I was in love with her husband. The same man who had told me that he wasn’t in love with her.
The man who would be just a memory in less than a week.
“Are you okay?” Polly asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “You did know he was married, didn’t you?”
I stared blankly at her and managed to nod. I looked to Beatriz. “Why the picture? What is the article about?”
Beatriz took the magazine back. I was glad. I never wanted to see it again.
She scanned it. “Nothing much. Just that his Barcelona restaurant celebrated a two-year anniversary last month and there was a big party. This magazine reports on everyone, especially old football stars. Plus Isabel comes from royalty.”
“What the fuck?” I exclaimed.
“Holyyyyy,” Polly said breathily.
A sly smile came across Beatriz’s face. “You don’t really talk about her very much, do you?”
“Mateo doesn’t like to.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” she said.
I gave her a sharp look. “Why? Is she a bitch?” And suddenly I was super hopeful that she was some raging psycho bitch so that I’d feel better about having feelings for her husband.
“Not really,” Beatriz said carefully. “People say she is quite nice and pleasant. Polite. Though she probably wouldn’t be with you. Understandably.”
Damn. “So she’s royalty?”
“More or less,” Beatriz said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Isabel’s mother, Paloma, was in line to be heir or something, but then Paloma’s mother, Penelope, renounced her claim to the Spanish throne. I can’t remember why. Something political at the time. I do think her grandmother is still called a Duchess though, but it probably is just a formality.”
“Wow,” I said. Great. So she’s pretty, polite, and quasi-royalty? I could never, ever compete with that.
“Yes,” she said, studying me. “But there have always been rumors and talk about those two.”
I didn’t want to ask but my eyes did it for me.
Beatriz went on. “You see, Isabel is very nice and pretty, but she is not perfect. The rumor, according to Atletico’s owner, was that Mateo was fine to return to play. He was only thirty at the time—he was in great shape, at his peak, as you say. The tear wasn’t all that bad, the one in his knee. But Isabel convinced him to give it all up. To get away from the lifestyle she considered too wild.”
“Wild?”
She smirked. “Oh yes. Our players are known for being a little wild and crazy. Lots of sex and fights and drinking. Mateo was no different than the rest. And Isabel, with her Duchess grandmother and her socialite status, she didn’t want that. The team called her Yoko Ono, for stealing Mateo away from them.”
I had forgotten that Beatriz was a sports reporter, no wonder she knew so much. I looked down at my hands. “But he went along with it. He married her.”
“I know. Everyone found that to be a surprise. I think Mateo lost himself a little after the injury and didn’t know what to do. She showed up at the right time and told him what to do. Soon they were married, and then they had a child. She helped in investing the restaurants. Her brother is chef, so I feel like she had something to do with that.”
It all made sense with what Mateo had said, that he’d just been oblivious to the whole thing. Eight years of oblivion. No wonder that soccer match, his injury, had evoked such a response from him. I had just assumed that he was reliving the pain and humiliation of the injury, not the moment his whole life had changed and he had become something that he wasn’t.
I suddenly wanted nothing more than to go find him. I don’t know exactly what I would have said or done once I did so—I certainly wouldn’t have told him what Beatriz had told me. But I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. That I knew who he was and that was more than okay. I liked the real Mateo with his jeans and boots, the businessman Mateo with his slick suits, the soccer star Mateo in his jersey and shorts. I liked the calm Mateo, the witty Mateo, the lusty Mateo, and the hot-tempered Mateo.
I liked all of him.
No. I loved all of him.
I loved Mateo Casalles.
With my eyes now brimming with tears, I slowly looked up at Beatriz, Claudia, and Polly, who had been watching me lapse into silence, their faces bunched with concern.
I didn’t have to say anything.
Claudia soothed, “Oh, honey,” and came over to my side, embracing me in a hug while the other two girls did the same. I let a few tears fall in anticipation of losing a love, an opportunity that never had a chance to be realized, while Claudia and Polly both cried knowing that they’d have to say goodbye to Ricardo and Eduardo too.
The clock started ticking louder. The countdown to the end had begun.
“I don’t want to go home,” I wailed into the phone.
“You say that now, but you’ll change your mind when you get back here,” Josh said, apparently munching on an extra crinkly bag of chips. “Besides, if you don’t come back soon, you’ll sound even more stupid. I thought you were teaching English over there, not losing it.”
“They warned us that would happen,” I said, conscious of how I’d started pronouncing words since I started talking to him.
I took the phone away from my ear and checked the time. I was sitting in my bedroom and talking to Josh while wearing the nicest dress I had packed, which happened to be the boobalicious maxi dress with the smocked waist. It was the night after the gossip magazine incident and corresponding tears, and all of the Anglos and Spaniards were being treated to a dinner at a restaurant in Acantilado. I only meant to check in with my brother quickly since I hadn’t all week and hadn’t planned on the phone call going on for so long. I guess I had a lot to say. I wasn’t even saying the half of it.
“When you come back,” he said, “I’ll pick you up at the airport.”
“When you say pick me up, you mean I’m sitting on the handlebars of your bike, don’t you?”
“Nope,” he said proudly. “I’ll pick you up in a three-year-old Volkswagen Golf.”
“And where did you get that? Stealing cars on the east side?”
“Nope again. I bought it. I have a car now.”
“What?” My brother had always wanted a car—sometimes it was crucial for our city—but he never managed to save up enough with his job. “How did that happen?”
“That contest I entered?” he said smugly. “I won it.”
“Holy shit!’ I cried out. “That’s amazing. And fast! And what the fuck, how much money did they give you?”
“One thousand dollars. And I had been saving some money, so I used that too.”
My smile faltered a bit at that. I knew he had some saved up, but I was about to suggest to him that he use that money to travel. I knew Josh felt as trapped and listless as I did, or at least close. I wanted to tell him to come here, do the program, or just backpack. Find life, inspiration. Even love, since all the picky, yoga pants-wearing girls in Vancouver didn’t seem to be impressed with his tattoos.
“Well I’m very happy for you,” I said. “This means I get a car too.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“Because I don’t want to go home!”
“Aw, Vera…”
“I don’t! And you can’t make me!”
“You have no money.”
“I can turn tricks. Spanish men seem to like me.”
“Nasty. I don’t want to hear it.”
“I’m serious, Josh. I don’t want to go home. It will kill me to leave here.”
“You’re such a girl,” he chided me.
“I mean it.” I sighed and peered out my window at the glowing sunset. People had started to gather in front of reception. My heart twinged a bit at the sight of them all, my friends. “This place changes the way you think, the way you look at life, the way you look at people. It teaches you…that we’re all the same deep down. It doesn’t matter your age or where you’re from. We’re all human, suffering from the human condition.”