By the time I stumbled into the dining hall for lunch, my face greasy with sweat and my lips desert dry, I started wondering if this program was going to be my new therapy. I’d certainly said more about myself in the last three hours than I ever did to the shrink I used to see.

I looked around for a table and saw nothing but similarly dazed faces. I also saw Claudia who was waving me over. I staggered to the table and plunked myself down.

“You look tired,” she said. “I am tired as well. It hurts to think.” She tapped the side of her head.

I raised my face off of the table and saw her pour wine from a bottle into a glass nearest me. I tried to focus and noticed that every table had two bottles of red wine. Red wine? At lunch? What kind of sorcery was this?

“Here have some,” Claudia said. “You drink wine, yes?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I mean I have had it, but I prefer beer.”

She laughed in the way that Mateo had at the same answer and quickly poured some for herself. “You will love wine in a few days, I promise. This is good. You will like it.”

“Do you always drink wine during lunch?” I asked, mustering enough strength to bring the glass to my lips.

“Not that way.”

I turned my head to see Mateo pulling out a chair. He looked to us in utter sincerity, brows raised. “May I?”

“Of course, yes,” Claudia said.

He looked at me and sat down. I raised the glass at him. “Not what way?” I asked, for some reason not surprised to see him here.

He quickly poured himself a glass of the garnet liquid then held it away from him. With the smooth twitch of his wrist, he moved the glass so that the wine swirled around and around.

“You take your time,” he said, eyes burning into me, as if I were the wine. “You give it time to breathe. You don’t rush it. Let it be what it is. Wine. Nothing else. Just wine. Let it interact with the world, with the air. Let it live. Just watch it, pay attention, appreciate.” He raised the glass to his face and stuck his nose in it. He breathed in sharply a few times before he pulled away. “Then you smell it. You take it in. Pay attention. Every wine is different, they are all trying to say different things, yes? This wine says it is calm. It is nice. It gets along with everyone.”

He got all that from the wine? I was kinda fascinated.

He then put the glass to his mouth and placed his full lips on either side of thin rim, wet and delicate. I swallowed hard, aware that I was watching him too intently and yet I couldn’t look away. He tilted the glass and the ruby streams slid toward his mouth. He opened his lips slightly and took it in. My god, I’d never seen something so mundane look so damn sexual. His cheeks moved in and out subtly as he let the wine sit in his mouth. He closed his eyes, lashes dark against his skin, and then slowly swallowed his Adam’s apple bobbing against his strong neck.

He kept his eyes closed even after he took the glass away. Then he opened them and grinned at me with a red-stained mouth. “This wine tastes like shit.”

If I had wine in my mouth, I would have spit it out. I laughed, loudly, like I was drunk but I was just drunk on him.

“Mateo,” Claudia scolded but she was giggling too. She took a sip. “It isn’t so bad. Vera, have some.”

“I don’t know,” I said warily, still smiling. I tried to do what Mateo did, albeit a speeded up version—swirl, smell, sip. It was very dry and a bit bitter, but then again that’s what most wine tasted like to me.

It also went straight to my head. I really should have waited but by the time the waiter put our lunch of rice and pork chops on the table (it wasn’t buffet-style this time), I’d had one glass and was grinning to myself. Shit, Spanish wine was strong.

“Are you buzzzzzed?” Mateo teased, leaning in close.

“No,” I said defensively and I picked up my knife and fork to cut into the pork chop. My eyes flitted across the table at Claudia and our new seatmate, Wayne. He was the man I’d first seen when I got on the bus, and though he wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat at the moment, he was an obvious Texan through and through. His bulbous nose was tinged with red and I wondered if he was feeling “buzzed” too or if he was just an alcoholic.

“You’ve got some interesting tattoos,” he said, eyeing my chest and arms. “I ain’t used to see a girl with so many.”

“You do happen to have a lot of tattoos,” Mateo mused, pretending to study me for the first time. “I am sure they all tell a story about you.”

“Do you have any?” I said, turning the question around on him.

He gave me a sheepish, adorable smile and shook his head. “I am not so good with needles.”

Claudia snorted. “Centre back for Atletico and you are afraid of needles?”

“What’s Atletico?” Wayne asked.

Mateo narrowed his eyes playfully at Claudia. “I did not say I was afraid, I said I am not good. We don’t…get along.” He looked to Wayne. “Atletico is a football—er, soccer, yes? A soccer team in Madrid.”

“He used to play for them,” Claudia said. “He was very good.”

“Was?” Wayne repeated. “What do you do now?”

“Me and my partner own a few restaurants.”

Wayne grinned. “No shit, Sherlock!” he said, pounding his fist on the table and making the wine splash around in the glasses. “I own bars in San Antonio and Austin. Texas.”

Mateo’s eyes lit up. “That is very intriguing. If we get a session together, I’m afraid I am going to—how do you say, pick your brain? Yes, pick your brain about that. I would like to expand the business overseas. I am very curious about the US market.”

“I look forward to it. How long have you been in the restaurant business?”

“Six years,” he said automatically, as if were counting the days.

“I remember when you left the team,” Claudia said between bites of her food. “And no one could understand why you were opening a restaurant. But, it was very good food. Still is. Better than this.” She waved her fork in small circles.

As she was saying this, I watched Mateo closely. His body stiffened just enough for me to know that the subject was a delicate one. Once again I wondered what had happened to him but I didn’t want to ask.

Wayne, on the other hand, wasn’t so good at reading people. “Why did you leave the team?”

Mateo sucked on his lower lip for a moment before he spoke, his voice measured. “I became injured. Tore my ACL. My knee. I’m fine now, but it was time for me to leave the game and do something else.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Eight years.” Another automatic answer. “I was thirty when it happened.”

Thirty-eight? Did I just count that right? Mateo was thirty-eight?

“You do not look thirty-eight,” I couldn’t help but say.

He gave me a smile that looked borderline grateful and focused his bewitching eyes on me. “What do I look like to you, Vera?”

A gorgeous, sensual, Spanish god. That’s what he looked like to me.

I crammed some rice in my mouth—so ladylike—and hoped I wasn’t blushing. When I swallowed, he was still waiting for an answer, his eyes never having left my face.

I dabbed the corners of my mouth with the napkin, my leftover lipstick staining it coral, and said, “You just look very young. That’s all. Like, thirty-two, maybe.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” I said slowly and in that moment I was suddenly aware that I was probably the youngest person in the program. Even Lauren seemed a year or two older than me, maybe because her bitterness and glitter glasses aged her.

“You got all those tattoos in twenty-three years?” Wayne exclaimed, as if it just blew his damn mind. “That is dedication.”

“That is dedication,” Mateo repeated in agreement, his eyes now raking over my arms and chest before they slowly made their way up to my face. He gazed at me intently like I was one of life’s greatest mysteries, as if I were utterly mesmerizing. I’d never seen anyone look at me that way and it glued me to my seat.