talk’ meant that we needed to talk now. Not that we could have a casual chat once he was done acting like a fool.

You’d think he’d care more about one of the top three best women he’d ever slept with, but perhaps that was a lie, too.

As if he hadn’t ruined enough people’s days yet, Juan grabbed an expensive-looking bottle of champagne, shook it as hard as he could, and sprayed it all over the patio, showering a shrieking Andrea with foam and bubbles.

“Juan,” yelled his father. “Not the millésimé!”

Hernan wasn’t in a very playful mood. He grabbed a glass and hurled it at his son–not just the water inside, the whole thing. Juan dodged it by a mere inch, and the glass shattered into a million tiny pieces.

“Maybe we should stop,” Andrea murmured.

“Word,” muttered Juan, touching his temple to check for a cut.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer. Nervously shoving his hands in and out of his pockets, took a step back to let the maids pick up the broken glass, and looked around the patio as if he was searching for somewhere to hide.

“I fucking hate him,” mumbled Juan, his words barely audible as they escaped his clenched jaw. “Getting all pissy over his stupid Mimi-Simmy champagne or whatever.”

“Well, the champagne was a step too far,” answered Andrea, as she peeled her drenched clothes away from her body. “My dress is all sticky, it’s so gross.”

A discreet grin returned to Juan’s tense face. “I needed a long-distance weapon, Andy. You should get me a water gun for Christmas.”

What a luxury it must have been, to be thinking about next Christmas and not your own, tragic, imminent death. Not only that, but I hoped he wasn’t serious about being here for Christmas. We were planning on leaving in the next two or three weeks, and December was six months away.

“Are you kidding?” she scoffed. “I’m not spending a cent on you. Last year you got me a head of lettuce.”

“But you love lettuce,” he teased.

Andrea rolled her eyes and groaned, but a smirk spread across her pretty pink lips.

“I’ll go change before my tits start smelling like Hernan’s breath,” she said. “See you guys in a minute.”

Juan lay down on a sunbed, and I settled down in a hammock beside him. Manée sat on the other side of the patio, glaring at us from a distance, gnashing on her salad like a horse munches its hay. Aside from that slightly unnerving detail, everything was quiet again.

“Can we talk now?” I asked, nestling deep in the hammock’s fabric.

He sighed, and hardly even looked at me, choosing instead to hide his gaze behind a pair of designer sunglasses. “Sure, what is it?”

“So I was thinking about everything we talked about yesterday, you know, in the car. About the passport, and waiting, and all that,” I whispered. “I just wanted to know if you’ve, well, started thinking about the next steps.”

Juan frowned. “You need to speak louder, Em, I can only hear you when you swing my way.”

With a huff, I grabbed the edge of the sunbed to stop my hammock from swaying back the other way.

“Have you gotten my passport yet?”

“No,” he said. “I told you, it takes weeks.”

“Well, have you even filed the paperwork?”

“Uhh,” he mumbled, then paused a second to think. “I would need a picture of you to do that.”

“Then take one,” I spat.

He gave me a concerned look from above the frame of his shades, and slowly swallowed his spit.

“We would have to go to a photo booth to get an official one.”

“Can’t you take a pic with your phone?” I hissed. “It’s not like you’re going to be doing everything legally anyway.”

He shrugged. “Oh, yeah. Then sure, I guess. We can do that later.”

I stared at him for a while, with a glare so tense my whole vision started to shake, as my fingers bent and curled like claws around the edge of his sunbed. There were times when I wished I could kill him, but then I’d have no one left on my side.

He shut his eyes beneath the dark lenses of his sunglasses, with a peaceful half-grin on his lips, and I reluctantly let go.

Idiot. Moron. Asshole, I muttered to myself. It’s like he doesn’t care at all.

He just sat there the whole time, cocooned in his usual, casual indifference, enjoying a nap in the warm sunlight. Time was ticking, and he let its frightening cadence rock him to sleep.

“Feeling any better?”

Voices rose up on the other side of the patio as Pablo’s slumping silhouette emerged from the house.

“Eh,” mumbled Pablo, as his brother helped him sit down in a comfy armchair. “I’ve been better.”

I stood up and went to join him. Perhaps I sighed too loudly as I got out of the hammock. Maybe I did kick Juan’s sunbed as I walked by. I might have glanced over my shoulder to check if he was watching, and kissed Pablo a little too passionately once I knew he was. Honestly, who cared if I was only being petty to mess with Juan?

After all, if he hated seeing me with Pablo so much, as he’d told me before, and as his face seemed to repeat, he knew how to make it stop.

Pablo looked up at me, his tired eyes peeking through strands of tousled hair.

“Come to keep me company?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied with a smile. “Do you need anything?”

“You,” he crooned, his fingers dancing across the back of my hand. “That’s all I need.”

A light laughter shot out of me, a steady stream of hair blowing out of my nose. Pablo grinned for a bit, before he leaned his head back and sighed.

“I’m sorry I cheated, Gordita,” he said.

My brow furrowed. “Cheated?”

“Yesterday night,” he murmured. “I flirted with Death.”

“Oh my God,” I snorted. “You’re so lame.”

He smiled just enough for his two dimples to dig into his cheeks. I stroked one of them with my fingertip, and Pablo rubbed his head against the palm of my hand, like a cat craving for another pet.

“If Oscar shows up while I’m asleep,” he yawned, “tell him to go fuck himself.”

My heart started to race again. “Why?”

“He won’t leave me alone,” he groaned. “He keeps hovering above me like a helicopter, and God knows how much I fucking hate helicopters.”

“Oh,“I whispered, trying to keep a calm face.

“That dumb motherfucker would roll me around in a wheelbarrow if I let him.”

“Don’t blame him, Pablo, he’s your brother,” I said. “Of course he’s worried.”

“Yeah, well, you’re sweet,” he mumbled. “You should hear the way he talks about you."

“What do you mean?”

Right as he sent all my senses into overdrive, Pablo turned around and fell asleep. Or maybe he pretended to, just to mess with me.

It worked. I felt sick to my stomach the whole time he was napping. But if he was faking it, then he was convincing, because he hardly moved his pinky finger until we were called over to the table for dinner.

It was just after sunset. The air was colder, and now I could breathe a little better, and think a little clearer.

Oscar greeted me with a polite smile and a curt nod. He threw me no accusing glares, and left no hushed whispers nor tense silences hanging in the air. It felt like a truce, like he’d stopped plotting against me for tonight, and I hoped it was because Pablo’s words had convinced him to let go for good.

Juan was okay, too. He didn’t outright ignore me, and he didn’t make it his day’s mission to push all my buttons. He was somewhere in the middle, where I wished he always would be. He was peaceful and inoffensive, remarkably unremarkable. He refilled my glass twice without me asking, and the only time he spoke to me was to ask if I could pass the hot sauce.

I was withdrawn from the conversations as usual, but that was the way I liked things. I didn’t share many common interests with the others, and pretending I belonged wasn’t worth the risk of accidentally blurting out something stupid.

Things were fine again, just like they were when I woke up this morning. Gone were the dull pain in my chest, the dryness of my throat, the low rumbling in my ears, all replaced by the tangy taste and light buzz of a dry wine.

Pablo rested his chin on my shoulder, his warm breath tickling the crook of my neck.

“Gordita, are you still hungry?” he whispered.

“Is there more?” I asked, still chewing on my last mouthful.

“You can finish my plate if you want,” he said as he gently pushed it toward me. “I’m done.”

His skin was pale and his eyes empty, fluttering shut as he gazed up at me. I swapped my plate with his and he kept on leaning his head against me, until I heard him snoring right next to my ear.

I gently tugged on his shirt to shake him awake. He perked up for a second, and quickly fell back asleep.

“Pablo, do you want to go to bed?” I murmured.

He sat up and looked around again, confused. “What time is it?”

“Half past eight,” I replied.

He glanced at his watch for what felt like a minute, and let out a heavy sigh. “Fuck it, I think I will.”

“I’ll take you to your room,” I said.

“Nah, don’t bother,” he said, putting a hand on the back of my chair to stop me from pulling it away. “Dinner’s not even over yet.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Gordita,” he answered, leaving a soft kiss on the corner of my forehead. “Good night.”

With Pablo gone, and with every glass of wine I drank, everything seemed peaceful. I even managed to slip in a few jokes and make the whole table chuckle during the rest of the conversation. My panic was over, gone like yet another rogue wave retreating into the ocean, and I was melting in my chair like the papaya sorbet on my dessert plate.

The patio was bathed in a soft golden glow, slowly dimming as the maid switched the lights off, erasing the messy traces we’d left after dinner, the leftover food, the wine stains on the tablecloth, our unruly hair strands and wrinkled clothes.

The dry, bitter aroma of cigarette smoke lingered in the air, meddling with coffee vapors and the scent of the lemongrass candles we burned to keep the mosquitos away.

It was late now, maybe even early morning. Most of the guests had already left. Andrea picked up the dress strap dangling off her shoulder as she stifled a yawn, before she dragged Oscar to bed, saying she’d see us in the morning.

Manée left too, and as usual, Hernan soon followed, leaving me alone with Juan.

“I think I’ll go too,” I said.

He didn’t answer, too busy glaring at his father and wiping the disgust from his lips with a dirty napkin.

I began to quietly stack up the plates people had left strewn on the table, scraping off bits of food and crumpled napkins, before bringing a couple of dirty dishes back into the kitchen.

“We have maids, you know,” Juan mumbled.

“They’ve all gone to bed,” I said. “If we leave the food out, there’ll be critters everywhere.”

He finally looked up at me, his dark eyes softening a little. “You want me to help?”

I smiled, and before I could answer, he stood up and tried to help, but it was clear that Juan had never done a single chore in his entire life. He brought me plates and pieces of cutlery one by one, eyed the glasses with a worried look as if they’d shatter as soon as he picked them up. He stacked big dishes on top of tall ones, filling up the kitchen sink before we were even halfway done clearing the table.

I might have let out a mocking chuckle as I watched him stumble in and out of the kitchen, holding a single fork at the end of his extended arm, like it could turn against him and stab him in a second.

He stared at me as I filled all the bowls and pots with water so the food wouldn’t stick to them overnight, and the maids wouldn’t have to battle too much to scrub it all clean the next morning.

Juan arched an eyebrow. “What, do you want to wash everything, too?”

“Do you even know how to do the dishes?” I snickered.

“Is it that hard?” he asked.

He leaned against the counter, dabbing his forehead with a kitchen towel like he’d just run a marathon.

I sighed. It was bittersweet. We had a long road ahead of us, not just to get out of here, but also to make sure we could live comfortably once we were far away. I loved Juan, but as handsome as he was, I wasn’t going to be his maid, and clean all his mess, wash all his dishes, and fold all his underwear for the rest of my days.

“You’ll have to learn, you know,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked with a frown.

“I don’t think we’ll have maids in Hungary.”

He shrugged. “I had a maid in Hungary.”

“Because your Dad could afford it,” I muttered.

“Yeah, and?”

My whole body seized up in frustration, from my grinding teeth down my spine, all the way to my toes, curling up against the cold kitchen floor.

I dried my hands and threw the towel down on the counter. “Nevermind. Good night.”

He followed me up the stairs and down the hushed corridors. The faded wallpapers and thick fabric curtains muffled the sound of our footsteps across the creaky wooden floors. I hardly noticed when Juan stopped in front of his bedroom door.

“Pst, Em,” he whispered. “Want to take that picture?”

“What picture?”

Juan rolled his eyes as if I was the idiot.

“For your passport, duh,” he replied, mouthing the word instead of speaking it out loud.

“Oh,” I murmured, feeling myself blush. “Sure.”

I tip-toed my way back to him as he ushered me into his room, a playful glint in his eye. He closed the door behind me, and the soft click of a turning lock echoed through the silence.

His one hand slid away from the handle and around the small of my back, while the other found my wrist. Slowly, he raised it above my head, his hold tight but his touch gentle on my skin.

My breaths grew short and my heart began to race as he pushed me against the hard door, his hips pressing against mine, and softly kissed my lips. Maybe he’d learned the move in some saucy romance or cheesy telenovela he’d seen a couple of years ago, but with me, it worked well enough.

Even after he let me go, and took a step away, I could still feel a few thousand of those Dorito-shaped butterflies fluttering in my stomach.

His bedroom was messy, but somewhat cozy. Much better than the room I’d stayed in, in the finca’s old dependency, at least. The walls were painted dark red, soft and luscious as velvet, covered in old hanging portraits of men in hunting gear, some of them with one foot stepping on their dead prey.

The smell of Juan’s perfume lingered in the air–Bleu de Chanel, I remembered. Sultry and elegant, just like him, when he tried hard enough. I suddenly didn’t know why I had expected the room to stink like the armpit of a cave bear.

His clothes were thrown in crumpled piles around his open suitcase, and half a dozen pairs of leather loafers were strewn around the floor. Although his bed was undone, and the threads of his sheets were probably woven with the memories of a hundred nights or more, I still pictured myself laying there, breathless and loveful in Juan’s warm arms.

“Where does Manée sleep?” I asked him.

“On the other side of the house,” he said. “Right next to my Dad’s room.”

“That’s not suspicious at all,” I snickered.

Juan scoffed. “I don’t know how nobody’s figured out they’re hooking up yet.”

“Maybe they know, but nobody dares to say anything,” I suggested.

“Well, you didn’t come here to talk about Manée,” he replied, shrugging off the grimace on his lips.

He walked around the room, with his phone in hand and a wrinkle between his eyebrows. He paced back and forth, looking for something but not telling me what. As I was wondering if I should sit down on the bed, or maybe on the velvet sofa in the opposite corner, he snapped his fingers to call me over.

“Em, come here. In the bathroom,” he said. “We need a white background for the photo.”

He pinched my shoulders to make sure I stood straight, turned a few switches on and off until the lighting was perfect, before skipping back and forth across the bathroom so he could find the right angle.

“Now look straight at me,” he murmured. “Well, straight at the camera.”

Juan looked funny, frowning a little as he took a picture of me, focusing hard enough that he squeezed one of his eyes shut, and his nose scrunched up.

“You can’t smile, it’s a passport picture,” he mumbled.

“I can’t help it,” I chuckled. “You’re making me laugh.”

His brow furrowed even more. “Why?”

“I don’t know, you’re just– cute, I guess,” I answered with a timid shrug.

“Cute?” he chortled, before he fluffed up his own cheek with his free hand. “Don’t make me blush, Emily Smith.”

Now he was pulling faces on purpose, and I struggled to keep mine straight. I tried to think of sad things so I could stay serious, but I just couldn’t stop grinning.

I was going to get my passport, I was going to get my life back, and to top it all off, I was going to get Juan.

With a satisfied sigh, he handed me his phone. “There, I took a few, tell me which one’s your favorite.”

I glanced down at the screen, and there it was, right in front of me. The first picture anyone had taken of me in over half a year. Since I’d been kidnapped, I’d been hidden, erased, forgotten. Maybe I’d popped up every now and then, like a ghostly blur, far in the background of some club-goer’s group picture, but this was justme.

It wasn’t the best picture anyone had ever taken of me, but its mere existence breathed life back into the long-dead Sarah Kennedy. It was proof I was alive, that I had been waiting for help, and it would be the first little piece of me to slip out of Pablo’s restraints.

Even if I died during my next escape, even if I disappeared forever again, that picture would stay. Maybe someday, someone would find it and figure out what I’d been through.

How strong she must have been, they’d say. Surviving six months, going through an unfathomable Hell. They’d see me as a fighter, a hero, an inspiration. Not a poor, pitiful soul who’d been put down like old cattle, dying tied-up, in a dirty basement of a bullet to the head.

“I think you look really pretty in this one,” he said, swiping a few pictures and then pointing at the screen.

“If you say so,” I said.

Juan looked up at me, and frowned a little. “You are, Em. You are pretty.”

“Send that one, then.”

He took the phone from my hands, and I smiled at him.

“Happy now?” he asked.

“Very.”

He grinned, and slipped his arms around my waist, pulling so close to me I could feel the soft breeze of his breaths caressing the skin of my neck. His lips left a kiss right below my ear, before crawling up to whisper:

“Now it’s your turn to do me a favor.”

Favor

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