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 “I’m still worried that you’ve been replaced by a robot.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.
“I would pay for your ticket, Vera,” she said. “It’s not a matter of punishment here, I just can’t swing it. Not with Mercy’s wedding.”
Of course. I rolled my eyes and yet still managed to ask my mom how the wedding was going. For some reason, I thought the wedding planning would have brought joy to my mother’s life, but she seemed perpetually annoyed about the whole thing. Perhaps Mercy and Charles were pissing her off too with their demands.
I told her not to worry about it, that I now had a way home and just had to pay my friend back. She sounded vaguely happy about that, which gave me a smidgen of hope for my return. Hope was a dangerous thing, I knew, but it didn’t stop your heart from latching on to it like a life raft.
Thursday night, however, the night before Claudia’s paycheck, my mother called me back.
“Vera?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, panic never too far away from me. Did something happen to Josh? Dad? Mercy?
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. I just called to let you know that I bought you a ticket home.”
“What?” I asked, completely floored.
“It’s on Sunday at five p.m., a red-eye. Do you have a pen? I have a confirmation number for you here.”
I scrambled for a pen, totally blown away. I hated owing my mom, but I knew deep down she could afford it. Claudia couldn’t. She had signed up for a big favor by offering to lend me a thousand dollars for my flight home, and I would have been eaten by guilt until I paid her back, something that would have taken a long time.
My mother told me the number and I wrote it down with all the details. Five p.m., Air Canada, on Sunday. Stopover in Toronto with a four hour layover. It all sounded like hell, but I didn’t care at this point.
I thanked my mom profusely and hung up the phone.
“What is it?” Claudia asked, coming out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine for our girl’s night.
“My mom bought me a ticket. I leave for home on Sunday.”
Her face fell slightly as she placed the bottle of wine on the coffee table. “Oh.”
“What?” I asked. “I thought you’d be happy. I’m saving you money.”
“I know,” she said. “But…” She plopped down on the couch and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I thought maybe I could have convinced you to stay.”
“Why would I stay?”
“Because you love it here.”
“Claudia,” I said, “I don’t love it here. I love you. Ricardo. Your cat. Okay, I do love Madrid, I do love Spain. But if I stay here, it will just remind me of why I came. It will remind me of Mateo.”
“Then go back to him,” she blurted out.
I frowned at her. Claudia had never given me any advice or any input into this whole thing. “What?”
She sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “I just think you are making a mistake if you get on that plane.”
“Why?”
“Because Mateo loves you and you love him, and while you think love doesn’t conquer all, I think it does. Vera, you need to go back to him.”
“I do not,” I said. “He hasn’t even tried to get in touch with me.” Except for that one text, I thought, the one I keep replaying in my head over and over again.
“Because he thinks that you’ve made your mind up, or maybe he even thinks you’re gone.”
I shook my head. “I made the right choice. I don’t need you to second guess me right now!”
“Just…” Claudia stammered, looking for words. “I don’t want you to go either. You need to stay here. This is where you belong.”
And then Claudia started crying.
My heart melted. She wasn’t a big crier and I didn’t want to leave her either.
“Claudia,” I said to her, bringing her into my arms. “This is still a happy ending.”
“How?” she sobbed. “You’re my friend and you’re leaving me. You’re Mateo’s love and you’re leaving him. You’re leaving the ones you care most about and the ones who care most about you.”
“But don’t the best stories, the best experiences, aren’t they about character growth and change?” I asked. “Aren’t they about sacrifice? This is just something I need to do. I’ll be happy again. So will you. So will Mateo.”
“You don’t need to justify your actions to yourself,” she said into my shoulder.
I pulled back and eyed her. “I’m justifying them to you.”
“No,” she said, meeting my gaze. “You’re not. You’ve been trying to explain everything away from the minute you called me up on the phone, telling me that you left Mateo. You keep repeating over and over again that you are doing the right thing, that you are doing what needs to be done for the greater good. Did you ever stop to think that you may not have a fucking clue what you are talking about?”
My mouth flapped open, slightly aghast. “I do know.”
“No, you don’t. You say you do and you don’t. You know nothing, Vera, nothing about Mateo and what he wants. He’s the one who is going through the divorce. He’s the one going through all of it, center stage. He is older, you know, he knows what is going on, he knows Isabel and his daughter. He is making the best decisions for everyone. You cannot make those decisions for him. You have no idea.”
A cold feeling came over me. “Has he talked to you?”
She looked away.
“Has he?!” I screeched, getting to my feet.
“He called me a few days ago,” she said. “He asked if I knew where you were. I told him you were still here and you hadn’t gone home yet. We were waiting for my paycheck. He asked me how you were doing.”
“And?!”
“And I told him what you’ve been saying for the last ten days.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he loved you.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s not enough?”
The thing was, it was enough. Just not enough to keep me here.
“You’re only doing the right thing because you’re trying to get rid of your guilt,” she said to me. “But wouldn’t you rather have some guilt and be happy than be miserable and not feel guilty?”
“One way is selfish and the other way isn’t.”
“Vera,” she said patiently. “You are selfish by nature. So am I. So is Mateo. It’s why he left his wife, so that he could be happier. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy and believing you deserve to be happy.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe that.
She got up and put her hand on my shoulder. “Look, I don’t know who has been telling you over the years that you aren’t worthy of love and happiness, but they’re idiots. We all deserve it. And if people get hurt along the way, that’s life. We’ve all been hurt. Doesn’t that make love more crucial to our lives? Did you ever think that loving Mateo hasn’t been punishment for the wrong you’ve done but payment for the shit you’ve gone through? Vera Miles, you are a lovely, beautiful, funny, generous, great human being and I am honored to call you my friend. Don’t let anything else color that or rob you from the happiness that you do deserve. Tell those voices in your head to shut the fuck up.”
At that I burst out laughing. Crazy happy and sad tears that rocketed through me, turning me hysterical. I wanted to believe Claudia so badly. I really did. I wanted to say she was right and a small part of me knew she was right. The part that burned for Mateo, that still believed in us, that believed that everything would be okay.
But it was too late now.
I hugged her, bringing her close to me, wishing I didn’t have to let go.