Parchment & Pearls

10. So You've Been Hiding Out In Brazil, Huh?

Chapter 10

So You’ve Been Hiding Out In Brazil, Huh? 

 

 

“Okay,” I said as Drake straddled his motorcycle.  “I’ll admit I’ve got, like, a billion questions, but right now I want to know one thing.  Why Rio?”

“Because I’ve been living here when I’m not traveling for the last three years, that’s why,” he answered.  Hallelujah!  Maybe he was actually serious about the whole giving me answers.  He held out his hand, nodding behind him.  “Get on.  We’ll go back to my place and you can get some sleep.”

“I don’t need any sleep.”

He snorted as I jumped on behind him.  “Sure you do, Miss Hattie.  You look like shit.”

“So charming.  You really know how to make a girl blush.  You’re starting to sound like Ryan.”

“Well, damn,” he grinned back at me as he wrapped my arms around his waist.  I couldn’t help but notice the yellowing bruise on his cheek.  At least it looked like his lip had healed more.  “At least, we’re both honest, huh?”

Drake didn’t give me any time to respond before he started speeding away from the airport down the Linha Vermelha expressway toward the neighborhood of Santa Teresa.  I’d only ever been in downtown Rio before, so it was nice to see a different side of the city.  The streets were narrow as they winded up the hillside.  My eyes couldn’t keep up with all the restaurants and bars, the museums and galleries.  Locals and tourists alike were walking the streets, laughing and having a good time. 

It wasn’t until we turned down another narrow street that Drake started to slow.  Finally, he stopped in front of a Spanish-style building, looking like it had been there for decades but had been revamped in the past few years. 

“Home, I’m guessing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him after he called a greeting to an older couple across the street.  He got off the motorcycle first before helping me.  “And you speak Portuguese now, too, huh?”

Drake shot me another grin.  “You’ve got to love learning a language by immersion.  You should have seen me the first couple weeks I was here.  I was a typical tourist, not understanding a thing.  But I made some friends who helped me.  I’m fluent now.  I know Spanish, too, since they’re similar.  Nowhere near your ability with languages, though.”

I nodded in appreciation.  “Three years and now fluent in two languages.  Not bad.”

“Come on,” he said with a snort. 

Digging a set of keys from his pocket, he opened the front door of the small house.  You could definitely tell a guy lived there.  There was nothing on the walls, the bare minimum in furniture, and various things like a shirt slung over the back of the couch or pair of shoes by the front door.  It seemed bigger on the inside.  The bottom floor consisted of an open living area with a couch with a low table in front, a few chairs, and a flat screen mounted on one wall and the kitchen was adjacent.  A table sat in front of a huge window that looked out at the city, boxes of cereal and bags of chips arranged haphazardly in the center.  There was another room closed off, but I didn’t have time to ask before Drake was leading me upstairs. 

“We don’t have a guest room, so you can take mine.  I’ll sleep on the couch.  We don’t have many visitors, as you can probably tell, but at least I had time to clean up some.  We’re not the tidiest of people.”

“We?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

He nodded.  “His name is Cruz.  He’ll be back later tonight, but you’ve technically already seen him before.”