99 Days
Page 1
99 days
Jessica Galera Andreu
jessi-ga.wixsite.com/fantepika
Translated by Omar Alberto Alarcón
“99 Days”
Written By Jessica Galera Andreu
Copyright © 2019 (Imagen de StockSnap - Pixabay).
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by Omar Alberto Alarcón
Cover Design © 2019 Jessica Galera Andreu
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
99 Days
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
Dedicated to all those who persevere in the struggle to achieve their dreams.
And to Vanessa Puig for being my inspiration to retake this novel, which was one day unfinished, and finish it; for being the first to read it and give me her most sincere opinion.
For helping me.
Knowing you has been one of those little gifts life gives you." That you don't lack to live, princess." Marcos.
CHAPTER 1
The taxi dropped me off at the hotel door and as soon as I put my feet on the asphalt, I felt them burning like a couple of fried eggs. Only two days had passed since I arrived in the city, and I had not even been able to stop to enjoy it at all, much less to rest. That was essentially a business trip, and from the first moment it was clear to me that enjoyment and rest would be part of the background, but the rhythm had been so stressful since landing that even I, accustomed to that frenetic coming and going, felt exhausted. I was beginning to think that my boss was trying to get rid of me without having to pay compensation; in short, he wanted to kill me.
As soon as I got out of the elevator, on my way to the room, I stripped myself of the high heels that punished my feet and snorted, relieved. Then I inserted the card into the slot in the door, and an immediate hiss gave me access to the interior of that luxurious room.
I was overwhelmed as I entered, not to say horrified. My boss spared no expense in organizing his employees' travels, but I had always thought that all that waste was unnecessary, after all, customers were not received in the hotel room, so there was no need to maintain appearances there. After all, however, I didn't pay, so there was no reason to complain any more.
As I opened the shower faucet, I stripped myself of the bobby pins that kept my ribbon on and I looked at myself mirror: a slight shadow furrowed the lower part of my eyes light. My mother's voice repeating to me that
I'd end up getting sick if I didn't start prioritizing.
my health above my work was repeated one and the other in my head. Even if I hated to admit it, I was right.
and even though I hadn't seen her in almost three months, I knew that she'd tell me again as soon as she put a foot in the house, something I thought I'd do in 24 hours, yeah. Everything was fine. The sound of my mobile phone interrupted my long-awaited entry into the shower and even though I almost ignored the call, I ended up looking for that blissful apparatus, worried that it might be my boss, hysterical and anxious to know the progress made in the operation that concerned us. However, the name on the screen was Marga. I would have discarded the call, were it not for the fact that I had already done so on three more occasions that day. I sighed, resigned and picked up the phone with feigned kindness.
“Marga!”
“Claudia, where are you? I've been calling you all day long.”
“I'm sorry, I'm all over the buying and selling of that that's a blissful factory. I swear if I don't leave it closed today he's going to give me something.”
“Well, you better! I remind you that tomorrow we have plans.”
“Plans?”
“God, don't tell me you forgot: dinner of promotion, remember? Institute, former classmates, losers, fat, bald, gold bachelors... there's so much fauna to see...”
I laughed at the crazy occurrences of Marga.
“Well, if I'm telling you the truth, I had forgotten...”
“Well, here I am to remind you,” she said
“Marga, I don't know if I'll finally go. I'm bursting and I still have a long train ride ahead of me.”
“Of course you will! You said that after closing the sale, you'd stay a couple more days in the country, you'd come to town.”
“I said it and I will, but I'm not so sure I'm going to that one happy dinner...”
“Let's go! You've missed the last 200.”
“Living in the United States doesn't make my power any easier to go to the dinners organized by Pili and company.”
“I know, and that's precisely why you have to come to this one. For once we caught you in Spain...”
“It's a round trip, you know.”
“I know, but since you'll be around, you can't refuse to go. Come on, we'll have a good time! You need a little leisure. You can't refuse. You can't make me this...”
“Don't get dramatic.”
“So, will you come?”
I sigh reluctantly.
“I'll go," I grudgingly promised him.
“That's my girl. See you tomorrow, then. We'll pick you up at the station, remember.”
"I thank you," I settled, before I cut off the communication.
***
The rattle of the train had plunged me into a dream uneasy. I opened my eyes for the umpteenth time and closed the book that I kept uselessly open on my lap; I was too tired to keep reading. I had managed to put an end to that complex buying and selling operation that had brought me back to Spain and I felt that it had taken an enormous weight off my shoulders, but not so the exhaustion that fell upon me as a huge slab.
I looked at the spring landscape and smiled when I recognized it. In a little less than half an hour I would have reached my destination, that little village that saw me be born and also go away; the that she had abhorred as a child and that she had come to miss so much during the grey days in New York.
I pulled my reddish hair away from my face and rested my temples on the crystal, already stripped of the drowsiness that had made me head-butting during the last few hours of travel.
I took the mobile phone out of my pocket and watched the WhatsApp group that Pili had created for the promotional dinner. They had been celebrating that event for several years but I hadn't been able to attend practically any of them, as it had been a long time that I had settled my life on the other side of the puddle, as many said and although sometimes I was embarrassed to think so, I felt that less and less things were binding me to Spain.
I smiled when I read some of the crazy things that my old friends did high school classmates were conversing on the screen of my mobile phone and I couldn't help but be attentive to the waiting for an intervention that was taking too long to be given. Thinking about Marcos made me bring a hand to my forehead and smile. Marcos Saavedra. How would 14 years later? What would have become of that handsome man blue-eyed boy that I had fallen in love – without wanting to or knowing it - at 13? My first love platonic, the same one I had cried bitterly for the tears of adolescent frustration and the same with which had fantasized all sorts of crazy things, even a wedding.
Marga and the other girls had told me years ago that he was still just as handsome and that Marcos was one of the most few boys in the class who had matured, not only with dignity, but with imposing perfection. My closest friends I had dared to confess to them that the image of Marcos flew to my memory with unusual frequency. It had long since ceased to be to as
k for him and convinced of my oblivion, they too had stopped talking to me about him, so I didn't even have the remotest idea of what might have been of his life: Did he would he have married? Would he have children? What would he work for?
Ask me all that and consider the possibility of to find answers that very night, made me feel nervous.
Shaking my head in the face of my own stupidity, I closed the WhatsApp group and I looked up another name among my contacts, James, my fiancé. The last message that I had received from him dated from the night before: "Be careful and let me know when you get home from your parents. I love you".
Although at first I thought of answering to warn him of my early arrival and reassure him, finally, I ended up closing the cell phone and keeping it from new in my pocket. There would already be time to write.
I thought. In addition, I knew that the time change would have to James still sleeping, so there wasn't any Hurry up. In a little more than half an hour I had finally arrived at my destiny. I picked up the two suitcases I had carried with me and walked among the crowds until I came across the unmistakable figures of Marga and Victoria, that me they were already waiting for. The first one was very tall and her endless legs had been the object of envy of everyone since our teens. I used to think that Marga could have made a living as a model if she had proposed it, but as paradoxical as it was, she preferred to place herself on the other side of the spotlights and made photography her profession. Blonde hair and eye-catching blue eyes, Marga's physique did not go unnoticed or even among that asphyxiating tumult of people.
I could still remember her on the day of her wedding to Carlos; she looked like an angel. Something less striking in its features and body although more exuberant in his clothing he was Victoria. Quite a bit shorter than Marga, she continued wearing the short black mane with which he always had it known. In high school they used to joke about the fact that that Victoria was born with it.
As soon as we were able to leave behind the ocean of people and to meet again, the three of us merged in a strong embrace as we screamed and laughed, excited.
“Claudia, you look gorgeous!” exclaimed a seemingly sincere Victoria. “The air of the United States suits you well.”
“Really? It will be pollution and so on ...” I joked.
We laughed, while Marga took a suitcase and Victoria, the other.
“Girls, I come from a journey, not from the war,” me I complained. “I can take them.”
“Come on, don't complain," replied Marga.
“I don't want you to have excuses to erase yourself from dinner.”
“You're still at it," I masked as we walked, snaking through people.
“Of course I'm still at it. You tried that yesterday.
and I'm not going to give you the satisfaction.”
“I'm really looking forward to going. But I'm exhausted.”
"In that case,” Victoria intervened again “we will carry your bags, take you to your parents' house and you can rest throughout the afternoon. When you wake up, you will take a refreshing hot shower and tonight you will be fresh like a lettuce.”
I smiled as I shook my head. We had already crossed the thirties but in the attitudes of Victoria and Marga, it seemed that we were still living in those days when they both dragged me from one side to the other, although at that time I needed much less insistence. The village received me under a leaden sky, although the heat was beginning to get worse, thanks to the proximity of summer. Marga and Victoria loaded the suitcases into the white vehicle of the first and in few seconds we were on our way to my parents' house. I had preferred to ride in the back seat, where he could be stretching with a little more comfort, as the long journey by train I had left my legs numb, despite of the walks he'd tried to take from wagon to wagon.
A nostalgic smile was drawn on my lips to the to rediscover the activity of that little village of no more than 10,000 inhabitants. Most of the shops were still in place, although some new one’s establishments reminded me that I already had a lot of time away from my land and my people. The park had also changed a lot since those summer afternoons, in which Victoria, Marga and myself played ball, to the skipping rope or thousand things more; the same one whose old bank, worn out, had had us sitting, glued together one against the others, to try to deal with the raw cold of the winter and the same one who had seen me give me my first kissed a guy whose name he didn't even remember anymore, a boy who arrived there from tourism one summer and who was barely a month in town. How sad... I recognized some faces among the multitude that paraded on the other side of the window and I found many others faces I'd forgotten or didn't even know about identify. All that seemed to me to be something so foreign that at times I felt chills. There lived anchored the memories of my childhood, a part of my life irrecoverable and with which, in some way, he had broken forever and ever in a necessary manner. My aspirations had demanded wings to fly away from a place too small and limited.
When I wanted to realize, the old façade of the house was already rising up before me as the engine of the Marga's car would stop.
“Well, here we are!” she exclaimed.
Marga and Victoria got out of the car and walked to the trunk to remove my two suitcases. I, for my part, he looked at the walls of that old house as if he were carrying centuries without seeing it. I could barely let myself fall through the town but whenever I had occasion I did it and even if I did not walk the old streets that I had left behind just a few minutes ago, my house was that particular parenthesis that sometimes I needed more than I was willing to admit. The relationship with my mother had been always a tug-of-war that led us to adore each other and, to the at the same time, we couldn't stand each other but that place was for I a certainty of a thousand things that reminded me of who I was and where it came from, a reality I should never lose from view.
With my father, things were different: he was an extremely serene man, with his everlasting smile drawn on his thin lips and a nostalgic air in her eyes the look. Source of wisdom and complicity, always had been my best friend, something that my mother always gave him.
She reproached: “Your role in her life is to educate her,” used to say. “And not be her accomplice to mischief. Not like this will never get anywhere.
I guess it hasn't gone so badly.
"We would help you carry your bags," Victoria said, "but your mother will have us chattering here until one thousand and today there is no time, so ..." I smiled, consciously, inwardly, that Victoria had reason. My mother loved being the perfect hostess, both on a planned evening as if on the spur of the moment.
“Yes, Teresa is a sun, but when she loses her tongue there's no stopping her," said Marga.
“Don't worry, girls. Enough you have already done.”
I hugged them again before saying goodbye to them and I carried the suitcases to the door, in front of which
I rang the doorbell. The fatigued but emotional face of my mother received me on the other side, flanked by my own, father, with identical expression.
“Welcome home,” he said.
CHAPTER 2
I looked out the window again, trying to put my human thermometer skills to use. The day had been hot, but in mid-March the night had cooled considerably, and no matter how stupid it was, I didn't want to show up at that dinner made into a painting. According to the conversation I had with Victoria just an hour ago, my personal situation would most likely be one of the best compared to my old high school classmates, and although that should be enough, I was fully aware that as far as rags were concerned, I had never been what could be considered a role model. Well thought out, I didn't even know how important that could be, but... I smiled as I thought again of Marcos. As stupid as it was to me, making a good impression on him was an important thing. It wasn't that I expected to give continuity to something that for me had always been a story about to begin, but I assumed that we all had that point of pride that made Marcos somehow regret not having given me the attention th
at I had asked for in some way without getting it. How absurd! As if being attracted to someone was something that could be chosen. Even so.
After much hesitation, I ended up opting for something casual, a dark jean with a beaded look and a red shirt that would be accompanied by a tight black jacket.
Just as I was finishing touching up my hair and makeup, Marga's car horn warned me from below.
***
Definitely my ability to dazzle clients was working wonders with my old high school classmates. My false smiles never gave away what I was really thinking. Marga and Victoria's joking comments were the only thing that was giving the night something worthwhile. I couldn't believe that the all-powerful and popular Silvia Benavente had turned into the chubby, sour woman who had been drilling me with her eyes for almost two hours. Or that the handsome Carlos Andrade had gone bald and tried to cover his evident alopecia with the lamentable trick of combing two locks of hair over the surface of his head. Nor would the owl Andrés Catalán have derived in the resultant man who had been flirting all night with the waitress at the restaurant. And much less that Marcos Saavedra would not have had the decency to appear yet. Where the hell would he be? It had been a while since he had his eye on Martín García, his best friend at the time, but Martín's good man, who had changed surprisingly little, chatted in a relaxed way with Pilar Guzmán and Maite Sevillano, brand new organizers of the event.
Dinner ran between an endless number of endless anecdotes in each other's mouths, toasts to better times, updates on our respective current situations and finally, conversations in small groups that put an end to an evening that had not been as heavy as I had imagined, although it continued to keep for me a bittersweet flavor. I had not dared to ask anyone about him, but his absence was a small disappointment to me and I could not deny it.
The cold worsened at that hour of the night and the only thing that gave off some warmth in me were my own cheeks, thanks to the glasses of wine that I had been drinking as dinner progressed. A fine drizzle slowly soaked the parking lot floor, and as Marga and Victoria chatted animatedly with some of the most backward, I hastened to catch up with Martin. I had always considered myself a practical person and to end the night with the stupid doubt as to why Marcos hadn't gone to dinner was absurd.