“I’ve always been afraid, Mateo,” I said. “From the very moment I met you, I’ve been afraid. But it doesn’t mean I’m leaving.”
“This isn’t fair to you,” he said, as if not hearing me. “I thought we were safe in Barcelona. I didn’t think anyone would notice or care. I was wrong because I didn’t think and that mistake has cost us dearly.”
I sighed and stared down at our hands. Just how dearly was this going to cost us? Isabel was going to find out now, his friends would know. What he tried to keep hidden—me—that was all going to be in the open now. It wasn’t just Mateo’s fault, it was mine too. I had known we had to lay low for a little bit longer, that we had pushed our luck already, that it was only a matter of time. I had just hoped and prayed that when we were found out, that it would happen after he was granted joint custody, after he had his rights to see his daughter.
“What do we do now?” I asked, looking at him again.
He gave me a sad smile and a subtle shake of his head. “I do not know. In the past, I have gotten mad at the publications. You know, when I was young and doing stupid things that I would never do again. But it never got me anywhere and I am not sure it will now. I can try.”
I shook my head, knowing that fighting the tabloids was always useless unless it was something extremely slanderous. The magazine was not presenting anything as fact—just speculation—so there was nothing illegal about it.
He exhaled, long and hard. “I guess the only thing we can do is wait.”
“You could tell Isabel,” I said. “Before someone else tells her.”
He winced. “Yes. But there is that chance that perhaps she won’t find out at all.”
I gave him a look. “Really? If that’s what you believe, then you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.”
“I don’t know what I think,” he said. “Let’s just see what happens tomorrow. We have the party. I will tell her after that.”
“Oh god, the party,” I cried out. “What will they all say?”
He squeezed my hand. “Vera, please, they will say nothing, and if they do, it won’t be anything bad. These people were all there, they all know. They have their own battles to fight.”
I leaned back onto the couch, utterly exhausted. This kind of shit served me right, especially after such a fun and frivolous trip as Barcelona. We had pushed our luck and we didn’t care because we just wanted to be with each other. But the truth always has a way of getting out.
And now we were still together, but having to deal with the truth: that our love affair wasn’t as pure as we wanted to believe. That good intentions meant nothing. That we chose each other despite the consequences and now they were ours to pay.
That night we lay in bed together. We didn’t make love, we just held on to each other in the dark, wrapped in our bodies and the madness of our own minds.
“Remember what I asked of you,” he murmured in my ear as we were drifting off to sleep.
“Hmmm?”
“Promise me you won’t give up on us.”
I won’t, I said, though not out loud. I was too afraid to say it, in case it didn’t end up being true.
The next morning we hadn’t heard much about the scandal. There were no phone calls from Isabel or anyone disgruntled. A part of me thought that maybe we were going to sneak out of this one, that everything was going to be okay. The other part of me thought that the net was just waiting to drop, preferably when we were relaxed and unaware.
I never wanted to let my guard down. The whole day I was a nervous wreck, shopping for party supplies and the menu and expecting the ball to drop at any moment.
And it did—just not in the way I expected.
I was making the appetizers—things I knew how to make like bacon-wrapped scallops and goat cheese flatbreads—and Mateo had jetted out to pick up the alcohol from the store, when my cell rang. Again, it was Claudia.
“Please don’t tell me you’re cancelling,” I said as I answered. “Because I cannot handle this alone!”
“I’m not cancelling,” she quickly assured me. “Ricardo and I will be there in an hour to help. I just…”
“Oh Lord, what now?”
“They know your name.”
My heart froze. “What do you mean they know my name?” I asked slowly. “Who is they?”
“They,” she said. “The magazine, Diez Minutos, they know your name. It is online now with the pictures.”
“What?!” I roared into the phone, seconds away from having a coronary. I shoved the tray into the oven and ran over to the laptop, frantically going to the page, which I had bookmarked.
“Did you talk to the press?” she asked me as I clicked along.
“No,” I said, my chest feeling heavier than lead, my breathing shortened and painful. I pulled up the page and scrolled down to the description. Now it said, “With a Canadian woman, Vera, whom Casalles had met at an English language program this June. This young woman, who is said to be in her early twenties, is rumored to live with Casalles in an apartment in the Salamanca barrio.”
“Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I gasped, my hand curling into a fist over the phone. “How the fuck did they figure this out?”
“Someone must have told them.”
“But who? Someone from Las Palabras?” My paranoid mind began scrolling through everyone, from the guests who were coming over, to Lauren. But everyone had liked us, and Lauren, as much of a bicycle as she was, wasn’t in Spain as far as I knew.
“I don’t know,” Claudia said. “I wouldn’t think so.”
I thought back to the only other person who knew, the woman who heard us doing it in the washroom stall when Mateo got all jealous over that guy. Sonia.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” I told Claudia, and then hung up, immediately ringing Mateo’s phone.
“Did you forget something?” he asked as he answered. “I just left the store.”
“What did you tell that Sonia woman?” I asked through grinding teeth.
“What?”
“The woman, your old friend, the one who caught us fucking in the bathroom. I went outside and you talked to her. What did you tell her about us?”
He paused and I could almost hear his mind racing. “I only…wait, why?”
“Just tell me!”
He sighed, frustrated. “I don’t know.”
“Did you tell her my name?”
“I introduced you as Vera, remember?”
“Did you tell her where we met? Where I was from?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck, Mateo!”
“Don’t fucking scream at me,” he sniped.
Don’t fucking tell me not to fucking scream at you, I wanted to yell back. It took a lot out of me to hold it in. “She told the magazine about us,” I seethed.
A pause. “How do you mean?”
“Well, come home and I’ll show you. But the photos, they now have my name and where you met me. And that I live with you now in Madrid, in the Salamanca neighbourhood. Did you tell her all of that?”
There was silence. I could hear him breathing hard, his footsteps through the phone. Finally he said, “Yes, I did.”
“Mateo!”
“Listen, Vera. I do not like it when you use that tone, all right? You know I have never done anything to hurt you, not on purpose. How am I supposed to know that Sonia would take useless bits of information and report them to the magazine?”
“Didn’t you know what kind of person she was?”
“I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t think,” I retorted. “That keeps on being your excuse. That you didn’t think. Well start fucking thinking.”