Love, in English

  I had very little money, enough for one night at a hotel.

  Not enough on my Mastercard to buy a plane ticket home.

  In reality, I was totally fucked.

  That didn’t stop me from walking and walking through the grey Madrid streets until I was covered in sweat and my back and arms hurt as much as everything else did. I paused, totally unsure of where I was and quickly called Claudia.

  “Vera?” she answered.

  And then the tears started coming again. I leaned against the cold stone wall of a building, shielding my face from passerby, and letting it all flow until I could speak again.

  “I left Mateo,” I told her.

  That was all she needed. I gave her vague directions, spotting the name of a few stores. She told me to stay put and thirty minutes later she was roaring down the narrow street and helping my bags and my life into the back of her hatchback.

  Claudia didn’t exactly live in the city; her apartment was just to the west, still accessible by metro but things looked a little greener and spread out. It took us about a half hour, and the entire time I cried to her about what had happened—that I had seen him kiss Isabel, that I knew things would never improve, that I was making things harder by staying, that I could ruin his family’s true chance to stay together.

  She never said anything except to murmur her shock or sympathies. She was just quiet comfort, which I appreciated more than I could say. Usually in this kind of case, people gave you unsolicited advice or agreed too much with what you were saying, wanting to help but only making things worse.

  Claudia was more than eager to offer me anything that I needed. She said that she didn’t have much money to spare, but if it turned out that I couldn’t get my brother or one of my parents to fly me back home, then she would lend me what she could and I would pay her back. The only catch was that it would take her until her next paycheck in two weeks.

  I had Claudia’s den as my room for as long as I needed, opting to sleep on an air mattress in there instead of on the couch. With Ricardo living with her, I wanted to give the both of them as much privacy as possible. I set up temporary camp in the narrow room, which Claudia’s fat grey cat Rocco didn’t like too much given that the den was one of his hangouts.

  That night I kept checking my phone for texts from Mateo, having a sick kind of pull toward it, some kind of torturous impulse. He had sent no texts though, no emails, and there were no phone calls. It was pretty stupid to admit how much that destroyed me even further. There was nothing worse than thinking that the painful decision you made was the right one. I guess I had held out a little hope that he would continue trying to convince me that I was wrong.

  I sat on the couch with Claudia and a bottle of wine, and we talked our way through the night. Ricardo decided he was heading out with some buddies of his, leaving us to vent and cry. I went through an entire box of tissues, just talking and talking and talking and just trying to work through everything.

  The only thing I kept getting thinking about, saying over and over again, as if I had willed it to be true, was that we brought this on ourselves, that we were doomed from the start. Ours had been a love that never should have been, that was never meant to be. I wished I had recognized it from the start, that it was too impossible to go on.

  “But you did,” Claudia said, pouring the rest of the wine into my glass. “You resisted until the very end.”

  “I should have tried harder,” I said. “I should have seen this coming.”

  “But love makes you an optimist,” she said. “That is what love is. It is hope for the future. Love doesn’t want you to lose faith, to view the world darkly, to have no hope. Love makes you believe in the impossible. That is the meaning of the word.”

  “Very poetic.” I sniffled. “But love is misleading.”

  She shrugged. “No one said it wasn’t.”

  Talking with Claudia helped, even if it didn’t make me forget or make me feel any better about what had happened. But as the night wore on and a new day begun, I felt like if I kept talking about it to someone, then perhaps I could understand why I really did what I did.

  Monday rolled around, however, and with Claudia and Ricardo at work, I was stuck alone with Rocco. I had nothing but time to kill with myself, time to feel that pain that kept reaching up from my gut like an icy hand.

  There were still no messages from Mateo. The irrational side of me started getting really mad at his audacity—that he didn’t care. I had to keep reminding myself that this was my doing, my fault, that I had wanted this, that I had done this to us.

  I decided to finally face my fears—admit that I was a failure—and call up Josh and my mother. It wasn’t going to be easy, to try and come crawling back to a home I had given the middle finger to.

  I called Josh’s cell, knowing it was better if I talked to him first. I hated having to ask him for money, I hated for him to worry about me.

  It was about seven a.m. in Vancouver and I was totally waking him up, but I wanted to talk to him before Claudia and Ricardo got home.

  “Hello?” he answered groggily.

  “Josh?” I whispered, as if I didn’t want to shock him.

  He groaned. “Yeah. Vera. What time is it? Are you okay?”

  “I’m…” I started. “I’m not okay.”

  “What’s wrong?” He was waking up now, sounding more frantic.

  I took in a deep breath. “I need to come home.”

  He sighed. “Oh, no. Vera. What happened, man?”

  “Mateo and I broke up,” I said, choking on my words.

  “Fuck,” he swore. “I’m sorry. Why?”

  “Many reasons,” I said. “It just got to be too hard.”

  He made a funny grunt.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just, you knew it would be hard.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the phone. “No. I didn’t know it would be this hard. You have no idea, Joshua, no idea what the fuck I have been going through since I got here.”

  “Sorry. I had no idea you were this unhappy.”

  “I wasn’t unhappy,” I said, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “I just…I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t you ever think that sometimes love isn’t enough? That it can’t overcome everything?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’ve never really been in love before, not the way that you have. I’d always hoped that love would be enough. Otherwise it’s just a Nine Inch Nails song.”

  “Well, love sucks.”

  But the truth was, not having love is what sucked. Not having Mateo sucked. Mateo was love. Despite all the shit while navigating this whole emotional shitshow, he loved me with all his heart. I felt the passion in his touch, saw his soul in his eyes. That man, that wonderful man who was trying nothing more than to be a good father, even with me in the way, he had loved me.

  And I was turning my back on it, on everything that Mateo had to offer me. He rearranged his life for me and I was bailing when it got tough.

  You’re doing the right thing, I told myself. You ruined a marriage; you don’t deserve his love or anyone else’s.

  This was karma.

  Payback.

  Consequences.

  “I have to come home,” I told him. “I’m doing what’s right for everyone.”

  “And what did Mateo have to say about all of this?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Josh laughed. “Doesn’t matter? Vera, the dude left his wife for you.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did and you know it. He’s mad about you, God knows why. I’m pretty sure if Mateo didn’t think you could have handled it, he would have cut you loose or bailed himself.”

  “No,” I said adamantly. “Because he doesn’t want to hurt me, because he believes so much in making this work.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  I paused, taken aback. “Because my happiness is not as important as a fa
mily’s.”

  “Maybe you should let Mateo decide that and not you.”

  “Josh,” I said sternly.

  “Vera,” he said right back. “Things aren’t too late. You’re still in Madrid, aren’t you? Spain, at least.”

  “Yes,” I said warily.

  “Then fucking go back to him and make it work. You love him, don’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, you either do or you don’t,” he added.

  “Josh, I’m coming home,” I said, louder now. “What’s done is done. I need you to be supportive, okay? You were so supportive when I came here.”

  “Because I believed in that crazy scheme of yours,” he said. “I don’t believe in this one.”

  “So I guess you’re not going to lend me money.”

  “No, Vera,” he said. “I am not. And not because I’m being a dick, but I actually don’t have a fucking dime to my name. Everything has been going to the car. He’s a piece of shit, that Herman.” It took me a moment to realize he was talking about his Golf.

  “Well, what the hell am I going to do?”

  “You really don’t have any money?”

  “No!” I cried out. “I don’t have a job.”

  He sighed. “What about your friend? Claudia?”

  “That’s who I’m staying with right now. And she’ll help me, but only in two weeks when she gets paid. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “You want me to ask Mom, don’t you?”

  I bit my lip. “She might say yes to you.”

  “Maybe,” he mused. “But probably not. You’ll have much better luck with Dad. You rarely ask him for anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s like, if Mom gives me money, then she’s pretty much saying I can come back home. If Dad gives it to me, I’ll probably have to live in Calgary.”

  “Or,” he said, “you could just go back to your man and live in Madrid.”

  “Josh, please,” I pleaded.

  “Okay fine,” he said. “Give me a few days, all right?”

  That would have to do. I thanked him profusely and hung up the phone.

  The silence thrummed around me like the cadence of Rocco’s purrs. I didn’t want to think about everything that Josh had said. I didn’t want to think about anything. I didn’t want to feel anymore. I wanted the hollow place in my chest to be filled, to take away the emptiness, that black hole that kept swirling with pain and doubt.

  The doubt was the worst part. It was the part that made me think everything that Josh said was true. That I was giving up too easily and too soon. But the thing was, he could never know what it was like to be me. He had never seen Isabel’s horror right up in his face or the look in Chloe Ann’s eyes when she asked her dad why he wasn’t coming home. I had to see all of that, feel it coming off of Mateo.

  He made all those choices for me, and I was the most undeserving person of them all. He was just blinded by me because I made him feel like a different person. Perhaps the truth was that our love was what it was, that shining star, and it should have remained in Las Palabras. It should have never survived outside those confines, outside of that slice of life we happened upon. We were meant for a certain part of time, and anything else was pushing it.

  I didn’t hear from Josh for a few days. I sank into a deep darkness that even Claudia couldn’t pull me out of. One moment I thought I was going to be fine, that I was going to get through this, and in the next moment, a Lana Del Rey song or a certain smell would bring me crashing to my feet, erupting into a fit of tears. There was no smooth ascent out of this pit. It was a jagged rollercoaster ride with no real end in sight.

  When Wednesday rolled around, just as I was getting into bed, I got a text from Mateo.

  I heard the beep—his particular chime—and my heart smiled. It was automatic, like Pavlov’s dog. I was used to feeling happiness at the sound.

  With my breath held in my mouth, afraid to pass it out through my lips, I picked up my phone and peered at the screen with trepidation.

  I love you. Please come back to me.

  That was all it said. That was enough for my soul to crumble, my heart weeping inside, torrents of agony. Oh, god. How was I ever going to get past this? How was I ever going to go home, knowing that this man was out there, a man who totally and completely owned me inside and out?

  I missed him. No, missing him wasn’t even the right word. I yearned for him, pined for him. I needed him. Something inside me was empty and aching in his absence, like flowers during the night. He was my sun, he was my everything.

  I held the phone in my hand, staring at the text, wondering if I should respond, wondering how I couldn’t. And yet there was this block inside of me, the moral part that was showing its head too late and trying to make up for past grievances. It prevented me from texting back, even though it killed me inside.

  I fell asleep in a river of tears, wondering if I’d ever feel whole again, if this pain would ever make me stop hating myself.

  Apparently, I still needed to be punished.

  Chapter Thirty

  A few days after Mateo’s lone text, Josh finally called. It was Friday night, nearly a week since I had left Mateo. Claudia, Ricardo, Rocco and I were sitting on the couch watching the Spanish version of The Voice. I was going through the motions, telling myself that everything was going to be all right, fooling myself into thinking this was just a hiccup in my life to overcome.

  Mateo couldn’t have been my one true love. I was only twenty-three. The cynic in me knew that the odds of me ever finding the right person were skewed toward my late twenties, particularly for the kind of lifestyle I lived.

  The romantic part of me knew that love happened at any age. As Claudia had said, it had no regard for time.

  I picked up my cell from the coffee table and answered it. “Hey, Josh.”

  I tried to sound breezy, as if everything wasn’t riding on it. I failed. My voice cracked, and Claudia and Ricardo looked over at me in worry.

  I got up, shooting them a quick apologetic look, and took the call out onto the balcony. The weather had turned so fast, as if it were mimicking my situation. I pulled my cardigan close around me. “Yes, what is it?” I said into the phone.

  “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Shitty,” I said. “Any luck in getting me home?”

  He sighed. “No. I’m sorry, Vera. Mom said no. She did, however, say you could return home if you apologized.”

  Normally I would have scoffed at that and told him she could go fuck herself. But I was tired of doing that. I’d already started to make the peace here in Spain, and I needed to continue. My pride didn’t matter so much. If Mateo could do things he didn’t want to do to keep the peace with Isabel, I could do the same with my mom.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Thanks for trying.”

  “So you’re actually going to apologize to Mom?” he asked incredulously.

  “First things first,” I told him. “I’ll get a way home, then I will tell her I’m wrong, admit I was sorry, whatever.”

  “Dude,” he said. “I’m not saying that you and Mom shouldn’t try and get along, but this doesn’t sound like you at all.”

  “Maybe I’m growing up,” I told him. “Maybe I need to make some changes in my life.”

  “Right,” he said slowly. “I’m still worried that you’ve been replaced by a robot. Since when have you ever cared about doing the right thing? You’re Miss Rebellious, always have been.”

  “Maybe when I saw firsthand what the damage was like,” I said. “What I leave in my wake.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Vera,” he scoffed.

  “It’s all I know how to be,” I remarked softly. Well, if my mom wasn’t going to help, that meant I’d be waiting another week for Claudia. I hated knowing I owed people but in this case I had no choice.

  “Well,” he said, “keep me posted on whatever you do. I’ll let Mom know though, so if she calls
you in the next few days, you’ll know why. Don’t freak out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Love ya.”

  “Love ya too.”

  I hung up and leaned out on the balcony railing. From Claudia’s apartment, the city lights were further away. You could kind of see some of the stars in that big velvet sky. They were fighting to get through all the light pollution and the haze, but they still managed to shine.

  That night I had a beautiful dream.

  I was laying on the grass out in that field, beneath that big oak tree, with Mateo by my side. Wildflowers grew all around us and up the trunk, spreading their colors across the leaves.

  “Do you know why I call you Estella?” Mateo asked, lacing his fingers with mine and raising our hands up into the big blue sky.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are my star,” he said, his voice low and smooth, raising the hairs on my arms. “You shine brighter than the sun.”

  “But even the sun goes away every night.”

  “But it is the sun’s absence that makes us feel its power. We know the loss, the beauty and the life that the moon can’t replace. That is why we hang on to each day we are given. That is why I hang on to you.” He lowered our hands and kissed my knuckles. “I love you, Vera. I’ve had the moon, the dark, the cold, for too long. I want my star back. My Estrella.”

  He kissed me next, his mouth tasting as I remembered, his stubble rough as my fingers traced his jaw. His eyes were deep and luminous, begging me to stay with him, to bring him the warmth we both needed.

  “And what if I was only supposed to burn for a certain amount of time?” I whispered. “What if I was only meant to shine for a while?”

  “Then you truly don’t know what stars are meant to do.”

  I looked at him in wonder.

  “They are meant to give us hope in the face of infinity.”

  He kissed me again, his warm hands on my skin.

  Then it all faded to black.

  I slowly woke up.

  My cheeks were wet. My lips tasted like sunshine.

  Four more days rolled past, days that went too quickly or too slowly, depending on my mood. Everyone was looking to Friday, the day that Claudia would get paid, the day I would book my plane ticket back home. In those four days, I talked to my mother and apologized to her. It went about as well as I thought it would. I felt utterly humiliated, having to admit I was wrong, that I made a bad choice. She sounded cold as always, though near the end of the conversation, she was conceding a bit.