I nodded, noticing that my eyes were welling up again. “Jet lag.”
And jet lag became my new excuse. I used it again during dinner when my mother noticed the glum expression on my face. For some reason my mother still insisted we all eat together at the dining room table, even though in the pre-divorce era everyone scattered to their rooms with their meals.
“I’m sorry Mercy couldn’t be here,” my mother said as she daintily put a piece of maki tuna in her mouth. She finished chewing it completely before she swallowed. “She and Charles had a fundraiser to go to.”
Of course. Mercy’s future husband, Charles, was an English ex-pat and worked for one of the city’s biggest developers. His company was always putting on a fundraiser or another, supposedly for charity, but I think it was just an excuse for a tax break—or a party.
I shrugged. It used to sting when Mercy would throw me aside for her fiancé, but I didn’t care anymore. Funny, I think six weeks away made me realize who in my life was worth caring about.
When dinner was over, I went straight to my room and told Josh and my mother I was going to bed. It was only seven o’clock, but again, jet lag. Actually, this time it wasn’t an excuse. I could feel my sleep deprivation catching up to me, making each step I took down the hall toward my room feel like I was moving through Jello.
I dragged my bag into the corner of my room, started up my laptop with the noisy fan with the intention of uploading photos, and looked around my room. Posters of Mr. Bungle, Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Depeche Mode all stared down at me, as well as a few art prints I had ordered online. I had them all framed, so it didn’t resemble a teenage boy’s room. On top of my overflowing dresser I had my jewelry tree, lush with retro baubles and estate jewelry I had collected; on the tiny desk I had stacks of magazines, hardcover fantasy books, and my textbooks. On my ceiling I had stuck star charts and the stick-on stars that glowed in the dark.
My eyes were drawn to the constellations of Pegasus and Leo, and suddenly I was seeing Mateo again, hearing his rich accent as he gave the presentation with so much ease and confidence, the way he blushed when I applauded so loudly at the end.
This fucking sucked.
One minute we were a memory in the making, and in the next we were just a memory. Something to haunt me for the rest of my life.
I sighed, expecting the tears to fall again, and when I realized I didn’t have it in me anymore, I walked over to my bed, collapsed on it, and went straight to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a blissful few seconds of actually thinking I was back in Las Palabras before the reality hit me. I blinked a few times, feeling the dampness in the air. The rain spattered noisily on the windowpane, partly obscuring a slate sky.
I exhaled and lay there for a few moments, wondering what time it was. My purse was on the desk where I left it. At that though, I was suddenly struck with an extraordinary sense of euphoria. My phone. Who knew what texts I could have, what emails. I needed to hear from Mateo like a junkie needed their next hit.
I got out of bed and staggered over to the desk, still in the same gross clothes that I wore on the plane. That I wore when Mateo hugged me goodbye.
Stop that, I told myself. You won’t survive a day if you keep getting sad over everything.
I tucked my unruly hair behind my ears and dug out my phone. I had a text from Mercy that said, “Welcome home,” though it wouldn’t have killed her to put an exclamation mark at the end. There was one from Jocelyn asking how I was. That was it.
The disappointment was physical.
I brought out my wallet and the piece of paper Mateo had given me. He said we could iMessage. I suppose I could have texted him, but I was afraid that the phone wasn’t private. What if his wife was super nosy and was always rooting through his stuff? What if she was super paranoid that he’d been gone for a month and was keeping an eye on him?
What if she knew?
I felt sick to my stomach. With the emotional haze of Las Palabras slipping away by the minute, like waking up from a dream you wanted to keep going, the reality of what had happened between us was slowly seeping in.
I was a bad person. This wasn’t news to me, but now I really knew. I wasn’t the black sheep, I was a black hole. I fell for a married man…I had sex with a married man. He’d told me I made him forget his vows and that had made me happy. People like me were disgusting.
And yet, it still did make me happy. It made me more than happy. Being with him had fulfilled me.
God, I was looney tunes. To hammer that point home, I went into my phone and checked my email, hoping to have gotten something from him.
There was nothing. No sign that Mateo ever existed except in my head.
And so began the rest of my day. I slowly got ready, taking a shower, my hair happy to have new shampoo and conditioner on it. I put on fresh clothes that had been laundered recently. Even though the maid service at Las Palabras did your laundry for you once a week, you were still stuck wearing the same things over and over again. I put on makeup that I hadn’t seen for six weeks, going nuts with shimmery emerald green on my eyes.
Every spare moment I had, between the shower and the clothes and the makeup, I was checking my phone. I kept entering my damn passcode so often that my thumb was getting carpal tunnel. Finally, just as I was pouring myself a bowl of gluten-free cereal (my mom had a gluten intolerance and my Froot Loops had gone stale), I got an email. I nearly leaped for joy.
It was from Eduardo, and it was a group email to everyone at Las Palabras, telling us all what a great time he had. It was weird to see those names again while I stood in my mother’s sterile kitchen, my memories of heat and gold contradicting with the grey and damp. It was like the two worlds could never really mesh with each other.
Minutes later there was another email, this one from Wayne, hitting “reply all.” And then another person and another. I wasn’t all that interested in Froggy Carlos’s first day speaking English to his co-workers, I just wanted to hear from damn Mateo. But, it seemed, he hadn’t emailed them either.
I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t even want to unpack because that really meant it was all over. But I couldn’t keep living with a backpack of smelly clothes. I took everything out and my heart sank at the sight of the turron from Nerea and the bronze pig from Angel and the Spaniards. I brought them out, carrying them as if they were baby birds, over to a corner of my bedside table. I would make a shrine to Spain.
Yes. That wouldn’t be weird at all.
I’d been sitting on my bed for hours and going through the photos on my SLR when Josh stuck his head in my room. My mom had been out all day, so for once I was grateful for the company.
“You’re home!” I exclaimed.
He gave me a puzzled look. “Yeah, just got cut early. Slow day.”
I could smell him from where I was, a mixture of burgers and weed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“You keep asking me that.”
“You seem strangely happy to see me.”
I shrugged. I guess I’d become so used to having people around me twenty-four seven.
“What have you been doing?” he asked, leaning against the doorway. He eyed my backpack, the clothes strewn all over the floor. “Gave up already?”
Don’t give up on us. Mateo’s last words rang through my head. I hadn’t. So why hadn’t he contacted me? Maybe I had to email him. He did say it was private.
“Vera,” Josh said loudly. “Earth to sister.”
“Sorry,” I said absently, switching the camera screen off.