Love, in English

Chapter Eighteen

I’d gone crazy.

Absolutely assfuck crazy.

After eighteen hours, no sleep, three layovers, and abused tear ducts, I finally landed in Vancouver as a complete zombie, drained of emotion and numb to the world. Though it was a nice change from the hours of crying into my shitty airline food and downing beers in an attempt to drown my feelings, it didn’t help my mental stability whatsoever. I kept feeling this pain that wanted to come out; my brain kept wanting to dwell on things I was too afraid to embrace.

The culture shock, though, was immediately jarring. And surprising, since I had lived in Vancouver my entire life. Suddenly I was looking at things written in Mandarin and hearing Canadian accents spoken at a rapid pace. Everything was sterile looking, modern and boring. People barely smiled and they didn’t make eye contact. When I grabbed my pack from baggage claim and stepped outside to wait for my brother, I was hit with damp air and dark grey skies. It was July. It was raining.

Thankfully it didn’t take long for a black VW Golf, just as my brother had promised, to come roaring up to the curb.

Josh got out of the driver’s seat and raised his arms. “I’m here!”

And finally, I had my first smile in what felt like a very long time. Josh. Despite everything, I had fucking missed him.

“Shit, you’re tanned,” he said, coming around the car to hug me. When he got closer he grimaced. “You also look like shit.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, giving him my backpack. He threw it in the trunk then gave me a big bear hug.

For some reason I thought he’d look different after six weeks, but he looked the same as always. Josh had been a fairly awkward teenager until he was nineteen. Then he stopped growing (thank God, cuz he was 6’2” at sixteen), gained muscle, his face cleared up, and his stutter disappeared. He had my dad’s ice blue eyes and my mother’s dark brown hair which he died black. He had a lip ring that he sometimes wore, and full sleeves and a ton of other tattoos, thanks to my influence. I knew Jocelyn thought he was a total “bad boy hottie,” but that description of my brother honestly made me want to barf. Josh, in some ways, was a bad boy, but the hottie thing was beyond what I was willing to admit.

“Good to have you home,” he said. He pulled away and frowned. “I’m guessing the feeling isn’t mutual.”

“I’m really tired,” is all I managed to say.

I didn’t speak much during the forty-five minute car ride through the city to our house. I couldn’t speak. My chest felt empty, everything felt hollow inside me. It was like I was suffering the worst emotional hangover of my life. In fact, it was like a life hangover. Is this what it felt like to die? When our lives were over, did we feel this same loss, this same ache for all the experiences we had just gone through?

Josh talked though, conscious of how I was feeling and needing to fill the car. He was good at that, picking up on other people’s feelings. I didn’t listen, I just stared out the rain-splattered window of his new car. The buildings here looked so plain and boring, no history to them at all. Everyone was rushing to get somewhere, stomping through puddles. Though Vancouver was beautifully green, it looked dark and gloomy under the skies. Even the sight of the North Shore Mountains, normally breathtaking above the shiny glass high rises of downtown, didn’t stir anything in me. I was just a shell.

I really needed to sleep.

When we pulled down the alley toward the back driveway of our house, Josh told me our mother had planned a surprise that wasn’t really a surprise. She had ordered in sushi. Now, my mother didn’t cook and never had, so ordering in was nothing new, and we often ordered in or got sushi for take-out several times a week (you, like, have to eat sushi in Vancouver or they’ll boot you from the city). I knew he was just trying to make me feel better about being home, so I gave him a quick smile and then brought out my phone again. Now that airplane mode was off and I wasn’t roaming, I was desperate to see if I’d gotten any texts or emails from Mateo.

I hadn’t.

I sighed and put it away. Josh noticed as he parked behind the house and nodded to my purse. “I never saw you update very much on Facebook. I thought you would have been all over that. No drunk photos of the Spanish flag wrapped around you or drinking sangria. Nothing.”

I shrugged. “There wasn’t really any time to go on Facebook.” And besides, this life here didn’t exist at all when I was at Las Palabras.

Our house was pretty nice—a narrow three stories with a small front lawn and a tall solid fence for privacy—but the lot it was on was worth an absurd amount of money. My mother, being a real estate agent and all, planned on sitting on the lot so she would “really make a killing.” With the way the real estate market kept rising, then stalling, then rising again, it looked as if she’d be trying to make a killing for years to come.

Josh got my pack out of his trunk and swung it up on his shoulder with ease. Guess he’d been upping his workouts at the gym. “You never said a word about Herman.”

I raised a brow. “Herman?”

“My car. He’s German, ya?”

“Aren’t cars supposed to be chicks?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re so sexist.”

“Look, do you really want to say, ‘I’m going to go take Herman for a ride,’ or ‘I love filling up Herman?’”

He shrugged as we walked through the single-car garage where Mom’s Volvo was kept. “I’m not a homophobe. Besides, Kit, Hasselhoff’s car in Knight Rider, that was a guy. Shit, so was Herbie in the Love Bug.”

“All right, all right,” I said, waving him away. We walked up the stairs to the main landing. It looked the same as before but the familiar was now foreign to me.

My mom was in the kitchen, nursing a glass of wine and on the phone with someone. Once she saw me, she gave me her beautiful and genuine happy-to-see-you smile but then turned her back and continued to talk on the phone. From the tense way she carried herself, I could tell she was talking to a client.

My mother was a gorgeous woman, even for her age. Though she was tiny and she’d gained a lot of weight on her lower half over the last few years, her face was unlined and her eyes behind her square glasses were youthful. She had long, dark brown hair that she always kept tied back in a bun. I knew she did this because she thought it made her look more professional and polished, but it also showed off her high Hungarian cheekbones.

She was dressed well as always, too—she had a closet full of sharp suits, and she was wearing a slick navy one at the moment. This realization made my mind conjure up an image of Mateo, standing in the dining room at Las Palabras, wearing a silver grey suit that fit him like a second skin. In my head he smiled at me, a wide stretch of white teeth against golden skin.

So breathtaking.

And just like that, the bereft feeling encased my heart. All of that, all of him, felt so far away. Impossible to get back.

“Are you all right?” Josh asked, putting a supportive hand on my shoulder.

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.

“Look,” he said, “I’m going to the Met tonight with some people. Why don’t you come with?”

Ugh. The Met. That skeezy bar was such a hit or miss. Still…I was up for getting out of the house, doing anything to take my mind off of things. I couldn’t believe I actually missed talking all day long.

A friendly Facebook message from Claudia and an email from Sammy later, I was shimmying into a pair of black skinny jeans and a tight Queen baseball tee that put Freddie Mercury’s eyes right on my boobs. Hearing from those two girls helped my mood, even though Sammy’s email contained a picture of a penis.

The Met was located in the bad part of downtown that resembled a typical episode of The Walking Dead. It was too far to walk, both of us were too cheap for a cab, and Josh wasn’t going to drive drunk, so we got on the bus. It was weird sitting on it and observing the people around me. Though Madrid had also been a bustling city, there was more life and friendliness there. More smiles.

“Why does it look like you’re plotting to kill everyone?” Josh leaned over and asked as the bus zipped down Broadway. “Is there something I don’t know about?”

“They were right, you know,” I said. “Whoever said Vancouver was a no-fun city.”

“Maybe, but…you know you can still have fun, right?”

“People in Spain were so…I don’t know…happy to see you. Friendlier. Talkative.”

“Vancouver has always been this way. It’s not that different from other big cities.”

“It’s changed.”

“No, Vera. You’ve changed.”

He was right. I’d been happy with my beautiful no-fun city up until now. This became more apparent as the night went on. We got a table in the corner of the dingy hipster bar, and while we waited for his friends to show up, I couldn’t help but notice the atmosphere. Oh, it was pretty much the usual—drunk chicks, cocky boys, $3 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice—but I was now noticing the differences between here and Spain. The men would stare, but only the really drunk or overly arrogant men would approach the women. There was a lot of lusty looks that eventually led to grinding by the jukebox, but no friendly smiles or flirty conversations.

Josh’s friends weren’t much better, I knew this, but at least when they were around me they talked and didn’t stare endlessly at Freddie Mercury. Well, not all of them. I’d known the lanky Brad since I was a kid, and body modification lover Phil had been my friend since high school. I was pretty much a sister to them.

Then there was Adam, a guy I had only met a few times before. He was pretty hot, I had to give him that—green-blue eyes, wide jaw, spiky dark blonde hair, strong build—which is why I normally didn’t mind when he stared at my breasts. Now, though, it just felt wrong. He was pretty much leering and I wished I could make Freddy give him the stink-eye.

“So, Spain,” Adam said. “Bet you partied pretty hard there. Did you go to Ibiza?”

I shook my head, turning the can of beer around and around. “No, I was just in one place. Acantilado, teaching English.”

“That sucks.”

I gave him a sharp look. “Believe me, it didn’t.”

He leaned back in his chair and gave me a wry look. “I don’t know, teaching? That sucks. That’s, like, totally not a vacation. You should have seen some culture or something.”

I exhaled in a hard puff. “There was plenty of culture.”

“So who were you teaching? Were they kids?”

“No, adults.”

“Were they, like, retarded?”

I glared at his choice of word, feeling very defensive. “No, they were professionals. They all had a basic level of English. This was just for conversational English. To build their vocabulary and confidence in business situations.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, that still sounds boring to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” I got out of my seat and looked at Josh who had been looking at me with a strange look on his face. “Do you want a drink?”

He nodded and Adam said, “Get one for me too, babe.”

I held out my palm in front of him and wriggled my fingers. He looked confused. “Give me money,” I said, “and I’ll get you a drink.”

He grunted and fished out some cash, tossing it across the table, nowhere near my open hand. He gave a chagrined smile to Josh. “Jeez, Josh, your big sister comes back from Europe and suddenly she hates my guts.”

I gave him an odd look and snatched the money off the table. Hate his guts? I didn’t even know him. Sure, I had made the flirty eyes, touchy-touchy moves on him a few times before, but that was then and this was now. Adam was just a boy, and I didn’t want a boy anymore. I wanted a man, I needed a man, and one man in particular.

I went to the dirty bathroom, checking my phone for texts and emails while I was in the stall. Nothing from Mateo.

I felt like crushing the phone in my hand, my lips pressed together. I stuck it back in my purse and made my way out to the bar. While in line, having a chick spill beer on my boots, I started thinking maybe I’d had enough of this place. When “Summertime Sadness” came blasting on through the speakers, much to the squeal of all the hipster girls, that’s when I really knew. I bought Josh and Adam’s beers and then plopped them down on their table.

“Where’s your beer?” Josh asked.

“I’m going home,” I told him.

He started to get up but I put out my hand. “No, I’m fine. Stay. It’s the jet lag. Need to go to sleep.” I gave everyone else a quick smile. “Have a good night.”

I turned and walked, hearing Josh yell, “Vera!” and then Adam saying, “Let her go, she’s probably PMSing.”

“Fuck you,” I grumbled under my breath. I walked out onto the puddle-strewn street, the lights reflecting forlornly in them. It wasn’t cold out but the dampness made me hug myself as I walked, my head down, my pace quick. I walked up a few blocks until the sketchy junkies were replaced by drunk bums, then walked past a hostel on the way to my bus stop.

I couldn’t help but stop. They had a small bar and computer area right by the windows. I stared in at the warm glow of the room, the travel posters of Vancouver and BC on the red walls. There was an Indian girl and a German-looking guy having a drink and chatting, all shy smiles, guidebooks in their hands. There were two Asian girls on the computers, fueled by paper cups of coffee, and writing up a storm. A tall couple with blonde hair and backpacks were talking to the young woman at reception who was pointing to a map of the city.

That had been me in London six weeks ago. All this promise and possibility ahead of me, the novelty of the new. Those people inside were experiencing something that would change them forever.

And here I was, standing on a dark, damp city street, alone.

Just memories.

No messages.

Chapter Nineteen

I’d become obsessive.

This wasn’t a new thing for me; I’d always gotten easily wrapped in things. When I was twelve, I saw Indiana Jones for the first time (yeah, I know, took me long enough), and I became obsessed with not only Harrison Ford, but with archeology. I decided I was totally going to be an archeologist instead of an astronomer, and wanted to live my life traipsing through the jungles and deserts on wild adventures. I also decided I would invent a time machine to take me back to the 1980s when Harrison Ford was younger and less grumpy, then somehow convince him to marry me and bring him back to the future.

When I was sixteen I became obsessed with Nick Cave and everything Nick Cave related. I joined chat rooms and fan groups, I poured over lyrics, analyzing them, I collected interviews and read them over and over again in hopes of gleaning something from his words. I started babysitting, even though I wasn’t a big fan of children at the time, so I’d have enough money to drive around America and follow him on tour. Needless to say, I never saved up enough money for that, but I did earn enough to buy signed LPs for my non-existent record player and rare concert posters.

And when I was twenty-three, I went to Spain for a month, fell hard for a married Spanish man and became obsessed over the fact that I hadn’t heard from him. For two days after I had gone to the Met with Josh, I’d become a walking time bomb. I wrote countless messages to Claudia, even Polly, who I grew closer to after the program, it seemed, since we were going through the same thing. At least Eduardo was in contact with her. I talked to other people too—Sammy, Becca, even Manuel the rocker dropped me a line asking about a band we had been listening to together.

No Mateo.

I checked all the time, thinking that the world could change in ten minutes, five minutes, two minutes, thirty seconds.

“Okay,” Josh said to me one sunny morning over bowls of Froot Loops. “Time to spill the beans. Why do you keep checking your phone?”

Caught, I quickly shoved my phone back in my pocket. I opened my mouth to speak but he showed me his palm. “And don’t tell me it’s jet lag.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s nothing. I’m just waiting to hear from a friend of mine.”

His eyes narrowed and he shoved a spoon of cereal in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “This wouldn’t be a male friend, would it?”

I just stared at him blankly.

“Vera, you’re not blinking.”

I blinked. Several times.

He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I’ve never ever seen you like this before over a guy,” he said.

He’s not just some guy, I wanted to say. He’s my man.

At least, he was.

Kinda.

“I don’t really feel like talking about it,” I said, making sure I was blinking a lot while I ate.

“Are you sure? Because your leg keeps shaking the table and you’ve got the crazy eyes going on.”

I stilled my leg. I brought the conversation over to Josh’s art because that was something that we both liked to talk about. But once he got up to put our empty bowls in the sink, I quickly ripped out my phone and checked. My compulsion was out of control.

But I had an email!

I wriggled in my seat, biting my lip as I got a closer look.

Shit. It wasn’t from Mateo. It was from Las Palabras. And it was an attachment.

With my heart in my throat, I downloaded the attachment and opened it.

I sucked in my breath, a pain forming at the back of my throat. It was the group picture on the last day.

From far away it looked like a blur of smiling faces against a blue sky. I took my fingers and zoomed in, going right for me and Mateo.

There we were. My cheeks were red, my face fresh and dewy, like I had this radiant glow about me. Mateo had his arm around me. Seeing his face on the screen felt strange, like he somehow knew I was looking at him, like I was being intrusive. I couldn’t explain it. The fact that he looked more handsome than my memories didn’t help either.

“I see,” Josh said, and I spun around, realizing he was behind me and peering inquisitively over my shoulder. For a split second I had déjà vu, then I remembered that Mateo had done a similar thing to me when I was writing an email to Josh.

“It’s the group picture,” I said. I quickly zoomed it out so it showed all of us.

“You look very happy,” he said in a tone of voice that let me know he wanted to say more. He turned and went down the hall to his room, leaving me with a picture of what was. I stared at it alone, in silence, for a very long time, memorizing everyone’s faces, remembering their voices, their accents, their laughter. Saliva flooded my mouth and I swallowed it down.

Eventually I got up, printed out the picture from my mom’s high tech office computer on a glossy 8x10, and then put it on the wall above the turron and the pig. My shrine to the person I was, was growing.

The obsession continued. I had a feeling it was the only thing keeping my heart from breaking.

The next day, before Mercy and Charles showed up for dinner, I decided to bite the bullet and email Mateo. He had told me it was private, but just in case I wanted it to look as professional as possible.

Hi, Mateo!

Just wanted to drop you a line and see how your English was keeping up! Things are great back in Vancouver, although it’s raining more than usual and that says a lot. The sunny days remind me of Las Palabras! Well, anyway, thought I would say hello. Hope you’re enjoying time back with your family.

Best,

Vera Miles

Not the best email I had ever written but it had to do. I waited a full five minutes, debating on whether to send it or not before I closed my eyes and clicked send. Now it was gone, out of my hands. And of course, now my obsession was going to grow two-fold.

I decided to be brave and leave the phone behind at the house when we went out for dinner. Mercy and Charles were coming over for a few drinks beforehand and then we were going to go to The Fish House in Stanley Park.

“VeeVee.” Mercy said my nickname as she walked into the house with her arms open wide. “I would have thought you’d be more tan.”

“Nice to see you too,” I said as we did a quick, shallow hug. “Less than a week back and the rain has sucked the color out of me.”

“You really need to go to my tanning studio,” she said, comparing her orangey tanned arm to mine. It wasn’t really a fair comparison since I had tattoos on mine which seemed to highlight the pale.

Mercy and I looked vaguely similar. We had the same build, generous in the boobs and the butt, but she did a lot of pilates that made her stand taller and look more toned. Her hair was chemically straightened and a dark golden blonde that I couldn’t figure out if she dyed or not, since I hadn’t seen her natural hair color in years. In a nutshell, she was like Jennifer Aniston on Friends, right down to the sleek and simple way she dressed. The pricey rock on her ring finger and her diamond earrings were spoils from her materialistic aspirations.

I went to give Charles a quick hug.

“VeeVee,” he said in his condescending accent. After spending time in London, I learned that his accent was “BBC English.” I knew because I imitated him a lot.

“Looking good, Chuck,” I said, knowing he hated that as much as I hated him calling me VeeVee.

We retreated into the sitting room by the balcony, my mom having bought wine from Spain for the occasion. As we sat around, only chatting mildly about Spain, I felt like I was thousands of miles away, across a continent, across the Atlantic Ocean. The Vera who was making small talk and sipping wine that didn’t quite taste the same, she was just a hologram.

Before we left for the restaurant, I went into my room to grab my purse and leave my phone on the table. Mercy poked her head in, and I expected her to comment on how messy my room was but instead she spotted the Las Palabras photo on the wall.

“Ooh, this is new,” she said. “This from Spain?” She crossed the room and then peered at it.

“Yup,” I said in a strained voice, wishing she wasn’t looking at it and making her judgements, which I knew she was doing in her head. I didn’t want anyone to assume anything about these people.

“Who is this handsome man who has his arm around you?” she asked in surprise, her finger pointing at Mateo. I wanted to swat it away.

By now Charles had followed her in and was looking at it too, like spectators at a zoo.

“He looks familiar,” Charles mused, frowning.

I couldn’t help myself. “He played for Atletico Madrid,” I told him proudly. “Mateo Casalles.”

I hadn’t said his name out loud in a long time. It sounded larger than life.

Charles nodded. “Ah, that would explain it.” Charles was a big soccer fan and often dragged Mercy out to five in the morning games, cheering on Manchester. At least he used to—she probably complained about it until he stopped.

“He’s married,” Mercy said with a twist of disgust on her face. I raised my brows, wondering how she could see his ring clearly but she just showed me her phone. She had Googled his name and brought up a damn Wikipedia page.

Shit. I hadn’t even thought of Googling him.

I peered at the picture, swallowing hard. It was of him back in his team uniform, yelling at someone during a game, all dark tanned skin, wild hair, and fiery eyes. It stunned me.

Now I was really glad I was leaving my phone behind.

Mercy sucked at her teeth and put her phone away into her designer clutch. Then she smacked her clutch against Charles as if he’d done something. “When we’re married, there is no way in hell you’re going to learn another language overseas. Especially if there are hussies there, leaning all over you.”

Wait. Did my sister just call me a hussy?

“Hussy?” I repeated darkly. What was this, the fifties?

“Oh VeeVee,” she said with a coy laugh. She grabbed Charles by the arm and led him out of the room.

As soon as they were gone, I gave them the finger. Mateo probably wouldn’t have approved of my anti-family behavior but whatever.

Dinner was a lonely affair. Funny how you could be surrounded by your family, your blood, and yet feel totally alone. Even with the sun shining on the sparkling shores of English Bay and Josh at my side, I felt like I was invisible, and in a dark, dark place.

My fingers itched for my phone, cursing myself for leaving it at home. I wanted to check to see if he responded, I wanted to cyberstalk the shit out of him. I was going crazy, this feeling of despair that carved out a hollow place in my bones. I knew this wasn’t good, that I shouldn’t be so upset over losing the people I cared for and loved when I hadn’t really lost them, they were still out there alive and living their lives. But I was no longer a part of his life. And sitting with my mom and my sister and Charles, it made me realize I wasn’t a part of anyone’s lives.

I thought about calling my dad tomorrow and asking if I could come and visit him in Calgary. He and Jude were always so welcoming, and now that the program was over and I didn’t have an internship, I was free to do whatever I wanted in the summer. Well, I suppose I had to try and get my job back at the coffee shop and try and earn some extra money before I headed back to school.

Wow. I wasn’t looking forward to any of that. Not the job, not the school. I wondered how long it would take for me to go back to the way I was before. Spanish Vera did not belong in Vancouver.

When we finally got back home, I practically ran to my room, my nerves tingling, my heart kicked up a notch. I closed the door behind me and picked up my phone.

And there it was.

Mateo’s name as the sender.

He had sent a reply.

Now I really started shaking, the phone nearly jostling out of my hands.

Breathe, I told myself before my anxiety got out of control. I felt giddy, excited, nervous, and pukey all at once.

I closed my eyes for a moment, took in a deep breath and then opened the email.

Vera,

It is good to hear from you. I thought you were ignoring my emails, more or less, and did not wish to harass you by phone, but I see now I was sending it to the wrong address. It looked like you wrote down “VerastarS” instead of “Verastar5”. Now, I am a bit worried what VerastarS thinks about me.

You sound like you are happy to be back, yes? I wish I could say the same for me, but that is not the case. I miss La Palabras terribly, and most of all I miss you. I couldn’t tell from your email if you feel the same. You sounded different. I wish to talk to you, hear your voice. My English is slipping away fast. I look up to the sky and I can’t see the stars from the city.

Let me know if you ever want to talk on the phone. Give me a time and I will call you. I believe I am eight hours ahead of you, but I don’t sleep much without you anyway.

Love,

Mateo

(The man you had siestas with in Spain)

I thought I was going to die from happiness. Relief pulsed hot in my veins and I was filled with this drug-like sense of euphoria. I read the email again and again, making sure it was true, it was real, I wasn’t missing anything. Each time, I grew happier.

Mateo had been trying to reach me but my chicken scratch handwriting led him astray. Oh god, I can’t believe he thought I was ignoring him. And then my actual email was so cool and professional compared to his. Ugh, I felt like such an asshole.

He didn’t sleep much without me. If I could hug my phone to my chest and dance around my room like a Disney heroine, I would. Okay, maybe I just did.

After I was done with my pathetic twirling, I quickly wrote him back. I calculated it being about four in the morning where he was and reminded myself not to expect anything back from him right away. I told him he could call me tomorrow morning after eight my time, which would make it around four his time, perfect for after work. Or, if he was really ambitious, he could call me tonight—I was staying up late.

I really hoped he was feeling ambitious. If he woke up around six o’clock, that meant he could phone me in as little as two hours from now.

Not sure what to do with myself, I grabbed a bottle of wine from my mom’s collection, took it in my room, and opened it. I put on what I knew to be two of his favorite albums, Paul Simon’s Graceland followed by Still Crazy After All These Years and just danced and danced and acted like a lovesick fool. At some point Josh knocked on the door, concerned that I was having a party in my room and he wasn’t invited. From the look he gave me, I could tell he thought about bringing the white coats to take me away.

By the time midnight rolled around, I was getting kind of depressed. Maybe it was the whole bottle of wine at the bottom of my stomach. I tried to be optimistic, knowing that at least he’d try and call me tomorrow, and it was just as I was getting into bed that the phone rang.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

An extremely long and alien looking phone number flashed on my call display.

I stared at it for a few beats before I bit the bullet and answered it.

I hoped I’d sound cool.

“Hello?” I croaked. “Vera speaking?”

“Vera,” Mateo’s rich, beautiful voice came through the line.

It was enough for my breath to hitch. Tears teased at my eyes, tingled my nose.

“Mateo,” I said breathlessly.

“Hi,” he said, sounding so warm, so close, despite our voices being bounced around the earth. “Sorry, am I too late to call you?”

It was funny, his fluency had slipped up a little bit.

“No, not at all,” I said. “I was up.”

“Oh, good.”

A thick silence filled the air and I found myself smiling to myself, unsure of what to say next.

“Do you know what this reminds me of?” he asked.

“What?”

“When we did our business calls, back at Las Palabras.”

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.”

“So,” he said after a pause. “What are you wearing?”

“Vete a la mierda,” I swore at him in my best Spanish accent.

“Go to the shit,” he commented happily. “I like that. I like your pronunciation, it is pretty good. How about saying it this way…”

And so, a week after Las Palabras, Mateo taught me how to swear properly in Spanish until five in the morning, when the stars in the sky started to fade.

Chapter Twenty

Compared to the previous month, the month of July crawled by at a sloth’s pace. In some ways this was good since every day that passed was a day that took me further and further from the Spain version of Vera. It made the memories harder to recreate in detail, it made me forget conversations, forget myself. Every day brought me closer and closer to becoming the old Vera Miles, the one I didn’t want to go back to, so the slower the month went, the better it was.

There was only one thing that kept me going throughout the days, and that was Mateo. Sure, I was enjoying the summer weather and the gorgeous beaches now that the rain had let up. I had gone to Calgary to see my father and Jude, and that was a nice little escape where my dad still spoiled me rotten. I got my job at Waves Coffee back, only I couldn’t get full-time, so I just picked up shifts when I could. I even briefly saw Jocelyn when she came to town, which ended up in a night of debauchery on Granville Street and me in tears because I’d had too much to drink. I couldn’t blame her for hurrying back to Saskatchewan after that.

But, even with all that, it was Mateo who got me up in the morning, looking forward to each day. He was a busy man, still looking into opening a restaurant in London thanks to his fancy English skills, so we didn’t talk on the phone every day. But we texted as much as we could, and sent emails when texting wasn’t good enough.

Sometimes we would talk for hours about everything under the rainbow. Other times we would watch a movie together, trying to get our DVDs on our computer to synch up. The other night we tried phone sex, which was an absolute first for me. I never asked where he was when we were talking dirty to each other, but I tried not to think about it too much. He would pleasure himself while talking wildly in Spanish, and that was such a fucking turn on that it only took me seconds before I was coming. My vibrators definitely got a work out, as did my voice control. No one wants to be a screamer when you live with your mom and brother.

We were pushing the limits with that and yet it only felt natural.

So, in some ways, I was satisfied. My sex life was healthy in its own fantastical way, I was able to keep in contact with him, to hear his voice, to talk and understand and enjoy each other. It was like part two of the relationship, a slower, distant version of what we had at Las Palabras.

But in other ways, I was absolutely miserable. There were only so many times I could hear him whisper that he was biting my nipples without needing him to physically be there biting my nipples. There were only so many times he could tell me he loved me and wanted to hold me without me feeling that hollow ache that he couldn’t hold me in his arms.

The only high point in my day was him, and after a while, that just wasn’t good enough anymore. That depression, that descent into Crazyville that happened right after I landed, that was coming back to me. To make matters worse, I had to start picking courses for the school year and concentrate on what my future would bring—a future that didn’t contain the man who had my heart.

On one extraordinarily hot and humid day, I felt pretty close to snapping. It didn’t help that Mateo and I had a fight of sorts over the phone in the wee hours of the morning. It wasn’t even over anything in particular, I was just being super bitchy and snippy, and he didn’t take that attitude very well, so the angry Spanish stallion in him came out. I didn’t see that side of him very often, but it made me realize I couldn’t be a bitch for no reason and not get called out on it.

Sleep-deprived and even more pissed off because of our fight, I had spent the morning listening to angry music, which was Faith No More’s King for a Day album. I had it on repeat as I cleaned my room over and over again.

“All right, that’s it,” Josh boomed above the music, suddenly appearing in the doorway. He walked over to the iPod dock and pushed the volume slider down, then leaned against my desk and stared at me, arms folded across his chest. “This has got to stop.”

I spritzed Windex onto my window for the millionth time and frowned. “What?’

“This. Your angry music.”

“So? Don’t be a Patton hater.”

“I’m not a hater. But you’re fucking driving me crazy, Vera,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “To be honest with you, you’re worrying me a little bit.”

Now he had my attention. I turned around fully and faced him, putting the cleaner on the windowsill. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my heart picking up a beat.

He gestured to the music. “You’re playing your angry album every day. You’re cleaning and you never clean. I talk to you, and half the time you’re not even there. You’re just this ghost of who my sister used to be.”

That kind of hurt hearing it from him. Was I really that obvious? I opened my mouth to protest but he went on.

“Then later in the day, or sometimes in the morning, I don’t know anymore, you’re happy like a pig in shit. You’re all goofy, googly eyes, like a fucking muppet, and you’re smiling and it’s great. But you still don’t seem like you’re here. And then you descend into your daily bout of PMS again.” He threw his hands up. “Look, I know we don’t tell each other everything. I know you’re older and you’ve got your own problems and I get it. But, you know, just let me in a bit. It’s hard sometimes, just living life, you know? I feel like you never even came back from Spain at all.”

My throat hurt. My eyes stung. He was right. I hadn’t come back from Spain at all.

He reached over and shut the door. “You don’t have to tell me what happened over there, but…I think it might do us both some good.”

My brother was right. I hadn’t really told him anything. I told him I missed my friends and he knew what the trip had meant to me. But when it came to Mateo, I hadn’t uttered a word. Josh never even knew his name.

He was the only family I could truly trust, could truly count on. He’d been there for me when others hadn’t. I owed him the truth, as silly as it would probably seem in the end.

With a heavy sigh, I sat down on the bed and patted the spot beside me.

“Take a seat,” I said. “I’m about to go all Nicolas Sparks on your ass.”

He reluctantly took a seat, knowing full well how much I hated Nicolas Sparks’ books and movies. I launched into it, from the very moment I stepped on the bus in Madrid, to when I got in the cab and watched Mateo through the rear view mirror.

Josh was wide-eyed, speechless. I went and got myself a glass of water, my throat raw from talking, and then told him about the last month, about our phone calls and how it was all taking its toll on me.

“So,” I said, exhaling loudly. “That’s the whole story. That is the dirty, shameful truth. Do you hate me now?”

He frowned, giving me a puzzled look. “Why would I hate you?”

“Because,” I said. “I slept with a married man.”

“But you’re in love with him,” he said earnestly. “And I’ve never seen you like this before. You don’t do love, Vera. You keep everyone at a distance.”

“I do?”

He nodded. “You may not realize it, but you do. You’re just so wrapped up in your head sometimes, I think. All my girlfriends wouldn’t shut up over the slightest thing, but getting you to open up, it’s like pulling teeth. And this dude, this Mateo, if he can manage to get through to you…I don’t know. I think it’s a good thing.”

Hmmm. The things you find out about yourself.

“That said, I don’t envy you, like, at all.” He got up and stretched his arms above his head. “Because if the two of you are ever going to be together again, even if you just keep doing what you’re doing and talking on the phone like you are, there are going to be consequences. At some point, shit will hit the fan. It always does.”

“Like dad and Jude,” I said sadly, looking down at the fleur-de-lis pattern on my comforter, my fingers absently tracing the lines.

“Yeah,” Josh said grimly. “Like dad and Jude.” His tone lifted. “But that’s an extreme case. Dad and Jude were carrying on for years. He was just stringing mom along, even though I’m sure they weren’t even in love anymore. All I remember were the fights, like mom and dad had always hated each other and were only staying together because of us. But yeah, eventually she found out, and well…we know the rest.”

I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t thinking about that every time my heart leaped for joy. It was like I hadn’t allowed myself to be happy this whole time because I knew that the happiness was coming from the potential misery of someone else.

“I have to say though,” he continued, “and I’m not excusing Dad because he was being a real dickhead. Totally. But…I see how happy he and Jude are, and part of me understands it. They went about it the wrong way. He should have broken it off with Mom the minute he was attracted to Jude…or at least, you know…I don’t want to get any visuals, but you get what I’m saying. There were always going to be consequences for what they did, but they could have saved a lot of extra heartache by not keeping it such a secret.”

I looked up at him, surprised to see my brother being so insightful and serious for once. Maybe we’d all grown up recently. “I just don’t understand how something like love can be wrong.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think it can be wrong if it comes from a pure place. I suppose you could be like one of those chicks who just keep it all inside and secretly pine for someone for their whole life until it kills them. But you’re not. What you feel isn’t wrong, Vera…it’s not black and white like that.” He cleared his throat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go get high and purge this estrogen from my system.” He gave me a wink before he left.

With the door closed, leaving me to get back to my thoughts, I felt a little better having confided in Josh. It made me feel like I wasn’t so alone anymore. Unfortunately, talking about it hadn’t solved the problem. I couldn’t really go on like this, every day a battle between my heart and mind, between right and wrong, between the dreams and the reality.

I had to start getting over him.

I started by not answering his phone call later that night.

Then the next.

And the next.

It had been three days since I last talked to Mateo, since I had the talk with my brother. I had hoped, foolishly, that by ignoring his calls, his texts, his emails, that I could pretend he didn’t exist. It wasn’t really working. I was a wreck. I even took after Isabel and mentally began to put my chaos and heartache into tiny little boxes, but I wasn’t sure how long they would hold. I wasn’t as strong as Mateo had been.

On the third night, Josh, sick and tired of my moping, invited me out with his friends again. This time we were going to the Cambie, which was one of my favorite bars. It was situated beneath a somewhat scummy-looking backpacker hostel, and had really cheap pitchers of beer. There were large picnic tables for seating, so you often shared a table with a whole bunch of people you didn’t know. The food wasn’t too bad and there were pool tables and arcade games. The bathrooms were always disgusting though, with stall doors that barely covered you from view and rarely locked. Apparently in the men’s bathroom, you all had to pee into a long trough.

Still, I loved it. It was cheap and relaxed, with no pretension, and at least one fight every night. Plus in the summer, there was a large patio area where you could sit and drink and ignore the junkies who would pester you for money.

Unfortunately, the patio was full by the time we got there, and we barely managed to snag the end of a picnic table inside. The other half of it had been taken over by a bridal party, the bride wearing bunny ears and a veil and looking totally shit faced. It made me cringe internally. Not that they were drunk and having fun, but that she was getting married to someone—someone wealthy, by the look of the rock on her finger—and despite her drunken antics, she looked completely happy and in love.

I was jealous. I wasn’t completely happy, I was only in love.

I knew it was going to be a weird night. I started drinking my beer fast, going through the pitcher I was sharing with Josh in just ten minutes. Every time the bridal chick mentioned her fiancé, I felt my heart turn black and cold. Meanwhile, I had Adam sitting next to me, who kept rapping his hands on the table and wiping his nose. He’d obviously been doing lines in the bathroom, and I watched Josh carefully to see if he’d been doing the same. We’d both left cocaine behind in high school, though I knew he still did it on occasion.

It just wasn’t for me anymore, so I just got myself another pitcher and proceeded to drink the night away. Soon the pitchers were starting to pile up on the table, and I found myself leaning into Adam, almost like I was flirting with him. I suppose I really was becoming Old Vera again.

I bummed a cigarette from Josh’s friend Brad and staggered out into the warm night air. I felt like I was losing myself, very slowly, draining away like the empty glasses. I had no idea what I was doing, I just needed something, anything to mend my heart, to distract me from the cave inside my chest, to make it all go away. All I could think about was Mateo and where he was, and if he was with his wife. Was he in bed with her? Was he kissing her? Was he falling back in love with her? Each thought was another dagger to my gut, the feelings so physical that my shoulders were curling over as I stood there on the street, enveloped in cigarette smoke.

I thought by ignoring him, I could make it all go away. But I couldn’t. It only got worse.

“Hey,” I heard Adam say, coming up to me. “Can I have a drag?”

I gave him a small smile, trying to straighten up through the pain. I handed it to him and his finger brushed against mine. I felt nothing. He kept staring at me, blinking rapidly, nose twitching as he puffed on the cigarette.

“So how are you?” he asked. “How are you feeling right now?”

I pursed my lips. “Drunk. I’m feeling drunk.”

He smiled. It was somewhat predatory. “Good. There’s nothing wrong with feeling loose.”

I shrugged. “Guess not.”

I reached back for the cigarette, almost falling over. He caught me by my arms, his hands squeezing me, and straightened me up. “You look like you could use a walk,” he said.

I nodded dumbly, numbly. He took hold of my hand and led me up the street and around into a smelly, dark and dirty alley.

Suddenly he flicked the cigarette to the ground, pushed me back against the slimy brick wall and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He tasted like beer and nicotine. For a moment I was shocked, and then something in me let him kiss me. I even kissed him back. It felt good to be in someone else’s arms, the object of someone else’s affections.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a kiss. His hands were groping me, squeezing painfully at my breasts, trying to undo my jeans. The warning bells went off in my head, breaking through my drunken, emotionally damaged haze. This wasn’t going well.

“Adam,” I said, “stop.”

“What happened to the girl who used to flirt with me?” he said, biting my neck so hard I thought he was drawing blood.

“I mean it,” I said. I tried to get out of his grasp but he grabbed me by the throat and pushed me back to the wall, my head striking it hard. I blinked through the stars, fear coming over me. Oh my god. What if he didn’t let go?

“You mean it,” he snarled. “Everyone knows what a slut you are, that you spread your legs for everyone. What’s wrong with me, huh? Not good enough for your whore ass?”

“Please, Adam,” I said, trying to speak, my throat pressing into his palm as I did so. What the hell drugs was he on? “I’m sorry if it seems like I led you—”

“You’re such a liar,” he said, then kissed me again, trying to yank down my jeans. “Fucking whore thinks she’s suddenly too good for me.”

“You’re drunk. You’re fucked up.”

“You’re mine.”

I couldn’t move, his grip on my throat like iron. I opened my mouth to yell but he quickly put his other hand over it, leaving my jeans alone for the moment. His pupils were crazy big, darting back and forth, his face red, mouth curled in a sneer. I’d never seen anything uglier.

“You’re going to shut up and take it,” he said. “I know you want it. You’re suddenly too much of a prude to say so. A slut doesn’t change her spots.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” I heard Josh bellow from behind Adam. I looked over his shoulder to see Josh running toward us. In seconds he had his hand on Adam’s shoulder, ripping him off of me.

I gasped for air, sliding down along the sticky wall until I was on the ground, and watched as Josh punched Adam right in the face.

“The fuck is your problem?” Adam cried out, holding his nose.

“That’s my fucking sister, you fuckhead!” Josh yelled, decking him in the side of the head. I had never seen my brother fight anyone before, I didn’t think he had it in him. But now, he was so livid he looked like he was about to beat Adam into oblivion.

“She’s been after me from day one,” Adam cried out, his arm out, trying to get Josh to stop. “She wanted it.”

“No,” Josh said, pointing at me, a shivering, quaking mess on the ground. “She did not fucking want it.”

“Whatever, you know she’s a big slut.”

And Josh punched him one more time, this one bringing Adam to the ground with a thump. Then he came over to me and grabbed me gently by my hands, pulling me to my feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked, peering at me.

I shook my head, a lump in my raw throat, unable to speak.

He put his arm around me. “Come on, I’m taking you home.”

I nodded feebly and he led me to the road, hailing a cab.

Once inside, he took off his leather jacket and placed it around my shoulders.

We were silent for a few blocks, the neon glow of the cold city lights flashing across our laps.

“Vera,” he said quietly, “I’m just your brother. I’m not Mercy or Mom. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. But you can’t keeping doing this either.”

I gave him a look, shadows rising and falling on his face. “Doing what?” I asked testily. “You think I asked for that?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I know you didn’t. No one does ask for that, no matter who you are, no matter who spins it. But…I feel like you’re on a path that you don’t want to be on. Drinking away your sorrows and putting yourself into these kind of situations where you’re acting out of loneliness. You need to treat yourself better.”

You should treat yourself better than that, Mateo’s words came ringing into my head.

I let out a sob, caught unaware by the pain of that memory, the memory of him after he caught me with Dave. Mateo. He’d been right, always so right about me. And I was pushing him away because it was too hard. He deserved to be treated better than that.

Josh brought me to him in a hug. I stayed that way for the whole ride.

Once I got home, I staggered to my room, locked the door, and called Mateo. I needed him right then, more than anything.

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 Twenty-One

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.

In the end, I had more at stake. I just had to get her to see that.

Things moved fast. As soon as I had made up my mind, I told Mateo. The joy I heard in his voice only added to the joy in my heart. I was so excited and nervous but so fucking happy. It felt good. It felt real. It felt like the right thing to do. He bought me a ticket on Iberia Airlines, flying from Vancouver to New York to Madrid on August 25th.

Naturally I had to tell Claudia. She was totally excited, pretty much as excited as I was. That felt good, to be missed, to be wanted. I started feeling like maybe I was going to be able to build a new life there after all.

A new universe.

I called Jocelyn too, to let her know. I wasn’t sure how she was going to react, maybe call me crazy. I had been writing her all about Mateo, and when she came to visit Vancouver after I had just returned from Spain, she got a teary earful about how doomed our relationship was. She’d never seen me that way and I think I scared her all the way back to Saskatchewan. But she took the news of me moving to Spain surprisingly well, with no judging on her behalf.

“Do what makes you happy,” she said lightly.

“Doing Mateo made me happy,” I joked.

She sighed. “Such a romantic name. Mateo Casalles. Vera Casalles sounds good too. You sound like a Spanish queen.”

I flinched at the mention of Spanish royalty. “Well, no one is getting married here.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said. “You’re only twenty-three and have your whole life ahead of you, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he never wanted to get married ever again, or even have kids.”

Ouch, that hurt. Did I mention that Jocelyn could be really blunt?

“I meant that more as in we don’t really know each other that well and should probably live together for a while first before that happens. Or, you know, what you just said.”

“Oh. Sorry, Vera. But, I mean, you should probably keep that in mind when you get there. I totally support the move to Spain for your true love kind of notion, even though I won’t see you as often, but try and keep your heart protected, too.”

Didn’t she know it was way too late for that?

After I told her, I knew it was only a matter of time before it would pop up on my Facebook or it would slip out somehow. It was time to tell my mother.

Unfortunately, I picked a day that Mercy was over. She and my mom were in the kitchen, baking dinner together. Josh had picked up extra shifts that week and happened to be home, so if I wanted his support, I was going to have to jump on it.

My chest felt like it was filled with cement. Ugh. This was going to suck so badly.

I went to Josh’s room and gave him a look. “It’s time.”

He nodded and came out to join me, and we walked down the hall. You’d think I was going to war.

We went into the kitchen. Mom was sipping her wine and peering at Mercy over her glasses. Mercy was wearing a stylish apron that she must have brought from her apartment, her hair pulled back in one of those effortless topknots that makes me look like I have an animal on my head when I try to do it. She was grating a block of parmesan into a bowl, gluten-free lasagna being assembled in a pan beside it.

I stopped on the other side of the island and cleared my throat until they looked at me and Josh.

“What is it, sweetie?” My mother asked.

Oh, she wasn’t going to be calling me sweetie in a minute.

I looked up at Josh. He nodded at me encouragingly.

I felt so sick, like I’d eaten a pile of nerves and they were sitting at the bottom of my stomach, wriggling around.

“I have something I need to tell you,” I said, my voice no louder than a whisper.

Mercy put the cheese down and cocked her head quizzically.

I was afraid to look them in the eyes, so I looked at the island instead. I cleared my throat. “I’ve decided to move to Spain.”

There was silence. I risked it and looked up.

My mother cocked a brow. “Okay. Well, I guess we can discuss this.”

Mercy looked at her, appraising her expression. She sucked on her teeth and said, “Sure, Vera. I could see you were really happy there.”

“You’re going to have to start working more,” my mother said. “And you can’t let it interfere with your studies.”

“I saved up a lot of money in a year,” Mercy said. “It’s hard, but it’s doable.”

“When did you want to go?” my mother asked. “Next fall? I don’t think you could make next summer work. You’ve got Mercy’s wedding and everything.”

“Yeah, my wedding.”

Ooh, boy.

I felt Josh nudge me.

I gulped. “I’m going next week.”

Mercy dropped the cheese grater. It landed with a clatter that echoed through the kitchen.

“What?” my mother hissed.

“You’re joking,” said Mercy, shaking her head. She looked at Josh. “What’s wrong with her? Is this a joke?”

“No,” Josh said. “I had nothing to do with it, but I’m here for support.”

Thanks, Josh, I thought angrily. Well, it was too late now. They were already freaking out. I wondered how long I could keep Mateo a secret, my whole reason for going.

“You aren’t going,” my mother said, putting down the wine glass. “You have school. Jesus, Vera. Use your brain. Sometimes I wonder about you and your flights of fancy.”

“I’m not going to school this year.”

“Like hell you aren’t,” she growled, really starting to get mad.

“I’m taking a year off. Or maybe two. Maybe I’ll go to university in Madrid. I’m sure—”

“Are you on drugs again?” Mercy asked, folding her arms together in a huff, her lip curled up like somehow this was affecting her life in some way.

I glared at her. “No. I’m not on drugs. I’m just going to Spain.”

“Well, you can’t and you aren’t,” my mother said with finality. “Wait till your father hears about this.”

“Right. Why is it that you always call dad when something wrong has happened, but never with something right?”

“Because things never go right with you,” my mother sniped.

Ouch. Okay, don’t cry, don’t cry, I told myself. She had a wicked tongue and I knew this going in.

“Mom,” Josh warned her.

“I’m disappointed in you, Joshua,” she said, her voice taking on that icy competitive realtor tone that she was really, really good at. “You’re actually supporting her decision?”

He gulped but nodded. “Yes. She’s an adult, she can do whatever she wants.”

“No,” Mercy interjected. “She can’t. She’s in school that’s paid for by mom and dad. She barely makes any money at her shit job. She can’t get to Spain even if she started turning tricks.” At that she gave me a pointed look, as if that was a possibility.

“I already have a plane ticket,” I said, and I knew once I said it that the can of worms was going to turn into a bucket of snakes. There were all coming out, unstoppable.

“How the hell did you get a plane ticket?” my mother asked. She shot Mercy a nervous look, as if Mercy had been right.

“It was bought for me.”

“By whom?” she demanded.

“By the man I’m in love with.”

Silence. I could hear the fridge motor kick on. Somewhere outside a dog barked. The blood inside me was pulsing loudly.

My mother looked truly confused. “What man?”

Suddenly Mercy shrieked, “Oh my god!” and put her hands over her mouth.

She figured it out.

“What?” my mom asked again. “What am I missing here?”

“The soccer player!” Mercy yelled. She pointed at me, jabbing her finger in the air. “You’re in love with the soccer player!”

I could see my mother mouth, “Soccer player?” out of the corner of my eye but all my focus was on Mercy as the disgusted look came into her eyes.

“Vera, he’s married!” she yelled. “Oh my god, you were with a married man?”

“What?!” my mother screeched loudly.

“He’s getting a divorce,” I said feebly, as if that would help. It wouldn’t. The damage was done.

“Oh my god, Vera,” my mother said, putting her hand to her head like she was going to faint. Her face had gone pale. “Vera, you stupid idiot. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”

“I’m not an idiot,” I retorted helplessly.

“You had an affair with a married man!” Mercy was beside herself. She kept shaking her head, flapping her hands. “I can’t even…I can’t.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not like that.”

“Oh, sure it’s not. We all know what you’re like. Can’t shut your legs for one moment, can you?”

“Shut up, Mercy,” Josh sneered.

“Vera,” my mother whispered, holding on to the edge of the island. “Please tell me this is all a joke.”

I shook my head. “It’s not. He’s flying me to Spain. I’m going to live with him. I love him.” She gasped. I continued. “It’s not a joke, it’s just life and it’s happening.”

“You’re such a slut,” Mercy said, practically spitting at me. “After what Dad did to Mom? After the mess you both became? What about me? I’m getting married next year, married, and you’re such a selfish whorish brat that you go and take up with a fucking married man, some Spanish scum, and you think you’re so cool about it?”

I couldn’t breathe. My face turned red, hot, tight. I felt a panic attack coming on, anchoring me in a terrible state of paralysis. I was afraid if I did move, I was going to punch my sister right in her self-righteous face.

“Hey, why don’t we all calm down here,” Josh said commandingly, raising his hands.

“Oh fuck off, Josh,” Mercy said. “You’re getting in the way and this has nothing to do with you.”

I didn’t care anymore if Josh did go. I couldn’t get any more hurt than I already was. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but damn, I didn’t think their words would be so vicious, so hateful.

“Vera Elizabeth Miles,” my mother said, her tone suddenly hard. I eyed her wearily, suddenly afraid again. I did not like that tone, the dead tone of indifference and disappointment.

She breathed in sharply through her nose. “If you leave this house, if you forgo your studies, you will never get a dime from me for tuition. And you will never be allowed back in this house.”

“Mom!” Josh yelled at her. “Are you crazy?”

“Oh shut up, Joshua,” she snapped, eyes flashing. “I expected more from you. Instead, you’re supporting your sister during her most idiotic move ever.”

Okay. Apparently I could get more hurt. My insides twisted around, the pain physical, as if my whole body was under fire. But she couldn’t be serious, could she? She was just overheated, overreacting because of what happened with her and Dad and Jude, right?

I swallowed painfully and stared at her. She stared right back at me. There was no love in her eyes.

“Do you hear me?” she went on, her expression made of ice. “If you walk out that door next week, you aren’t allowed back here. You’ll get no help with school. You’ll be totally on your own. And don’t even think your dad will help you either, because he won’t. You understand? If you’re going to be a damn homewrecker, throwing away your future for a man who can’t keep it in his pants, then you are going to suffer the consequences. These kinds of things do not go unpunished in life. Hope you learn from this, sweetie.”

The sweetie part was a killer. Tears came to my eyes, the front of my face feeling hot and tight. I nodded, able to keep them at bay, and turned around, walking quickly back to my room, my heart in my throat, my lungs deprived of air.

I shut the door behind me and stood there for a few minutes, trying to absorb what had just happened, trying to hold my body together. It felt as if it would come falling apart at any moment.

I was risking the chance at a new life on uncertainty, and the only thing that was certain was that if I ever returned, I’d come back to no life at all.

I collapsed to the floor.

I had made my choice.