It rang for a long time before he answered. “Hola, es Mateo,” he said slowly, almost questioningly. I knew I had called him at a bad time; he would have seen my phone number and now he was pretending.
“Mateo,” I choked out, the tears rising up, my chest tight.
“Si,” he said.
“I am so sorry. I’m so sorry and I’m so sorry I’m calling you right now like this, but I just needed to speak to you…” I trailed off and started sobbing.
I heard a female voice in the background. “Quien es?” I couldn’t breathe.
“Si,” Mateo said to me, his voice strained. “Te llamaré de Nuevo, estoy teniendo el desayuno.”
And then he hung up. I had no idea what he said. I felt the cold grip of dread, wondering if I had made a mistake by calling him. I lay back in bed, then rolled over onto my side, curling into a ball. I tried to imagine his arms around me, his lips on my forehead, the kindness and complete understanding in his eyes, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. He was right. It would never be enough.
I was half-asleep, my face coated with tears, the blanket soaked beneath me, when the phone rang. It was Mateo. I gripped it in my hands, afraid to let go.
“Mateo?” I cried softly.
“Vera, Vera,” he said, his voice shaking. “Oh, Vera, my Estrella, what happened?”
I couldn’t speak for some time. Finally I was able to say, “I miss you. I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too. Oh, Estrella, my star. You have no idea. No idea. I have been so worried about you, you haven’t answered my calls or my emails. I think you don’t love me anymore. My heart has been breaking.”
I made a fist at my chest. “Mine too. This is just so hard. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Please, please, Vera, don’t say that. There is always a way.”
There wasn’t. There was only one way, and every time I entertained the notion, it made me feel sick with guilt.
“I need you,” I told him. “I need you too much, miss you too much. I thought if I ignored the problem, it would go away.”
“The problem?”
I licked my dry lips. “Yes. The problem of us.”
“There can be good problems to have,” he said quietly. “I would rather have this problem than not have you at all. Don’t you feel the same?”
I wasn’t sure. All I knew is that I hurt, constantly, and his voice was the only thing that could make it go away. Even his voice sounded like home. “I think I feel too much,” I told him. I took in a deep breath, trying to concentrate on my breathing. What a fucking night.
“I’m glad you feel so much.”
I laughed caustically. “I don’t. My heart is a whore.”
I heard the changing gears of the engine in the background. “Where are you right now? I’m so sorry I called you like that. I know it’s…risky.”
“It is fine, I am glad you did,” he said. “I was just having breakfast. Heading to work now.”
I didn’t dare ask who he was with, I knew it had been his wife. “What did you have?”
“Lots of mam and chess,” he said.
A grin spread across my face and I giggled. “My favorite.”
The next day I woke up hung over but still feeling better than the morning before. That was a good start.
Chapter 21
Exactly seven weeks after Mateo and I parted on that tear-soaked street in Madrid, I got a phone call that would change my life.
It was 3:30 a.m. when my phone rang, jolting me out of a dreamless sleep. I grabbed my phone and peered at the screen. It was Mateo.
My heart lurched, my thoughts immediately thinking that something had to be terribly wrong for him to call me in the middle of the night. I had no idea what time it was in Spain, but he had to have known I’d be sleeping.
“Hello, Mateo?” I whispered frantically into the phone, not wanting to wake the house.
“Vera,” he said thickly. My skin prickled with the familiar sound of his voice. Because of one thing or another, I hadn’t spoken to him on the phone for a few days, with only a few texts passing between us.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I…I think so.”
I sat up and swallowed hard. “You don’t sound okay.”
“It’s just that…” he trailed off. The silence felt miles wide.
“What?”
“I filed for divorce today.”
I put my hand to my chest, to make sure my heart was still there. “What?” I cried softly. I was floored, stunned, my brain was short-circuiting. “I don’t understand.”
“It wasn’t working. We all knew that. She knew that.”
“Holy shit,” I swore. “Sorry. I’m just…I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say. Was she…upset?”
“Of course,” he said simply. “She doesn’t want a divorce at all, but I cannot force myself to love her. I think deep down, she does not love me either. That this has been this way for years because of Chloe Ann.”
Shit. This was so real.
“When will you…when will it be final?” I asked softly.
“That, I do not know. It all depends. She agreed to it. However, I did not agree to the judge’s ruling about joint custody.”
“They see you as an unfit parent?” If I knew anything it was how much Mateo loved his daughter.
“Not at all. But in Spain, the mother always gets custody. You have to appeal for joint. I would let her have full, but I don’t particularly trust her when it comes to visitation rights. She could take my daughter away from me and I’d never see her. I’ve seen that happen to a few friends of mine and I couldn’t bear that.”
This was so heavy. I was too young to know anyone who had gotten divorced, and I had no idea how any of it worked. For a second there, my age started to weigh on me. But there were bigger things to worry about. This was Mateo’s burden and I had to be there for him, as much as I feared I had something to do with it.
“Do you have to pay alimony to Isabel?”
“No,” he said. “Because she had money coming into the marriage. The judge only forces alimony payments if the other party is clearly disadvantaged economically. I am sure it pains Isabel to not get a dime from me, but her parents and lineage will take care of her, perhaps better than I can. But for Chloe Ann, I will pay more than I should. I will give her as much as I possibly can.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, feeling pained for him. “I can only imagine how hard this is going to be.”
“Do not be sorry,” he said. “Yes, it will be hard. But I will fight. I have faith this will work out. I want this, Vera. And I want you.”
The blood in my veins slowed to a whoosh.
“You didn’t do this for me,” I croaked, a statement, not a question. “Please tell me you didn’t do this for me.”
“My Estrella,” he said. “I did this for me. Even if you don’t agree to what I’m about to ask of you, I know it had to be done. Eight years is a long time to be unhappy.”
Now my breaths were slowing, catching in my throat on the way out. “What are you going to ask me?”
“Come live with me.”
There was an undercurrent of desperation in his voice that reached down into my heart, opened the steel gates, and let loose the butterflies. I closed my eyes, surrendering to the feeling, that this man loved me, wanted me so much.
But one by one, the butterflies fell. And my heart closed up again.
“I can’t,” I managed to say. “You know I can’t.”
“I’ll fly you out here. I’ll take care of you. You won’t have to worry about anything.”
“My school,” I said. “My degree. I can’t just quit school now. I have one more year.”
Silence made the room a wasteland.
“Maybe in a year,” I went on, grasping for something.
“No,” he said adamantly. “I cannot wait a year. In a year you could become someone else’s star. I can’t let that happen. You belong to me and only to me.”
“I’ll wait for you,” I said feebly, feeling like I was living a World War II film.
“You’re twenty-three years old,” he said gruffly. “I would never ask you to wait for me. Vera, I need you. I love you. I want you here, now, tonight if I could have you.”
My fingers curled into fists above my chest, feeling the squeeze. God, I wanted him so much, just to be in his arms, to feel his heart against mine, to kiss his beautiful face. Oh fuck, this was killing me fucking slowly. All this time, every day since we parted, I was slowly being drained of life.
“Maybe you could come here?” I said, willing the tears to stay away. “You could open up a new restaurant…”
“You know I would in a heartbeat,” he assured me. “But I will not leave my daughter, and I would not be able to take her with me. I have to stay in Spain. In Madrid.” I heard him swallow over the phone. “You’d love Madrid, Vera,” he said quietly. “You could find a job if you wanted to or I would take care of you. We could create that universe. It would be so beautiful. Please. Please, just think about it.”
I had no choice but to think about it. The love of my life just asked me to move to Spain to be with him. It was all I would be able to think about until the day I died.
“Mateo, I love you,” I told him. “Please know that.”
“I know that,” he said. “And I don’t want you to love me from afar. I want you to love me, right here, in my arms.”
The butterflies stirred again, their wings brushing my ribs, leaving a trail of champagne bubbles in their wake. This damn man. This lovely, beautiful, passionate man. He was instilling me with hope all over again, that dangerous, ruthless thing.
“Don’t give up on us,” he whispered, fueling the flames. “I haven’t.”
“I’ll call you soon,” I said when I found my voice. “Adios.”
The line clicked dead. My room was as silent as a tomb. I was all alone again, but this time I had that burden of hope, a box of butterflies and chaos in the corner.
Waiting to be opened.
The next morning I got up early and went down the hall to talk to Josh. I wanted to catch him before he went to work. The truth was, I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep after Mateo’s call, and I spent the rest of the night going over pros and cons lists in my mind. I couldn’t believe I was actually considering it.
“Josh?” I said, knocking gently with one hand on the knob. “Are you awake?”
I heard him grumble through the door. My mom was in her room, getting ready for her day, and I wanted this to remain completely private. I took a chance and opened it a crack, peeking my head in. To my surprise it didn’t reek like weed as it normally did.
He opened the door, squinting at me with one eye open, his hair a mess on his head.
“It’s called sleeping in, Vera,” he groused.
“Are you decent?”
“I have clothes on if that’s what you mean.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said. He took one look at my face and gave me a grave nod.
“Okay,” he said, letting me in.
I closed the door behind him and cleared off his desk chair that had a stack of porn on it. I frowned, picking a magazine up and waving it at him. “People still buy these? I mean, the internet is full of porn. Free porn.”
He sat down on his bed and shrugged. “I’m old-fashioned, what can I say?”
I rolled my eyes. “Ew.”
“So what is it? I’m guessing you didn’t come here to discuss Hustler with your brother.”
I grimaced. “No, I certainly did not, you fucking weirdo.” I sighed, realizing I was stalling. “So…Mateo is getting a divorce.”
His eyes bugged out. “No shit.”
“No shit at all,” I said. “He called me last night to tell me.”
“Damn. Well…I suppose that’s good, right? I think so. He called it off, did the right thing. No more lies.”
“Yeah, but how is his daughter going to handle it? Look at how I turned out.”
“I think a divorce when you’re a kid is a lot easier to handle than a divorce when you’re a teenager. You were thirteen. I think you handled it way worse than I did, and I was eleven.”
“It’s my fault.”
He frowned and gave me a wry smile. “Vera, you’re not quite off the hook, but I wouldn’t go around calling you a homewrecker either. It just happened this way. Obviously he was unhappy. Fuck, isn’t it better to be happy than not?”
“But at what cost?”
“Look, Vera, I know you want to victimize yourself here and all that, but honestly, this is for the best. You know it, and knowing it does not make you a bad person. Shit, there are worse people out there in the world, doing hurtful, spiteful things. You just fell in love with each other at a very messy time. It’s life. It happens. Mateo never set out to fall in love, to hurt his wife, to get a divorce. You never intended any of that to happen either. You aren’t some femme fatale from one of your noir films, prowling on married men. Give yourself a bit of a break here. This is a good thing.”
I cleared my throat. “He asked me to live with him.”
Now he was stunned. “Sorry, what?”
“He asked me to come live with him in Madrid. Now.”
He laughed dryly. “Well, you can’t.”
“I know.”
“You have school.”
“I know.”
“You have no way of getting there.”
“He would fly me out.”
He bit his lip and nodded. “I see.”
“Yeah.”
We lapsed into thick silence, both of us wrestling with the same question.
“So,” he said, “are you going to tell him no?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Vera…”
“I’m not telling him yes either. I just…I need to talk about it. I need to work through it.”
“Well, I can help you work through it. The main reason you can’t go is because you have school. Why not wait until you’ve graduated?”
“I don’t want to wait,” I said. “Waiting drowns me.”
“So dramatic.”
I waved my arms in the air. “What is the point of me staying here? I’d go to school and I’d hate every minute of it. Yeah, I want to finish my degree, but Madrid has programs too. I’m just…I feel like if I don’t act now, what we had is going to totally disappear and I can’t lose that.”
“I guess if you can’t be reckless and adventurous at twenty-three, when can you?” he mused.
I nodded. “I’m not worried about school. What’s an extra year? I know myself. I know I’ll get my degree somehow. That’s not the issue.”
“What is the issue then?”
“I’d be giving up a lot on uncertainty. What if it doesn’t work out?”
“Then you come back home.”
“But…” I could barely think about it. “I don’t think I’d survive it.” I caught a look in his eyes. “And don’t tell me I’m dramatic. I have no idea if our relationship is strong enough to handle me going all the way over there and trying to start a new life with him. I’d have nobody except him.”
“What about your friend Claudia?”
I breathed out through my nose. “Yes. Thank god. But even so, it wouldn’t be the same thing. What if the relationships I made at Las Palabras were only meant to survive right there in that bubble? What if they don’t stand a chance outside of that world?”
He ran a hand through his hair, making his bedhead worse. “Look, Vera. You’re in love with him and he’s in love with you. Obviously your relationship is strong enough to get this far. And long distance, that’s the fucking worst. I will be here for you no matter what you choose. I just want you to promise me one thing.”
“What?” I looked at him curiously.
“If you do decide to stay here, please stop crying and moping around about him.”
“But if I stay here, that’s all I’ll do.”
; “Then you have your answer.”
Shit. Fucking Josh, when did he get so damn smart? He was right. As frightened as I was about taking a chance on uncertainty, a risk on love, shit, moving to another fucking country for a guy, I knew this was the best solution to the life I was living. If I told Mateo no, I would break my own heart and I would break his. I would be miserable for a very long time and I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I made a mistake.
I did not want to live a life with regrets. You only regretted the shit you didn’t do. That’s what I told myself when I signed up for Las Palabras in the first place. I didn’t want to be thirty, married to some dude and thinking back to how different my life could have been if I had just followed my heart.
Because my heart, as abused as it had been lately, was beating to the pulse of Spain.
I took a deep breath and got up. “Well, I guess I’m going to Spain.”
Josh smiled. “And I guess I’m going to lose my fucking sister again.”
I pouted, despite the butterflies that were taking flight and filling me with excitement. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m just joking,” he said. “Maybe I’ll come visit someday.”
“He does have a sister who’s twenty-five.”
“Oh, older women, my favorite,” he said wryly.
I picked up a porno and threw it at him.
He laughed and picked it up. He stared at it blankly for a moment before he put it aside and looked back up at me. “When are you going to tell Mom?”
Oh, god.
Why the hell did I think I could just jet off to Madrid and not tell my mother about it?
Oh, fuck. She was going to kill me.
I couldn’t move. Josh got up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey. Let me know when you tell her and I’ll back you up, okay? Now get out of here so I can go back to sleep.”
I nodded weakly and left his room. I could hear my mother in her room down the hall. This was not going to be easy, and it was not going to be fun. I decided I better tell Mateo and get the plane ticket all squared away before I had that conversation with her. She had paid for my tuition already, so it was going to be extra tricky to reason with her when she had so much at stake.
Keep This Promise Page 76
