Power

Only Javier and I remained, sitting next to each other under the starry night sky.

Javier flashed me a cheeky grin. "A magnificent, magical night with Lady Nicole, eh? She's exactly as advertised." He leaned over and kissed me.

"Shut up," I giggled as I ran my fingers through his head of thick, dark hair.

Okay, okay, so I hadn't exactly been a good girl when it came to my I'm-not-interested-in-another-short-term-fling resolution. Zac had warned me about the impending arrival of "a smart and ridiculously good-looking Latin gentleman" on our doorstep, and he wasn't kidding.

Rick, Brennan, Zac, and their girlfriends had gone out to dinner on Javier's first night in town, leaving us both as the seventh and eighth wheels at the table. Javier was in his mid-thirties, tall and muscular with dark caramel skin, a handsome face, and a sexy smile. What did I think was going to happen? The two of us sunk deep into conversation during dinner, which kicked on to drinks at various local bars when the rest of the group went home. We both ended up dancing at a reggaeton club into the wee hours of the morning, then making out on the terrace lounge while a stone philosopher stared wistfully off into the distance beside us.

Mery, Zac's cook, wasn't a fan of our little fling. The moment she figured it out, she chased me around the kitchen, smacking me with her spatula and yelling, "No, Nikki! Hombres son perros! Hombres son perros!" It was a pretty standard warning among South American women — men are dogs. "You don't go near Latin men who look like that," she berated me in Spanish. "They're all womanizers. He'll break your heart."

Zac was waltzing past the kitchen at the time, roaring with laughter. "You think Nikki's in trouble? That's cute. Nikki's not the one you should be worried about."

He was right. I was used to this transient lifestyle. If happiness is reality minus expectations, then I'd mastered the art of a happy nomadic romance. I was perfectly content to just live in the moment, connecting deeply with a human then saying goodbye as they caught a plane to their next destination. Not everything is meant to last forever, and I'd made peace with that. I wanted to find my permanent partner in crime and laughter and adventure and life, but Javier wasn't that man. We just enjoyed each other's company, both knowing it was fleeting — and all the sweeter for it.

"So, what are your big plans for this year?" he asked as I rested my head on his broad shoulders. "You spent the morning helping me think through some big decisions. What are your goals?"

I smiled to myself. "I'm going to get my Colombian migrant visa, so I can use Medellin as a home base. And then I'm going to get a little husky girl named Atlas-"

"Why Atlas?" he asked. "Isn't Atlas a boy's name?"

I shrugged. "It just means 'strength.' I don't think strength should be limited to masculine symbols of big muscles." I softly ran my fingernails along his massive biceps. "I'm never going to physically be the strongest person in the world, but I'm exploring what it means to have a strong mind and a strong heart. It's a different kind of strength — a softer kind of strength. Besides, with a name like that, she'll be a bitch so strong she can carry the weight of the world on her shoulders."

"Very clever," he chuckled. "What else have you got planned?"

I hesitated. "I guess I also want to finish writing my book."

"You're writing a book?"

"Kind of. Yes. I guess so. I don't know... it's a little weird. It's about eighty percent complete, but I was high as a kite when I wrote it-"

"On drugs?" he asked, surprised. "I know we're in the cocaine capital of the world, but I thought you didn't do drugs."

I shook my head. "No. Not drugs. Umm... how do I explain this? Have you ever seen the movie Limitless, with Bradley Cooper?"

"Yeah," Javier replied. "He takes a drug that allows him to utilize the full potential of his brain, right? And suddenly, he becomes a superhuman version of himself."

"Yeah... so... for some reason, my brain can produce a chemical cocktail that gives me a similar effect."

"It makes you limitless?"

"Kind of. I just become an upgraded information processor. The world is suddenly crystal clear, and I'm capable of producing huge amounts of creative work. Last time I was high, I wrote a book in three weeks."

"What's it about?"

"Umm..." I stared out into the distance. "Oh gosh, I don't even know how to describe it. It's super weird. I guess you could call it an intellectual adventure. It's a first-principles analysis of reality, but it's written as one long conversation — kind of like a stream of consciousness. That's just how my brain works when I'm like that. Everything flows into everything else, so it's hard to discern barriers between ideas and events and things. Everything is connected."

"So, is it fiction? Non-fiction?"

"What's the difference these days?" I chuckled. "I guess it's a mixture of both. As my dad always says — 'Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.' It's loosely based on a real-life conversation I had with Zac last year. I'd just returned to Australia after training at a Muay Thai camp in Thailand for a few months, and was feeling pretty lost in my life. Zac came to visit me in Sydney-"

"Oh! That's when he bought the didgeridoo?"

"Yeah," I said. "One day, I had a massive epiphany, and I tried to explain it to Zac while he was sitting on my bed. I was terrible at articulating my thoughts, though. I literally made no sense."

"In the book or in real life?"

"In real life," I replied. "I just experience everything all at once when I'm like that. It's like being overwhelmed by a torrential downpour of non-linear information into my consciousness, and then I have to focus and filter the information into an ordered, linear sequence to avoid drowning in chaos. I'll just know something is true, but I struggle to articulate to other people why it is true, even though I can see it so clearly in my mind. When I talk, no one really understands what I'm going on about. They just think I'm mad. It's almost as if I have to reverse-engineer what I intuitively know, in order to understand why I know it. Does that make sense?"

"Not really," Javier laughed.

"Yeah, sorry," I sighed. "It's super weird. We don't have to talk abou-"

"Actually, it's super interesting. Why are you apologizing?"

"I dunno," I muttered as I fiddled with my dress.

He looked at me. "You're obviously intelligent. But you're way smarter than you let on, aren't you?"

"How am I supposed to answer that?" I asked. "If I say yes, then I'm vain. If I say no, then I'm lying."

"Can I give you some unsolicited advice?"

"It's not unsolicited if you ask me first."

"Nikki," he said. "Don't ever apologize for who you are. Don't apologize for what you're passionate about. And certainly don't apologize for your intelligence. If other people can't handle it, then they can fuck off."

I looked at him, head tilted to one side in fascination. "Where does it come from?"

"What?"

"Your confidence," I said.

He shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be confident?"

There. Right there. That was my problem. Why wouldn't I be confident? I could think of a million reasons why I wouldn't be confident. I could start with the circumference of my thighs, or the way I sometimes struggle to verbally articulate my thoughts because my mind moves in multiple directions while my mouth only moves in one. I could then move on to my overwhelming enthusiasm for topics and ideas that most people don't understand, or the shame I feel over the trail of failed projects in my life, or how uncomfortable I become when my bold opinions are perceived as immodest arrogance. I could easily extend grace towards the perceived imperfections and failures of other people, but to myself? It was a constant struggle for me. I held myself to impossible standards. I knew that one day, when I was perfect in every way, I'd finally give myself permission to be unapologetically confident in Who I Am. As a young girl, the world taught me that confidence was something to be earned by staying skinny, and being well-liked, and neat, and conscientious, and productive, and 'good.' Who was I to be happy with myself, exactly as I was? It just seemed so… presumptuous. Immodest. Unladylike.

But there he was — a six-foot-two hunk of muscle with a cheeky troublemaker personality, who was not perfect by any means. But what was 'perfect,' anyway? He would get fired up about little things that other people did, and his anger was triggered way too easily in my opinion. He called it having 'high standards.' I personally gave zero fucks about trivial minutia, so I just thought he needed to chill. But then, the previous night, Zac was being an asshole to me, and Javier was all over him like a rottweiler, teeth snarling, ready to rip his throat out. Zac looked in my direction and told me to heel my dog, but I didn't want to. I didn't care about Zac's trivial insults, but I quite enjoyed the feeling of being fought for. It was pretty hot, to be honest. I guess 'perfect' is a subjective concept, after all.

And yet, Javier was unapologetically him, but I was still apologetically me. Why? It was almost as if no one had ever domesticated his natural wild-born self. No one had told him his masculine confidence was immodest, or that his bold, heterodox opinions were inappropriate. No one had shamed him for being 'too much.' Instead, they'd praised him for being an alpha; for being exactly what a man 'should' be: strong, bold, confident, dripping in self-worth. He just did whatever the fuck he wanted.

"I want what you've got," I said, prodding him in the chest.

"And what's that?"

I could sense it in the air. I inhaled, intoxicated by its aroma. "Power. I want my power back."