Love, in Spanish

  “Oh my god,” she says, her head rolling back and forth, her wide eyes staring at the ceiling. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

  “Keep saying my name, it’s fine,” I tell her, unable to stop from grinning. I feel an incredible sense of pride to leave this mark on her. It feels wonderful to feel this even if it’s just temporary, just for tonight.

  “It’s like you can put your tongue anywhere and I’m coming just like that. Fuck, me,” she says, sounding amazed. “I didn’t even think that was possible.”

  “I think with you, anything is possible.” I sit up and unbutton my shirt before discarding it behind me. She reaches up and runs her fingers over my muscles, that hunger still in her eyes, but it’s not just for me, it’s for us and everything that we are. She’s come so alive in this relationship, and so have I. It feeds us, makes us stronger, better.

  I kiss her, her lips richer than honeycomb, and quickly remove my clothes until we are both naked beside each other. I stare into her eyes, my hands trailing up and down the soft slopes of her body, my fingers circling the inky constellations on her skin, as if her skin itself could tell me their stories. I close my eyes and commit the feeling of her to memory, wishing I too could be embedded on her skin, that she could never shed me.

  Vera places her finger beneath my eyes and I am surprised to feel her wipe away a tear. I must be crying just a bit.

  She murmurs something then kisses me with salt and flavor, and I move my body on top of hers. My fingers skip down her stomach and hips and settle in between her thighs. She is still wet and warm from her previous orgasm, and she feels like home. I slide my fingers along her slickness and up inside her, rubbing against her G-spot with even pressure.

  I love the way her body gives into my hands, like I can mold her into anything I want. But all I want is her, forever in my bed, just like this, her passion awoken by mine again and again. She arches her back, knees coming up to give me better access, and I slip my fingers out and position my cock there instead.

  I push in deliberately, inch by inch, and let the sensation flood through me. This is so beautiful and so final. My eyes close, and when I go deep, as far as I can go inside of her, it feels like we are one and will stay one and nothing will pull us apart.

  My feelings are lies, but they will do for now.

  I have to control myself so I will not come before we are both ready. Even if we were both ready, I wouldn’t want this to be over so fast. I breathe in deeply with each slow, wet thrust.

  “How do I feel?” I ask her, my voice richer, darker, wrapped up in desire. “Because you feel like the heavens.”

  She grins lazily, her eyes closed. “You feel like Mateo.”

  “And this is good, yes?” I drive myself in deeper, and she lets out a moan.

  She opens her lustful eyes to stare up at me. “Yes,” she says breathlessly. “The best I’ll ever have.”

  A lump forms in my throat, and I quickly swallow it down. She will also be the best I’ll ever have, and I may never have her again.

  I push through the pain. It is the only way out. I fuck her faster now but still in control, desperate to drive away the sorrow that’s waiting beyond, wanting to just feel this way and nothing else, but not wanting to rush. It is push and pull, and everything inside me is building, building, building until I am on the edge and so is she.

  I am so afraid to let go.

  “Mateo,” she whispers, lips at my ear. “I can’t hold back any longer.”

  A shudder rolls down my back and I still myself, unable to keep going without losing it. Sweat pools between our overheated bodies, our hands gliding over each other, yearning to hold on. I am determined but so is she. She reaches behind to play with my ass, and she knows how much that drives me wild.

  Everything she does drives me wild.

  And now I can’t hold back anymore either.

  I reach the crescendo and come so hard into her that it feels like the room shakes and I lose all control. I am brought to another place—a place that I can only find deep inside her body—and it is this other world of light and stars and beauty. I am calling out her name, vaguely aware of how loud I am, how powerful my groans are, how concisely this pleasure rips me apart. She is a mixture of nails in my back and frantic gasps that echo throughout the room. She pulses around me and we both keep coming, and for one gorgeous moment I think we will come forever.

  But it eventually leaves us and it leaves us bereft. I collapse on top of her, nearly crushing her, and I bury my face in her neck, holding on to her limbs and trying to breathe, trying to keep her. I’m not sure if I even have a pulse anymore, if I am even Mateo Casalles. I’m not sure if she’s really real beneath me, hot and wet and shaking. She is crying and I am crying, and it doesn’t seem fair that this is what we are and what we are no longer permitted to be.

  All at once I know that if Vera and I never see each other again, I will still go on and find happiness because now I know what it looks like. Now I know what it feels like. My eyes have been opened forever, and if I had never been so lucky to have her in my life, I would have never lived.

  “I’ll forever keep searching for you,” I murmur. “I will look up to the sky and let it point me your way. I will not let you go, Vera. I will never let you go.”

  She sobs quietly in response, and I can feel how much this is breaking her. It’s like we’re the only thing keep each other together.

  I kiss her lips, her nose, her forehead, smoothing her hair back with my hands. “I will never let you go,” I repeat.

  I stay inside of her for as long as I can.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vera’s flight is at one in the afternoon, and even though I want nothing more than to spend our last hours in bed, our bodies entwined forever, there is far too much to do. Claudia and Ricardo come by before they are off to work, and I have to leave the apartment to get some coffee because my heart can’t take any more tears. Vera has made an impact on these people and they are hurting just as much as I am to see her go.

  The drive to the airport goes by too quickly. The last time we went, the future was full of such promise. We were heading to Canada with our friends. Now only she is going, and I am starting to lose faith in her return. If I could, I would manipulate planes and move mountains, but I can only go so far as she will let me. She has to want to return to me.

  Return to me.

  The words catch in the whirlwind of my mind, tugging at my heart.

  Return to me, my star.

  I pull into the short-term parking lot and help Vera with her luggage. She came with so little and somehow was leaving the same. Of course she looks beautiful—she looks like her true self. A soft but fitted dress, a cropped cardigan, sandals, and a sunhat she picked up in Biarritz, fit for Bridget Bardot. She is wearing large, cat-eye sunglasses that make her seem older and hide her reddened eyes.

  She hasn’t stopped crying since Claudia left. It’s not always a full-on bawl, but it’s a stream of constant sadness. Each time I see a tear escape beneath her glasses, some other part of me dies inside.

  Somehow I manage to soldier on though, and after we’ve checked her bags and lingered in a café, it’s time for her to go through security. It’s at this moment when I take back everything I’ve ever thought about being in love and being a hero.

  I feel like a coward.

  I feel like a real man would grab hold of her and stop her somehow. Escape from the country with his love by his side.

  It would be heavenly to do that, to just run away with her and never look back.

  But this man, this tired old sap, has the same responsibilities that most men do. I could never leave my daughter. And my daughter could never leave her mother. And her mother could, would, never leave Spain, or even Madrid.

  Once again I am tied, that same fucking noose connecting my neck to everyone else’s. Would a hero or a coward cut that rope loose?

  I don’t know. I only know myself.

  And now I have to
say goodbye to the most real thing I’ve ever experienced, the true love of my life.

  I can’t even tell her the words.

  Goodbye.

  Neither can she.

  We stare at each other outside the security line, and every time I want to open my mouth to speak, the words fail me, along with everything else deep inside. All I can do is grab hold of her delicate wrists, feel the silk of her white, inked skin, and look at her intently enough so she can read everything I’m feeling.

  I wrap her into my arms and she cries once again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t crying too. There is only so much a man can take, and this is my limit. You take away Vera, you take away my life. I will feel loss. I will weep.

  We stand like that in the airport, her purse and carry-on at her feet, and we ignore the masses of people who pass us on each side. For this one moment, it is just us again in our very real, very small world.

  But even our world isn’t immune to time.

  “I have to go,” she says, lightly breathless. She pulls away from me, severing the connection, and I immediately want to scream, to yell, to tell her that this is wrong, that I can’t breathe without her, and that she can’t go.

  It cannot be this way.

  And yet it is.

  She gives me a half-hearted wave, tears rolling down her face, and heads toward security.

  I don’t move. I stay there. She looks behind at me once or twice, and we she sees me, she looks surprised, as if she never expected me to wait.

  But I do wait.

  I wait.

  And I wait.

  And I wait.

  Until she is through security and out the other end. She tosses me a sad, cornered glance over her shoulder, and already I feel like what we are is beginning to split in two. If she changed her mind, she could get to me.

  I can’t get to her.

  I watch her until she disappears out of sight. Then I watch the space where she was for a long time after that. Just me, standing in the airport as everyone else passes by me in a blur.

  Just a man in love. Just a hero. Just a coward.

  Just me.

  I am thirty-nine years old. I was a national football hero. I have a young daughter. An ex-wife.

  I lived with the woman of my dreams.

  I asked her to marry me.

  Now she is gone.

  And I am nothing but a black hole.

  Time does a peculiar thing when you’re grieving. It runs slow, like syrup without the sweetness. For two weeks after Vera left, I barely remember even getting out of bed. The sun and moon rotated, the heat of late summer was replaced by an early autumn chill. I went to work—it was the only time I interacted with people. Every other moment I was by myself, nursing the hollowness that was growing inside me with glass upon glass of old scotch.

  I try to have some sort of contact with Vera as much as I can. If I am not texting her, I am talking to her on the phone; if I am not hearing it that way, I am watching her grainy but still beautiful face over Skype. I send pictures to her and she sends pictures to me. My fingers trail down the screen as if I can feel her.

  But we are both wounded, fighting our own battles now, in our own countries, with our own enemies. For me, my enemy is still fate. Isabel has let me take Chloe Ann on Wednesdays and weekends again, and the gossip has mercifully stopped. In the last week, I have not had my picture taken by a single photographer, and Carlos Cruz has agreed to take the settlement and the clause that he never post an article or picture about me again.

  But the damage is done. I am here and she is there, and we are both suffering. I can read it in every one of her words, hear it in her voice, see it in the shadowy captures of her face. She is miserable and struggling through each day, just as I am. But sometimes, Vera seems more lost than I, and less determined to find her way back.

  She is back in her mother’s house, in her old room. She says her mother isn’t being as bad as she feared but she’s certainly not welcoming. I guess at one point Vera was used to the distance and indifference, but now, perhaps after being in Spain with me, with my family, she’s learned what warmth feels like. I can attest, just from the few times I’ve met her, that Vera’s mother is as cold as ice, and I can’t imagine her thriving in that kind of environment anymore.

  Josh, her brother, has been her savior like he has before, but even he can only do so much. Vera tells me that when she’s not hanging out with him, she’s not doing much of anything. He works at a restaurant and she has nothing to occupy her time. She’s not even sure if she’s going to get a job or not because every time she applies, it seems her mother brings up future plans. It sounds like she wants Vera to go live in Alberta if she can’t commit to Vancouver one hundred percent.

  And Vera can’t. I am grateful for that, that she’s not throwing down roots where her roots used to be. She doesn’t want to apply for school in January because she thinks perhaps she can come back to me. Each time I talk to her, I tell her that her future is here, that if we can hold on through these months apart like we once did, we can be together again.

  She never sounds very convinced. I feel like our connection is already starting to deteriorate, and I don’t know what I can do to fix it. I just try and talk to her as often as I can, tell her I love her as often as I can, and hold a lot of hope in my heart.

  But the days are getting colder. Shorter. And yet it does nothing to make the time go faster, to get her in my arms sooner.

  It’s a miserable day at work. The sky is swollen with dark clouds, and they flood the streets with rain. Even though it’s technically still summer, the sudden damp chills me to the bone. It seems everyone is feeling it.

  Our main goaltender was injured two weeks after our first official game, and the back-up is having some conflict with Diego. Warren and I watch from the sidelines and you can see the tension rising among the players. There has been too much change for them lately, and it’s starting to show. They lost the first game which definitely didn’t help the season get off on the right foot and the fair-weather fans have already started to jump off the bandwagon, as they often do.

  I am almost done with some paperwork on one of the players when Warren stops by my desk. I glance up at him, about to tell him I’ll see him tomorrow, but he just hangs around my work area.

  “We need to get a drink,” he says to me, folding his arms and leaning against my desk.

  “Right now?” I ask, surprised. We’ve never done anything outside of work together. I haven’t even seen Pedro or Antonio outside of work either, not since I started. Seems once you’re theirs, the wooing stops.

  “It’s been a shit day,” he says. “Perfect excuse to have a drink, don’t you say?”

  I shrug but find myself agreeing—every day has been a shit day since Vera left. I grab my jacket and follow him out the door. It’s four o’clock, which is a bit early, but it’s also the hour of the day that I find myself growing lighter, happier. It’s the time that means Vera will be getting up soon. The time difference between us is a terrible burden, and it’s hard having to go the majority of my work day without being able to talk to her.

  Warren usually takes the metro to work, so we take my SUV and find a bar halfway between his apartment and mine. It’s a bit down at its heels and I immediately feel a rock of sadness in my chest, knowing that it’s the kind of place that Vera would like.

  I miss her so fucking much it hurts.

  We sit down and Warren goes to get us a drink. I’m surprised when he comes back with bourbon instead of beer.

  “Had a hard day?” I ask him.

  He only grins. “Nah, mate, you’ve had a hard day.” He clinks his glass against mine. “A hard few weeks, I would think.”

  I nod slowly, watching him as we tip the liquid into our mouths. When he first asked me for a drink, I had wondered if he wanted to talk about him leaving and me taking over his position, but now I am not so sure.

  “How are you holding up?” he asks me. He’s cur
ious, but there is no malice in his voice, just true concern.

  I take in a long breath. I haven’t talked about this—Vera and I—with anyone. When Lucia or my parents breach the subject, I have to walk away. Their voices and faces hold so much emotional attachment to her that it breaks my heart all over again and reminds me what I am missing. Their loss only adds to mine.

  But Warren is a somewhat impartial outside party. He has no emotional attachment to her, or to me. He won’t even be around for much longer. And because of this, somehow I feel it is safe to tell him the truth, even though it pains me to admit it.

  I look down at my glass, swirling the amber liquid around. “I am not holding up,” I tell him. “And that is the truth.”

  His eyes turn sympathetic though not pitying. “I know how that is.”

  I down the rest of the bourbon, relishing the burn. “I thought I did,” I say, clearing my throat. “I thought that because we went through this before I would be able to handle it again. But the person I was back then, the person she was . . . we have both changed so much since then. We have grown. With each other. Into each other, if that makes sense. Before it was tough . . . but this, this is killing me.”

  It’s not like me to ever admit that with someone I don’t know but it feels good—freeing—to say it. Hearing it come from my own mouth makes me realize how much it is true. How badly I am being affected. Vera is everywhere, every moment of the day, every crevice of my mind, and yet I cannot build her out of my memories, I cannot conjure up her taste, her smell, her skin, her smile, and make a real flesh and blood version of her. She is a prisoner of my mind and heart and soul, and it’s not enough for me. I want her real, I want her here. Now. Today. Tomorrow.

  Warren sighs, and from the sound of it, I know he understands. He’s remembering what it was like for him, how being this in love can warp your whole life. But he can’t know this pain, he can’t know what it’s like to lose Vera because he never had Vera. If he had, then he would really know how I’m handling things. With scotch. With numbness. With a bleeding heart.