I laughed lightly. “Well, sorta. We don’t have to follow any scripts.”
“No, but I do have questions for you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. What are you wearing?”
I chuckled. “What, are you serious?”
He laughed. “Yes, but I’ll ask my other questions first.” I heard him sigh and his voice became lower, softer. “How are you, really? It is so good to hear your voice, to hear Vera.”
Yup, I was still a sucker for the way he said my name. My lady bits tingled in response; they’d been deprived for too many days.
“It’s good to hear you, too,” I told him. “I’m okay.”
“Just okay?”
“The only thing okay about me is the fact that you called…otherwise…” I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to admit to him, that I’d been nothing but lost and lonely since coming back from Spain.
“If it helps, I am not okay,” he said. He was trying to keep his voice light but I could hear the gravity in it. Somewhere on his end, a car honked its horn. I imagined the city streets of Madrid filled with sunshine.
“It doesn’t help but yet it does,” I admitted.
I could almost hear him smile. “I understand. I…I don’t know. Things are not the same anymore. I feel like a foreigner in my own city, in my own house. I stare at Isabel and I can’t seem to understand what she’s saying. I go do my job and I feel like I quit a long time ago. The people on the streets, they aren’t familiar. The only constant is Chloe Ann. She stays still while the whole world spins.”
I bit my lip. “I thought I was feeling that way because I came back to a different country.”
“I think Las Palabras was a different country. And you and I, well, I told you I wanted a new universe. Yet, here I am back in the old one. I know I have…changed, I suppose, in some ways, and I’m not too sure if I want to go back to the person I was.”
I exhaled, my heart melting with my breath. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
“Then, I am sorry for both of us.”
We fell quiet. It wasn’t awkward now. It felt comfortable, natural, just to hear each other breathing, to know we were alive. I heard what sounded like a bus zoom by.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I am walking down Calle Toledo,” he said, not sounding out of breath at all.
“How is your knee?”
“Better,” he said. “Hurts in the morning, but that is all. As long as I stay away from the ball, I should be okay.” He sounded a bit dejected, as if playing soccer again had factored into his plans. I remembered how joyous he looked on the field, how confident and in control. He couldn’t have gotten that same feeling from co-owning a restaurant. Though we never talked about it, Mateo didn’t seem the slightest bit passionate about food or cuisine, aside from telling me what tasted like shit and what didn’t taste as much like shit.
“Are you coming from the office?”
‘Si,” he said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time at work. I think my partner thinks I’m a bit crazy. I told him I was trying to make up for lost time. It’s just a tiny room in a building downtown, and I know he wants me to go work from home. But, I just can’t.”
“Why?” I asked, though I had an inkling.
“Because Isabel is there,” he said. “And I can’t stand to look at her.”
My chest squeezed and I tried to take a deep breath. “Are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It is the right thing to do, yes? I just need…more time. To think.”
“About what?”
“About my new universe. I’ve never been one to jump into things without thinking it through. Even with you, I spent a month weighing the pros and cons.”
This was something new to me. “I see.”
“There were only two cons.”
I nodded to myself—I knew what they were. “Do you think she knows?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Things have been distant between us for a very long time. She goes out a lot to parties. Usually I go, but I have turned her down the other night. She didn’t like that. But no, I don’t think she suspects anything.”
I don’t think she suspects anything.
Shit just got real.
“Vera?”
“Yeah?” I whispered, feeling out of breath. “Sorry.”
“Is it getting too much?”
I rubbed my lips together. “Yes.”
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “You are not the one married.” He sighed, silence wrapping the line for a few beats. “We are both adults. If I could have chosen it any other way, I would have. But…I love you. And I don’t want to deny myself, or yourself, of that, no matter how selfish that might be.”
“I know,” I said as the self-loathing tried to sink its dirty claws into me. He loved me. How could something so beautiful making me feel so ashamed?
“You are still my Estrella,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I was. And like the stars, I was unreachable, untouchable, oh so far away.
At least, I thought.
“Vera,” he said. Sometimes I think he just liked to say my name for fun, letting it roll off his tongue. “When can I see you again?”
I nearly laughed. He said it as if we’d had our first date and were planning the next. “Mateo,” I said. “That’s not funny.”
“I am not trying to be funny. I’m serious.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“How about next month?”
“As in August?” I asked, completely confused.
“Yes,” he said. “You have some time before school starts, don’t you?”
“With what money?”
“I will fly you here.”
“And where the hell would I stay?”
“You don’t need to get upset, Vera.”
“Well, I kind of am upset!” I said. “You’re being a tease.”
“I am not being a tease,” he said, his voice gruff. “I told you I was serious and I am. Do you not take me at my word?”
“And where would I stay?” I repeated. “In your house?”
“I would get you a hotel room.”
I laughed at the sincerity in his voice. “A hotel room. Perfect.”
“I do not understand…”
“I will not be your mistress, Mateo!” I shouted into the phone. “I’m not going to fly to Spain for a month and stay hidden in a hotel while you continuously cheat on your wife.”
“But in Las Palabras…”
“That was a different animal and you know it,” I maintained heatedly. “We knew better. What we did was wrong. What we did, I am sure will come back to haunt us in the end. But, please, I cannot willingly go and be your mistress. I can’t let you keep me hidden while you pretend to have this other life at the same time. I won’t do it.”
And now is when the silence felt awkward, but my heart was beating so loudly, the blood in my head so hot, that I barely noticed it. So much time passed that I thought he hung up on me until I heard a bird chirping in the background.
Finally he said softly, “I am sorry, Vera. Very sorry. You’re right, about all of it. I guess…I’m not thinking properly. No, I’m not at all. It is just that I am so…blind, without you. I just want to feel like I did before. I’m desperate for you and I’m not making the right decisions. I am being a total asshole. Forgive me, please.”
Ugh. I put my hand on my chest, pressing down. He sounded so fucking lost; he wasn’t like the Mateo I had known. Then again, I wasn’t the Vera I had known either.
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure him. “I forgive you. I just don’t know what to do either.”
“I guess the only thing to do is….keep talking?”
I leaned over and turned out the light, settling back under the covers. “I would love that.”