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1. Orange blossom water
The first scent that Marta can remember – the one that sends her the furthest back within her memories, to a time before anything truly solid or concrete – is orange blossom water.
There aren’t any real memories to go along with it, nothing tangible, no words or situations or even images. Just feelings. Just warmth and safety and a surety of sorts, that she was absolutely loved.
She remembers being held close after something that had scared her. Whether it was a scraped knee or a bad dream or an angry father, she cannot recall now, but her face was tucked into a warm neck with light brown hair, just like her own, and being surrounded by orange blossom water.
There’s a bottle that sits on her bedroom vanity table, tucked away at the back, not used but opened quite often. A discontinued perfume, one that never sold particularly well, but beloved just the same.
Marta sits at the vanity, staring at her reflection for a long moment, cataloguing the darker circles under her eyes and the tight set of her mouth, symptoms of stress from her job, from the family, from Jamie, from….everything. The pressure rests on her shoulders, and there is no one to share the weight, no one she can trust to help her bear the burden.
And so she reaches for that little bottle, unscrews the lid carefully, and closes her eyes. The warm, refreshing scent of orange blossom water washes over her, and she falls back into a time when she had a mother who loved her dearly.
For now, it is enough.
2. Chanel No. 5
She’s strolling aimlessly through one of the main shopping districts of Nice, whittling away her time until she has to be back at the house for dinner, when she first smells it. A woman, dressed fashionably and without a coat despite the chill in the air, walks by Marta quickly, the breeze shifting her hair and carrying the perfume she’s wearing right over to Marta on the other side of the promenade.
Without even realizing it, Marta closes her eyes and turns her head to the side, as if to chase this mysterious scent through the air. A heady combination of the sandalwood and vetiver base notes to round it out, it is something new and different that she has never experienced before.
It takes several seconds before Marta realizes that she is standing still on a sidewalk with her eyes closed, and she starts walking again without any true direction. She’s of half a mind to turn around and chase down that woman to ask what perfume she was wearing, but when she glances back, the woman has already disappeared from sight.
With a sigh, Marta continues along the street, her feet almost dragging as she dreads going back to the empty house that awaits her, the repetitive boredom that goes along with being the wife of a sailor.
Then she turns the corner and the scent is there again, pulling her forward until she looks up at the sign for a Chanel boutique. There’s a queue trailing halfway down the block, dozens of women, young and old and of seemingly every walk of life, all waiting for one of the small clear glass bottles displayed in the shop window.
With only a hint of hesitation, feeling only a bit like she’s betraying her own perfumery-owning family, she steps back and joins the queue.
“Chanel Number 5,” Marta murmurs to herself, eyes glancing critically around at how the store is laid out, the advertisements and billboards and displays, noting what works and what could be improved. Her mind wanders to the small, rather bare store back at the colony in Toledo and begins a mental list of ways to improve it, bringing over proven strategies from other perfumeries.
As she steps over the threshold into the store, the scent of the perfume becomes so much stronger, nearly overpowering, but she just inhales again. Bergamot. And lemon top notes, along with jasmine and, perhaps iris? She wonders if Luis would be able to differentiate every component of this perfume, like the game they used to play as children.
She watches woman after woman make her purchase and leave the store with their spine a little straighter, their smile a little brighter, their step a little lighter, clutching the little gift bag of their purchase to their chest like a child on Christmas morning. And as she steps up to the till, bills in hand, it feels like a turning point, for reasons she can’t quite understand.
When she arrives back at the house, instead of going to the kitchen to prepare dinner for her husband, she instead sits down at his desk and pens a letter to her father back in Toledo. A different sort of letter than the usual monthly missives, which have been merely updates on facts and events, with no real feeling within them.
This one is suddenly brimming with intention, full of ideas for the shop and displays at other stores, future campaigns and advertisement strategies. All things that had sprung up in the back of her mind over the years watching the family business from afar, watching her father and uncle and brother close themselves up in the office, leaving her alone in the hall. Now she puts them to paper in stark black ink, list upon list, proof of the attention she’s always paid, even when trapped in the shadows of the family legacy.
At the very end of the letter, her pen hesitates above the paper. She knows her father’s expectations for her life: to be with her husband, to tend to the home, to have children and care for them. All the things her own mother did, and seemed content to do. But there’s something in Marta that itches for more, that chafes at the boredom she’s found in Nice, that wants to push the boundaries and actually use her brain for more than planning dinner parties and household accounts. Her father has indulged her for most of her life, but this would be the biggest and most unusual request she’s ever made.
She glances at the new bottle of Chanel No. 5 sitting on the table, the glass glittering in the late afternoon sun, and realizes this nearly unrecognizable feeling in her chest is something like hope.
Hope for more, for better, for a bigger life than she’s been settling for so far.
She takes a breath, and her pen begins to move quickly, writing out a final idea for her father to consider: that she leave Nice and move back to the colony to take over running the store for the family.
3. Esencias De La Reina
She first smells Esencias De La Reina in Luis’ lab, delicately sniffing at the tester, following along with his process as he develops the perfume from idea to creation.
She smells it dozens, probably hundreds of times in the weeks that follow. The slight variations, the tweaks, the subtle differences it has when resting on peoples skin, the vast variety of ways it can change, all known and categorized. From testing bottles, to showing it to staff and shop owners while preparing to launch the campaign, to demonstrating it to customers in the shop.
It’s a familiar scent now, one in the company’s growing catalogue of perfumes and scents. Lovely, to be sure, proof of Luis’ genius, but not quite ground-breaking for Marta in particular.
Until…
Until Fina Valero smiles – and honestly it nearly knocks the breath right out of Marta’s lungs for reasons she cannot bring herself to think about. Marta watches, half dazed, as Fina spritzes the perfume upon her own wrist, and brings it up to her nose, eyes closed and expression blissful. She calls it magical and Marta’s cheeks almost hurt from how widely she’s smiling as she agrees, despite never having actually worn the perfume herself outside of demonstrating the new perfume.
Fina’s wrist hovers in front of Marta as she steps closer, and though the bottle is raised as if to spritz the air with the perfume, Marta temporarily takes leave of her senses and finds herself gently holding Fina’s wrist in her grasp. She can feel Fina holding her breath as she lowers her head slightly to sniff at a delicate wrist, the muscles beneath pale skin tensing and then relaxing in her loose grip.
Marta feels her eyelids slide closed as she inhales deeply, and somehow the perfume takes on a whole new dimension, warmed on Fina’s skin. Instead of the scent she sometimes finds almost too sweet on her own skin, it’s vibrant with citrus notes dancing on top, bright and refreshing and so very Fina. It fills her lungs and when she exhales, she can feel a slight tremor in Fina’s hand. She shivers.
She realizes that this sensation, this overwhelming feeling welling up inside her, will happen every day when she walks into the store. Fina will spray this perfume on every morning, and Marta will get to experience it day after day.
In half a daze, she watches as Fina tenderly cups the back of her wrist and sprays Marta’s bare skin with the perfume. Their eyes meet for a moment as Marta debates whether she should wait for it to settle and warm or smell it immediately. The decision is taken out of her hands when Fina instead lifts Marta’s wrist, her fingers gentle and just barely pressing.
Marta cannot tear her eyes away from the way Fina’s mouth is a mere inch from her palm, the warmth of her breath just brushing against the sensitive skin of her wrist. If she uncurled her fingers at this moment, she could stroke the softness of Fina’s cheek. The little noise of satisfaction Fina lets out as she closes her eyes does something to Marta’s chest, squeezing her heart and then suddenly letting go.
Fina’s eyes finally lift to meet Marta’s and she can barely process any of the words being said as Fina’s thumb trails up her inner forearm. Marta lifts her wrist to smell the familiar perfume, wishing that it smelled how it did on Fina’s skin, searching for those novel notes of citrus rather than the sweetness that remains.
Their eyes meet and hold for just a second, an endless second - then Fina smiles that beautiful smile and asks how Marta’s birthday is going.
All Marta can think is I don’t want this to end.
4. Freshly baked bread
Work has been intensely stressful in recent days, pushing Marta to her limits of control and patience. The constant bickering and jostling for power with Jesús, with Don Pedro, with her father, with the Merinos, even with Andrés at times, is utterly exhausting and excruciatingly pointless sometimes. She remains Director of the perfumery, and is still proud of her work, but there are times when she is dearly tempted to just throw it all out the window and walk away.
Coming home at the end of a long day at work is always such a relief, a balm to the soul.
In the not so distant past, Marta knows she would have dealt with the stress by reaching for a glass of brandy from the crystal decanter that was somehow always full in both the factory and home offices. She would let the alcohol soften the tension creeping up her spine, blunt the razor of her tongue, and then have another glass just for the taste. It was perhaps not the healthiest habit, but one that nearly everyone else indulged in around her. Rarely was there a late meeting where all the crystal glasses by the decanter went unused.
But then, she had slowly realized that Fina didn’t like the taste of brandy on her tongue or on her breath. She never said anything explicitly, but Marta noticed the slight furrow in her brow whenever she’d pull back from a kiss after Marta had more than just a sip. Nothing that anyone else would have noticed. Fina herself might not have even known she had a visible reaction at all, but Marta notices everything about her, studies Fina’s face like the masterpiece it is. She didn’t make an announcement of any change, but the next time Marta brought the glass of brandy to her lips during a truly ridiculous board meeting, she paused for a moment and put the glass back on the table.
Now, there are other ways she unwinds the knot of tension pulling her shoulders tight at the end of the day. She walks through the growing garden of the house in the mountains, touching a soft petal of a newly blooming rose as she passes by. She can hear faint strains of music coming through an open window. Fina has been taking advantage of the new record player.
When she opens the front door, turning the shiny brass knob and stepping over the threshold, she stops, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
She smiles, automatic and unstoppable, as she smells the familiar and mouth-watering scent of freshly baked bread, of crisp pie crusts, of flour and sugar and eggs and yeast all mixed together to create alchemy. But it’s not even just the smell itself, though she is rather hungry, for she could get the same combination by going to the closest bakery, or to the kitchen in her father’s house, or to Digna’s home.
No, for as lovely as the scent itself is, her smile is brought on by what it represents: Fina is home, and happy.
Unlike Marta, who mainly cooks by necessity and only bakes (with little success) in order to hide away from the world for a few hours, Fina bakes for pleasure, for joy, for the sheer indulgence of being able to reach out and taste something delicious. It’s something she had once mentioned sharing with her late beloved mother before she passed. A small Fina would peak over the edge of the counter to watch Adela Valero knead dough or mix batter and be assigned a small task that Fina would later realize wasn’t actually helpful, but instead a way to make her feel included. As a reward for this childish assistance, she would then receive one set-aside cookie or bun, delivered with a kiss to the forehead and a smile.
Each loaf of bread, each fruit pie, each empanada is a creation of love for Fina and offered with a radiant smile. Marta, who lives and dies by that smile, finds herself indulging in more baked goods in the last few months than in the previous two decades of her life combined. She has also never felt quite so loved.
She places her bag and documents on the table by the door, happy to leave work behind, and slowly strolls down the hallway to the kitchen, following that delicious smell to its source. Something French and romantic plays on the record player in another room, and she can hear Fina humming along in the kitchen.
When she arrives at the entrance, Marta just leans against the doorway and watches as Fina carefully pulls a beautifully risen loaf of bread from the oven. Fina has Marta’s birthday gift apron on, and Marta’s fingertips itch to undo the thin white strings,slide her hands underneath Fina’s shirt and touch her warm, smooth skin. Instead, she takes another deep breath, the lovely scent just getting stronger with the bread finally done, happy in the knowledge that she is home and there will be something delicious to eat afterwards.
Fina must hear her or sense her presence in some other fashion, because she turns around with a grin and before Marta can even say anything, Fina has the two of them pressed close, swaying to the music.
Raising a hand to gently push back a lock of Fina’s hair, Marta tips her head forward to lean their foreheads against each other. This close, she can almost feel the vibrations of Fina humming to the music in her sternum, and all the stresses and problems and pressures fall from her shoulders like leaves in autumn.
After a luxuriously long few minutes – just swaying in place, her fingers combing through Fina’s hair, Fina’s hands loose and relaxed around her waist – Marta leans back to ask about Fina’s day, only to be interrupted by a small slice of still steaming bread being shoved into her mouth. She laughs around the delicious morsel and leans back against the countertop as Fina gives her an exaggerated wink before turning to start cleaning up the kitchen.
Everything else can wait, Marta decides, because this is exactly the home she’d been dreaming of her entire life.
5. Fina
She’s not sure what wakes her up.
Perhaps it’s the sunlight just starting to peek through the edges of the curtains, golden and warm. Perhaps it’s the shuffling sound of dog paws on the hardwood floors of the hallway, as Luna makes herself comfortable once again. Perhaps it’s the birds chirping a light morning song, nesting in the trees just outside the window.
Or perhaps it’s just something about Marta that always ensures she wakes up a few minutes before she absolutely must be out of bed, before their alarm goes off and the day truly starts. Just a brief moment of respite, before the rest of the world floods in.
And on mornings like this, Marta revels in it.
No matter how they might wish it, Fina cannot spend every night at their house. Despite the growing number of people who know about their relationship – and truly Marta cannot think about it for too long or she starts to get dizzy and has to sit down – it would be suspicious if she did not often sleep at the dorm, where everyone could see her leave her own room in the mornings. So there are many nights when Marta goes to sleep and wakes up alone in their bed, reaching for a warmth that simply isn’t there.
But this morning, Fina is here, just inches away, tucked under the heavy duvet and breathing long and slow. Her long dark hair spreads over the pillow and no matter how often it ends up in Marta’s mouth as she sleeps, she loves that Fina leaves it loose in her sleep rather than tying it up. Marta reaches out, slow and careful, to wind a lock around her finger, a soothing ritual.
There’s a small noise as Fina shifts minutely, and Marta stills but doesn’t worry too much, as Fina is a deep sleeper on nights they spend together, rarely waking even when Marta gets out of bed to get ready. Fina settles again, having moved back towards Marta just slightly.
With a smile, Marta knows Fina is seeking out her warmth, and that if Fina had woken up first, she would have likely shoved her cold toes against Marta’s shins to heat them up. So she slowly eases forward, slipping her arm into its usual spot around Fina’s waist, slotting it into the natural curve where it fits so perfectly.
And then she does her absolute favourite part of any early morning.
She closes her eyes and tilts her head forward until her nose just touches the nape of Fina’s neck, nudging aside the silky hair until she finds skin.
Then she just breathes.
Marta has spent her entire adult life thinking about scents: judging them, selling them, analyzing them, comparing them. She has immersed herself in the world of perfumes, and has been remarkably successful at it, selling them to people from every walk of life and across Europe. She has her favourite top notes and base notes, and she knows what sells best for each season.
But this scent, that she spends long moments every morning taking in, is her absolute favourite.
It’s just Fina, warm and sleepy and exactly as she is. Sometimes with a floral hint from her shampoo, or a few citrus notes from her favourite perfume, or the milk in her lotion, or the almost dry notes of her makeup, or other random scents she might accumulate in a busy day. All those things might be present, might even be fairly strong, given the day.
But that all pales in comparison to just the scent of Fina’s bare skin.
It soothes something in Marta’s very soul. Her heartbeat slows, lethargic, letting her sink deeper into the bed, but it can also make her heart race, excited and painfully in love and lust. Her muscles relax; the buzzing of business and stress in her mind fades to the background. All there is in Marta’s world, for these few minutes, is the warmth of Fina’s body against her chest and the scent of Fina’s neck.
It’s familiar and known and something that is for Marta alone. Even Fina herself can’t really smell anything special about herself, shrugging with a rueful smile when Marta tried to explain it the first time Fina woke up to Marta basically sniffing the back of her neck. It had been an interesting morning.
Now, from her position so close, pressed together at every inch, Marta can feel Fina slowly waking up. Fina’s muscles tense, then loosen, and her arm comes up automatically to reach behind and gently touch Marta’s cheek, as if reassuring herself that Marta is there with her.
Marta takes one last deep breath, tries to imprint that heavenly scent in her mind once more. Wishes, as always, that she could bottle it and take it with her everywhere she went. But then, maybe it would lose its immediacy, its novelty, its ability to pull an instant reaction from her body. Then again, maybe not.
Fina hums, low in her throat, both a greeting and a question.
Marta places a gentle kiss on the back of Fina’s neck in response.
The rest of the world can wait for just a few more minutes.
+ 1. White roses and gardenias
Fina is the daughter of a gardener.
Her childhood was spent in the vast gardens and woods and land that surrounded the De La Reina house, given free reign to wander and explore to her heart's content. But at the end of every afternoon of adventures, she’d find herself kneeling by a flowerbed with her father, carefully pruning a dead twig or patting fresh soil around a new sprout. There was always dark earth under her fingernails, no matter how much Digna scrubbed at them in the sink, and there was always one more task to do.
And every day, when Fina’s mother leaned out the door and called them in for supper, her father would give Fina a little wink and then he’d snip a single white rose from the bushes along the eastern wall. He’d hand it to Fina and with a loving tap on her nose, send her off to deliver it to her mother.
Those same white roses now bloom all around Fina’s home, beautiful and delicate and just as lovely as Fina remembers. Isidro hadn’t been able to finish planting them himself, but Fina had finished the job, as she knew he would have wanted. Tears slipped down her cheek as she planted the roses, taken from the original bushes along that eastern wall, in the rich earth. Marta had made herself scarce that afternoon, somehow understanding that this was a moment of prayer for Fina, something solitary and sacred, but she’d been ready with a gentle kiss and cup of tea when Fina had finally come inside.
The following year, Fina had surveyed the lovely little garden, and just felt that there had been something missing. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but knew she’d know it when she saw it. And then one day, Marta arrived at home with a bouquet of white and pink gardenias. Not for any particular reason, as Marta still was not a person particularly attached to flowers, but just because the colour reminded her of Fina for a moment in the shop. Fina had looked at her, holding those lovely colourful flowers in her hand, and it clicked.
Fina had planted the gardenias in the garden, scattering them amongst the white roses, bursts of delicate colour, pinks and reds and purples, amidst all the white. As she worked, Marta had wandered outside with two glasses of water and a book tucked under her arm. Fina had accepted the water gratefully, smirking as she watched Marta stare at the sweat dripping down her neck with hungry eyes. When Marta had finally regained a hold of herself, and after a few kisses, Fina had raised her eyebrows at the slim book laying on the grass.
It was a book on the language of flowers, something which Fina had been fairly sure never interested Marta before, so it had probably come directly from the De La Reina house. A silk ribbon marked the entry for gardenias, listing various facts and figures about growing conditions, which Fina skipped over entirely until her eyes found one phrase, underlined in black ink.
They symbolized secret love.
Fina had blinked at the words, and felt her eyes well up in tears unexpectedly. When she looked up, Marta wiped her tears away with gentle hands and kissed her softly.
Now, those white roses and colourful gardenias grow intertwined all along the front of their house, a symbol of both Fina’s past and her future, both so filled with love that it sometimes still feels unreal.
The bright summer sun warms the blossoms and their lovely scents rise in the air and mix together on the breeze. Fina isn’t as knowledgeable about scents and smells as Marta, but she’d be able to identify this particular combination anywhere she went.
Fina walks up the path from the road, and inhales deeply, leaving behind the dust and the smoke and the sweat of the factory, and taking in the smell of home.
She can hear Marta calling her name, calling her in for dinner from the kitchen window. She smiles and reaches down to pluck one of the pink gardenia blossoms from the garden, holding it to her nose as she heads inside.
It will look lovely in Marta’s hair.