Chapter Twenty-Five
It took me ages to get ready for his parents’ house. I was trying on everything I owned, experimenting with my hair and makeup, trying to make myself look as demure as possible. I eventually settled on a long-sleeved navy blue dress, form-fitting but cleavage-covering, and pulled my hair back into a braid that covered up the tats on my neck. I wasn’t taking any chances with these people.
On the car ride over there, I was starting to crack a bit. My breathing felt restricted, my thoughts chaotic. I kept rubbing my palms over and over again on my dress. I’d had panic attacks as a teenager, after the divorce, and this felt like one of those episodes all over again.
I couldn’t hide it from Mateo. He took one look at me and pulled the car over to the side of the highway, so private and public at the same time.
“Vera,” he said, twisting in his seat, putting his hands on my face. “Look at me, Vera.”
I managed to meet his eyes, overwhelmed by the panic in them, as if he was feeling how I was feeling, absorbing my emotions for his own.
“Vera,” he said, his voice low, soothing but strong. “You’re okay. You are with me, yes? You are here and you are okay. Just breathe. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowly.”
I did as he asked, trying to focus on my breath going in and out of my body. Eventually my heart rate slowed and I was starting to feel more centered and in control.
“Oh, my Estrella,” he said softly. He pressed a gentle kiss on my forehead. “What happened?” he murmured.
I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said weakly. “I just…I’m just so afraid. So afraid.”
He sighed and wrapped his arms around me. “I know you are. And it’s okay to be afraid. But, you will see…my parents are not your parents.” I flinched slightly, the memories of my mother and Mercy slamming into me. I had told him all about them—he knew. He went on, “You deserve good people in your life and happiness. Trust me, my family is good people.”
“They won’t like me,” I said, nearly sobbing. “The deck is stacked against us, Mateo. There are too many things wrong about me.”
“Vera,” he said sharply. He pulled back and peered intently into my eyes, commanding me to listen to him. “Do you know why I love you?”
I tried to think, and in my frazzled state came up with nothing. “I have no idea.”
“I love you because you are you. You’re a little bit crazy, and I find that more interesting than being normal. You’re passionate and I find that more fascinating than being calm. You’re curious and adventurous and sexual, and you’re full of life and you make me want to be a better man, to live louder, to bend and break all the damn rules.” He kissed me hard and I was so shocked by it, shocked by his words, I didn’t have time to reciprocate before he broke away. “And those are all the reasons why my parents will fall in love with you too.”
I gave him a shy smile. “Well, except for the sexual bit.”
“Hey, they are happy as long as I am happy. And Vera, you make me happier than I have ever been. Even now, even with all this shit going on around us, I am still happy because I have you—by my side and in my bed. We will get through this. I promise you. I swear on the stars.” He raised my hand to his lips and ran them over my knuckles.
My lip quivered. Fuck, I was getting really tired of getting so weepy all the time, but at least now these were happy tears.
Mr. and Mrs. Casalles lived in a two-story stucco house on the outskirts of the city, in a nicely kept suburban neighborhood. It kind of reminded me of home, except all the houses had this wonderful Spanish-style architecture and the gardens were a lot more colorful.
Mateo pulled the car up into the driveway beside Lucia’s Mercedes. It was funny—the car that Mateo drove was just a black SUV, nowhere near as flashy as his sister’s, even though he could obviously afford a Mercedes himself. I liked that about Mateo, how he had quite a bit of wealth, but aside from the suits and the apartments, he didn’t really flaunt it.
I got out of the car, conscious of my every step, every movement, walking in slow motion. He came around to my side and looped his arm through mine.
“Did I tell you yet how beautiful you look?” he asked, grinning down at me.
“No,” I said. “Did I forget to tell you the same?”
He stroked along his beard, holding his face in his hand. “This old thing?”
We walked up the stairs to the porch and rang the doorbell. I was surprised he didn’t barge right into the house.
I held my breath as I heard footsteps on the other side. The door opened and an older man with a thick grey beard and glasses peered out at us. He was a tad shorter than Mateo, slightly portly, and I was immediately reminded of a thinner George R. R. Martin. He even had a fisherman’s cap on.
“Papa,” Mateo said with a respectful nod.
His father smiled only slightly at his son and then fixed his eyes on me. He raised his bushy silver eyebrows and said something in Spanish to Mateo.
Mateo looked to me. “Papa doesn’t speak English. But he thinks you’re very pretty.”
Now I raised my brow. That didn’t seem like what he said.
Luckily there wasn’t time to stand on the porch and think about it. He opened the door wider and Mateo led us inside.
The home itself was cozy and inviting. Very Spanish—lots of tapestries, some Dali and Picasso prints among pastoral landscape paintings, walls of color mixed with wood. It smelled amazing, like herbs and olive oil.
“Mateo!” a woman cried, coming out from what I assumed was the kitchen, wiping her hands on her messy apron. This must have been Carmen, and at first I was shocked at how young she looked until I remembered that his father had waited ten years before he remarried.
She put Mateo’s face in her hands, squeezing it until I had to laugh, then kissed him twice on each cheek. She was a tall woman with a lively, friendly face. When she finally focused on me and I could see that same warmth in her eyes, I knew she was just a friendly, good person.
She came right over to me and embraced me like I was an old friend. “Vera,” she said, her accent heavy. “I am so happy to meet you, Vera. I have been asking Mateo about you.”
I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. She pulled away, and with a firm grasp on my shoulders, looked me up and down. “You are very beautiful. Such a lovely face.” She looked at Mateo. “She is an angel, Mateo.”
“More like an angel in disguise,” he said gleefully, biting his lip at the daggers I was shooting him.
“Oh, you are no good,” Carmen said to him. She looked back to me. “Are you hungry? I hope you are hungry.” She started leading me toward the living room. “Come, come, sit down.”
Mateo’s father said something but Carmen waved him away. “Quiet Sebastian,” she admonished him. “Mateo’s father doesn’t speak a word of English but don’t worry, he is more harmless than he looks. He thinks he’s turned into Hemingway in his old age.”
I wanted to make a remark about George R. R. Martin but decided not to push it. I had a tendency to gang up on people when I was trying to make friends.
Carmen sat me down on a worn velvet sofa. Mateo joined me while his father and Carmen disappeared into the kitchen.
“You are doing great,” Mateo said to me, putting his arm over my shoulder. “Carmen is very lovely.”
“Yes, she is.”
His father came out a moment later holding a bottle of wine and two wine glasses. He gave us one each and poured the bottle of red into our glasses. Mateo thanked him and he only grunted, shuffling back into the kitchen.
“My father is shy,” Mateo said. “And, well, he can be a bit of a grump before he’s had his wine. He will loosen up later, you will see. I bet he is nervous about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because he doesn’t speak English and wishes he did,” he said. “He always wanted to learn, he just never got around to it.”
“Maybe I can teach him English one day,” I suggested. “Apparently I am good at it.”
“You are,” he said, clinking the edge of his glass against mine. “And even the fact that you would offer that makes me very, very happy.”
We finished our wine while Carmen worked in the kitchen. Eventually his father came out and made small talk with Mateo, becoming more animated the more wine he drank. Then Lucia came down, a sullen look on her pretty face.
“What is wrong, sister?” Mateo asked in English, giving her a hug.
She shrugged. “Carlos isn’t coming for dinner. He is working late. Again.”
She came over to me and gave me a quick hug. “Nice to see you again, Vera,” she said sincerely, even though she was pouting a bit.
“Fuck Carlos,” Mateo said.
“Mateo!” Carmen admonished him from the kitchen. “Please be nice.”
He laughed. “I am serious, Lucia. He is always cancelling on these dinners. When are you going to give him the boot?”
She glared at him. “His reasons are all true. Don’t be so overprotective.”
He sat back down, pulling me against him. “I am not overprotective. I am just getting annoyed that you are dating the invisible man, that is all. I mean, how do you even kiss him if you can’t see his face? Seems complicated, yes?”
I elbowed him, feeling like Carmen. “Be nice.”
He grinned at me like a jackass. “What? It’s true. I wonder about such things.”
I rolled my eyes, though secretly I was enjoying the banter between the two. Playful Mateo was always fun and he really loved to rile Lucia up who fell into his trap every single time.
Dinner was pretty much the same thing, except that his father was smiling a lot more. He asked me a few questions too, which eager beaver Lucia translated for me. The food was amazing—finally some authentic homemade paella that wasn’t made for tourists—and there were endless bottles of wine. I was pretty buzzed, laughing at everything, while Mateo stayed sober so he could drive us home. And by the time that came, I actually didn’t want to leave. I had a long embrace with Carmen and even Sebastian seemed affectionate enough when we said our goodbyes. For all his grump, there was an innate kindness in his eyes.
In the car ride back, I told Mateo that I had been terribly wrong about his family.
“I told you so,” he chided me. “They are good people and they trust me.”
“I wish everyone was good like they are,” I said.
“Yes, the world would be better,” he said. “But frankly, I am grateful for them and the way things are. Sometimes you don’t need everyone on your side, you only need a few.”
I smiled and prayed someday I would take that to heart.
A few beats of silence passed, that kind of comfortable air that happens when you’re riding in a car at night, only the sound of wheels on the dark highway and the soft glow of the dashboard lights.
“You know what we should do?” he eventually asked.
“What?”
“When we get back from Barcelona, we should have a party. Let’s invite everyone from Las Palabras, all the ones who live here or nearby.”
My smile nearly broke my face. “That is a fantastic idea!”
“I thought you would like it,” he said. He put his hand over mine and gave it a squeeze. “We deserve some fun and friends, no?”
That night we got home and tore each other’s clothes off, barely making it in through the door. I hoped I was able to show Mateo just how beautiful he made me feel.
Barcelona ended up being an absolute gem. First of all, I loved road trips, so the fact that Mateo and I were jetting through the Spanish countryside, stopping at wineries and olive farms and drinking and stuffing ourselves silly on everything that was overripe and decadent was amazing. Then the city of Barcelona itself managed to knock my boots off. The city was a maze of beauty, a mix of the quaint and the avante garde. Dali and Gaudi-esque architecture made me snap a million pictures, the narrow and unassuming side streets led us to hidden tapas bars and used bookstores, the busy street of Las Ramblas made me spend too many euros giving change to all the living statues that were lined up and down it.
Mateo’s apartment was as fantastic as I had imagined it back at Las Palabras. It was in a modern-looking high-rise overlooking a wide expanse of golden sand beach. With the balcony doors open, you could hear the aqua waves crashing at night and feel the ocean breezes during the day. The apartment was only a studio and it was furnished sparsely, looking more like a hotel room than anything. But it was absolutely exquisite nonetheless.
The day before we left, we packed up a picnic lunch—rose wine, meats and cheeses—and headed to the beach just in front of the apartment. It was a Monday and less crowded than the weekend, with only a few bronzed bodies lying about. I decided to do what I had been too scared to do all weekend long and that was to sunbathe topless.
I sat up on my beach towel and untied the back of my string bikini, my breasts coming free. I could see a bit of movement in Mateo’s board shorts, the ever-present erection.
“I approve of this,” he said, eying my breasts lustfully. They were so white in the glaring sunlight I was surprised he didn’t need shades. He could go blind staring at them for too long.
“I figured if you can’t beat them, join them,” I said, lying back down.
“Now this must be an American or Canadian phrase because no one should beat your breasts. Bite and lick them, yes, but only me.”
I shielded my eyes from the sun, looking up at him. “It is an expression. Meaning, everyone else on this beach is topless so I might as well be too.”
“Yes, might as well,” he said. “Too bad I don’t like it when men stare at you.”
I frowned. “I would think most men on this beach are used to seeing breasts.”
“Yes, but not your breasts. Your breasts are pale, Canadian breasts. They are special, beautiful, and very large.”
I let out a laugh. “Wow, you really are putting on the charm, aren’t you?”
He shrugged and ran his fingers over the shooting star on my chest. “The other girls on the beach aren’t marked the way you are. They are just topless women, but you are something amazing that no one but me should get to see.”
“I’m keeping my top off,” I told him. “And if we’re lucky, I won’t burn them to a crisp.”
He immediately picked up a tube of sunblock. “Then may I volunteer for the job?”
“Will you try and not have sex with me in public?”
“I promise nada.”
He smoothed the sunblock on my breasts and I did what I could to not be turned on. While we could go back to the apartment for another roll in the hay, I also wanted to soak up the sun’s rays while still possible—this was pretty much the last week or two of good weather. I was only a light golden color while Mateo was this rich bronze that bordered on mahogany. The Spaniards got dark over the summer.
When he started paying too much attention to my nipples, I swatted his hand away. Eventually he got the hint and rolled over onto his stomach, perhaps to keep his hard-on hidden from passerby. While women did go topless on the beaches here, it wasn’t seen as a sexual thing.
Eventually I got tired of lying around and getting sweaty, so we went into the surf, playing in the waves. I was still topless and finding the whole thing absolutely liberating. Yes, I got some looks because of my tattoos and such, but overall, no one really cared. The only time people really looked was when Mateo picked me up over his shoulder, strode out into the waves and unceremoniously dumped me into the water. I landed into the end-of-summer chill of the Mediterranean and flailed for a few shocking moments, shrieking, before he pulled me up, grinning. I tried to take him down too but I just wasn’t strong enough and fell into the water again.
Jerk.
We came out of the waves and he pulled me to him, kissing me hard, tasting like salt. Then he slapped me lightly on the ass and laughed. Barcelona Mateo was a bit of a deviant—I liked that.
The next day we pretty much did the same thing, except we headed out into the city to have our lunch at one of the small bars we had stumbled upon the other day in a pretty yellow courtyard. It was so fresh and new in Barcelona that I was oddly sad that we had to return to Madrid. I guess the sea air and mild breezes reminded me of home, plus there was the fact that the two of us could just be ourselves and wander around the city without a care.
That said, there was plenty to look forward to upon our return. When we arrived back in Madrid on Wednesday, the weather now cooler by a few degrees, I had the party that Friday night to plan for the Las Palabras folks. I had gotten in touch with Jerry, whom I didn’t realize actually lived in Madrid, and reached out to about twelve Spaniards on the list, telling them to bring their significant others or a friend. It felt good to have a mini reunion, and I started entertaining the idea that maybe I could get a job working for the Las Palabras office in Madrid. I know that Mateo had said he’d take care of me and everything, but since I wasn’t going to school, I would eventually need to do something. And while I had planned to immerse myself in Spanish, I wasn’t going to be fluent for a really long time. I needed something to occupy my days and make me feel like I was contributing to the relationship and our way of life, even if in such a small way.
It was Thursday night when I was settling down on the couch with Mateo, a big fluffy blanket wrapped around us, glasses of red wine in our hands, when I got a call from Claudia. I eyed the time and thought that ten o’clock was unusually late for a call from her; then again the party was tomorrow and perhaps she wanted to know what to bring.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Vera?” she said, her voice sounding odd, kind of panicked. It made my heart skip forward in time.
“Yes? Claudia, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said with a note of unease. A pregnant pause followed. “Have you seen the latest issue of Diez Minutos? It just came out today.”
“No,” I said carefully. Mateo was staring at me inquisitively but I could only shrug. I turned my attention back to the phone. “Why?”
“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure if it will be on the online version or not. But perhaps you want to go to the store and get a copy for yourself, to see. There is a…there is a picture of you in it.”
My heart came to a screeching halt. “What?” I asked, voice hard.
Now Mateo was sitting up, trying to get my attention, to figure out what was going on. But even I couldn’t figure it out because what Claudia had just said made no sense at all.
“How could I be in it?” I asked carefully.
“You just are,” she said. “On page eight. It, um, it’s a picture of you. The paparazzi took it.”
“What?!”
“You’re in Barcelona, on the beach. You’re topless in the pictures.”
I gasped loud enough to shake the walls. I shot up straight to my feet, hand to my mouth, the phone nearly dropping out of my hands. “How can that be?”
“I don’t know,” Claudia said, sounding desperate. “They often take pictures of celebrities on the beach. Your, um, nipples are blocked out. But it is you. Three pictures in a row. In one you are kissing Mateo. The other he is carrying you on his shoulder. The other he is slapping your behind. Vera, these were all about Mateo. And now they are about you.”
I couldn’t even breathe. I let the phone slip through my fingers, thudding to the floor. I pushed past Mateo, grabbed my house keys and a ten euro note from the change bowl on the counter, and ran out the door. It didn’t matter that I was barefoot and in pajama pants and a t-shirt, I was running down the stairwell, through the lobby and out into the dark of night.
The nearest convenience store was open late and just a block away—perfect for when you needed coffee, toilet paper, eggs, or a gossip magazine. The bell above the door rang as I pushed myself into the fluorescent lights, my bare feet slapping on the sticky floor. I didn’t care and I didn’t have to search for long. There it was, propped up below the counter, beside the newspaper and the candy bars.
I snatched it up, trying my hardest not to flip through the pages, and bought it. And by buying it, I mean I slapped the ten euro note on the counter, and without meeting the clerk’s eyes, I left it there and ran out of the store with the magazine.
I made it about half a block when I decided to break down and flip through it, but I saw the shadowy figure of Mateo leaving the apartment building and heading straight to me. “Vera,” I heard him call after me, but I was on a mission.
Under the orange glow of the streetlights, I flipped to page eight.
And there I fucking was.