After a while though, it was time to part ways. We invited them over for a drink—they would have been our first guests—but Claudia looked a bit drunk and was complaining about a headache, so we made plans for another day and Ricardo took her home.
When we were walking back to the apartment, our gaits meandering along the stones of the sidewalk, Mateo gestured to another bar. I was drunk too but had the energy to keep going, especially as the sun was only beginning to set.
It was fairly busy, but I guess it was Saturday night after all. It wasn’t a large bar and had a rustic appeal to it. Little plates of patatas bravas—potatoes with a spicy orange sauce—and calamari and olives were lined up along the bar. Mateo put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to order him a beer while he went to use the restroom.
I went up to the bar and leaned against it, trying to get the bartender’s attention since he was wrapped up in conversation with an old dude. A young guy, mid-twenties, sauntered up to me. I could see him approaching out of the corner of my eye, and it wasn’t until I looked at him that I saw he was actually quite cute. He had sandy brown hair that fell in his eyes, bronze skin, green eyes, and a chin with a dimple in it.
He rattled off some Spanish to me but I could only smile and say, “Los sientos, je ne parle pas Spanish.” Then I laughed at myself from my drunken attempt at Spanish. Somehow I managed to get it mixed with both French and English.
The guy laughed. “You are American?”
“Canadian, actually,” I said.
He nodded, as if that was better, and stepped a bit closer. “Cool. So what are you doing in Madrid?”
I smiled at him, trying to be polite and charming but not give him the wrong idea at the same time. “I live here.”
“Oh, you do?” he asked. “Can I buy you a drink?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
He didn’t seem offended, not like guys back at home would be. “So do you live alone?”
“She lives with me,” I heard Mateo’s gruff voice say from behind me, his arm going around my shoulder. I looked up at him and was surprised to see the look of cold steel in his eyes, the muscle in his jaw tensing. He was looking at the guy like he was about put his fist through his face.
The guy looked between the two of us a few times then threw up his hands and muttered something with a smile on his face. He turned around and moseyed into the depths of the bar.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Mateo didn’t say anything for a few moments. I could see his pulse beating along an artery in his neck. He was angry…or maybe it was something else.
Could Mateo have been jealous?
“Mateo,” I said.
He slowly tore his eyes away from the guy who had long since disappeared from sight and looked down at me. Instead of looking angry, he looked worried, nearly frantic. His grip around my shoulders tightened.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice breaking with something I didn’t understand. “Come with me.”
I blinked, puzzled, and jerked my thumb at the bartender. “You don’t want a beer.”
“I just want you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and led me back toward the restrooms. He kicked open the woman’s washroom and poked his head inside. Then he ushered me in, closing the door behind him.
“What is…what?” I asked, still a bit confused as he brought me over to the handicapped stall and locked us both in there. “Um, Mateo.”
He grabbed my face and started kissing me, hard and feverish. The breath was sucked out of me, replaced with fire. “I am the only man for you,” he growled. “I’m going to come inside of you and I’m going to make you come hard.”
Well, okay then.
The man was jealous. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
He hiked up my dress until it was around my waist and groaned at the sight of me with no panties—I knew there was a good reason to go commando. Suddenly he picked me up and pressed me against the wall, taking out his cock while I gripped him with my thighs. He pushed into me, tight and quick, and I gasped at the friction.
He fucked me relentlessly, his passion and need filling the air like static electricity, present in every touch of his body. He’d gone mad with lust and I’d gone mad for him.
When he was done, both of us breathless and sore, we made each other look presentable again. I smoothed out his collar, patted down his hair where I had pulled on it; he tucked my breasts back into my dress, pushed the hair behind my ears. We grinned at each other, two silly fools in love, and opened the stall door.
There was a woman standing there as if waiting for us to finish.
She already had a look of disgust on her face, but when she laid her eyes on Mateo, they widened as if she’d just seen the biggest spider in the world.
“Mateo?” she cried out in ardent disbelief.
Oh fuck. I swallowed hard and started paying attention to her. She was probably in her late-thirties with dark brown hair cut into a severely stylish bob. Red lipstick, secretary glasses on her eyes—the cat-eyed kind, a yellow jeweled tunic over white capri pants. Sophisticated. Older. And she obviously knew Mateo.
And suddenly I couldn’t breathe. This could not be good.
Before Mateo could say anything—he was, in fact, too stunned to speak—she put one hand on her hip and cocked her head, eying us both with a manipulative gleam, the disbelief having worn off. She pointed at me and looked at Mateo. “Mateo, no creo que esta es tu esposa.”
I understood esposa. That meant wife.
“Sonia,” he said, finding his voice. He cleared his throat. He looked down at me and I saw absolute fear in his eyes. It rocked my foundation. “Vera, this is Sonia. I have known her for a long time. She moved to Paris. I did not know she was back in Madrid.” He stressed these words to let me know that this chick did not know about the divorce; at least that’s what I got out of it.
Oh, this so did not look good. Now I was blushing with shame, like a flaming tomato. I had to get out of there.
I nodded at her and gave her a quick smile which she did not return. “Nice to meet you,” I said. I brushed past her and shot Mateo an apologetic look over my shoulder. “I need to get some air.”
I made my way out of the bathroom and bar and into the night air. A certain chill had settled in it, despite the heat of the day.
Summer was ending sooner than I thought.
Chapter 24
The next day was Sunday and a day that Mateo thought I should finally meet his little Chloe Ann. I was extremely nervous, especially with what had happened with Sonia at the bar. After I had gone outside, Mateo explained to his friend that he and Isabel were divorcing. He didn’t say anything about me, I guess that was pretty explanatory. And even though Sonia had been his friend—an ex-girlfriend of one of his buddies—and not Isabel’s, he said he could feel the hate coming off of her.
It definitely put a damper on the evening and made me realize with a kick to the gut that we couldn’t be a normal couple, not yet anyway. We were hanging around fun restaurants and bars not just because of me, but because he didn’t want to run into people like Sonia. Claudia and Ricardo were the first friends we’d met in a long time, I hadn’t seen his parents yet, and it seemed like there was an awful lot of hiding going on.
When I brought the subject up over our hung over breakfast, the feeling that our relationship was as sequestered as it had ever been, he told me that he’d go pick up Chloe Ann and we could take her to the zoo, one of her favorite places.
He called up Isabel and I listened to their conversation blatantly, mainly because I didn’t understand any of it. There were a few tense moments, the heel of Mateo’s hand pressed to his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut. Finally, it seemed she acquiesced and he let out a sigh of relief.
I, however, was a bundle of raw nerves. This was his daughter we were talking about. And I knew she had no idea who I was. Mateo had told me that though Isabel knew there was another woman
he met at Las Palabras, she didn’t know I was here, living with him, so Chloe Ann definitely didn’t know about me.
“What are you going to say to her?” I asked later as he was grabbing his keys off the hook on the wall, about to leave. “Who will you tell Chloe Ann I am?”
He gave me a soft look. “I will tell her you are a friend of mine from another country, Canada, and that you are very nice.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and folded my arms. “That’s it? I mean, don’t you think she’ll tell Isabel about me? Don’t you think that maybe you should tell her about me anyway? I mean, the thing with Sonia…it’ll happen again, don’t you think?”
He nodded and exhaled, his shoulders slumping slightly. He looked defeated. He stared at his feet for a moment before he looked back at me, a quiet desperation on his brow. “Vera, I just want you to see Chloe Ann. I want her to see you. You’re the most important girls in my life. So…I will ask a favor from you. Will you do me a favor?”
I couldn’t say no to him. “What?”
“Today, when I bring her back here, can you cover up your tattoos? Put your hair up. And I will call you Estrella.”
I felt my stomach freefall. I frowned, feeling disturbed. “You want me to hide who I am? Pretend to be someone else?”
His lips curved into a sympathetic smile. “No, Vera. Just…you are so lovely, so full of life. You’re distinctive. You’re right, I need to tell Isabel about you. But I also want you to see Chloe Ann, and I don’t want Isabel to hear it from her.”
“I don’t think I like this.”
“Please? Just this once.”
“She’ll still probably say she met Daddy’s friend Estrella, what’s the difference?”
“Please.”
I sighed, running my hand through my hair in frustration. “Fine.”
He came over and held me tight, a quick embrace. “Thank you. I’ll be back soon.”
And then he left.
I leaned back against the hallway wall, my legs splayed in front of me, barely keeping me up. This was getting so complicated, and it would only continue to be complicated until…well, I didn’t know when it would end. Things never got tidied up the minute a couple got divorced. It seemed, from what I’d seen, that the divorce itself was the easiest part and all the real shit is what came afterward, shit that went on for years.
And then I understood why Mateo wanted to keep me so hidden, so under wraps. Lucia had said that being with me wouldn’t reflect poorly on him to a judge, and while that may or may not be true, it obviously wasn’t what Mateo thought. He feared that if Isabel knew I was living with him, that it would affect his chances of getting joint custody of Chloe Ann. And I knew that if I was just some other woman, it probably wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
But I was me. I had all the tattoos, the piercings, the way I dressed, the way I was, the fact that I was fifteen years younger. I was sure that Isabel could spin me into anything she wanted; all she’d have to do was point to me and call me dangerous, a delinquent, a threat to her child.
For the first time in my entire life, I felt a cut of regret at all my tattoos.
But Mateo loves you for you, I told myself. Because of all those things that make you who you are.
I knew I was right. I knew that had I been someone else, someone older, no ink, someone prudish and classy and demure, that Mateo wouldn’t have fallen in love.
It was just such a shame that the reasons Mateo fell in love with me were the very same ones that could be used to rip his life apart.
With that heaviness weighing down on my heart, I went into the bedroom and changed into skinny jeans and my Freddie Mercury long-sleeved tee. I brushed my hair back and knotted it in a bun at the back. I took my dark eye makeup down a touch, but unfortunately that only highlighted my age. There was really nothing that could be done about that. Thankfully to a five-year-old, every adult looked the same—old.
While I was waiting for him to come back, I started pacing the apartment, trying to take my mind off of things, this terrible feeling of dread that had started building up in my gut after we saw Sonia last night, like the week of sex and fun was over and now things had to get very real and very serious. I’d only spoken to Josh once since I got here, but I had a feeling I was going to need his advice again. I couldn’t burden Mateo with this exact thing. He already had enough to worry about.
Suddenly my cell rang, jolting me out of my thoughts. It was Mateo.
“Hey, where are you?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a whisper. “Do you mind coming to meet me at the zoo instead?”
The fuck was going on? “What? Why?”
“Please,” he said. “It will work better this way. Trust me.”
I exhaled sharply through my nose. “Fine. How do I get there?”
He gave me directions that sounded far more complicated than I wanted to deal with. I grabbed my purse and headed out the door.
Nearly an hour later, after I’d gotten off at the wrong Metro stop, I slogged my way through the heat up to the zoo, which was set in a beautiful park. After I paid my way in, I watched the signs to the Panda exhibit. Apparently it was one of the more popular attractions and Chloe Ann was obsessed with pandas. I was tempted to snatch up one of the stuffed ones I saw for sale in the kiosks, but thought that would probably come across as a bit creepy, a random lady giving a child a toy.
I kept my eyes peeled for them, taking in the sights, the smells, the screaming children, the families. It was kind of weird to be in this atmosphere, so wholesome and normal.
Eventually I spotted Mateo in the crowd. With Chloe Ann up on his shoulders, it wasn’t hard. I stood there, watching, unseen, just wanting to observe him and his daughter together.
She was certainly a precious little thing. She had on blue leggings, a white t-shirt that already seemed to have some sort of stain on it, and little blue running shoes on her feet. Her profile was dainty and cute—she got Isabel’s delicate nose and Mateo’s full lips—and she had long sandy brown hair that waved and shimmered in the sun. I was surprised at how at ease she seemed with Mateo, holding on to his head and occasionally smacking him playfully in the face over something. Sometimes she’d kick her heels into his chest, like he was a horse, and he’d try and take her closer. Unfortunately, the crowd in front of the pandas was so thick that even I couldn’t see what they were all staring at.
While they stood there, she talked to him, nearly non-stop, always smiling. In turn, Mateo was smiling too, a big, beautiful smile that made his face glow. It was almost heartbreaking to know what was going on outside of this picture, and once again the guilt started eating away at me.
I didn’t know how long I was planning on being a stalker but eventually Mateo’s sixth sense kicked in. He swivelled his head and his dark eyes came right to me.
I lifted my hand up quickly in a soft wave. He smiled back and then said something to Chloe Ann. The girl scrunched up her face, not happy about this no more panda thing, and he brought her over to me.
I didn’t know what to do or say, how to act, how to stand, so I just stared at him while he stopped right in front of me. Chloe Ann’s eyes were not noticing me at all—they were looking in the distance at what other animals lurked out there.
“Hola,” Mateo said to me warmly.
So I was speaking Spanish now?
Chloe Ann finally looked at me, peering down inquisitively. “Hola,” she said in a tiny voice.
I smiled at her. “Hola. Me llamo es Estrella.” And I was totally butchering the language already.
“Mateo,” he said, gesturing to himself. He tapped her leg. “Chloe Ann.” Then he began speaking to her quickly in Spanish and I could only stare, smile, and nod, like I totally had a clue what was being said.
Chloe Ann smiled at me after he finished talking and he gently lowered her to the ground. She ran over and grabbed my hand, tugging lightly at it. “Vamos!” she cried out, giggling, and started to pull
me toward the panda enclosure. I laughed in surprise and raised my brows at Mateo.
“Pandas,” he said, rocking back on his heels and watching us go. “Su favorito.”
I guess he had told his daughter something about pandas either being her or my favorite, because she led me over to the crowd and was pointing in their direction, saying a bunch of stuff. I could only nod and keep saying, “Si, si,” over and over again but that seemed to be enough to keep her satisfied. She just kept talking and talking. It was the cutest thing ever, and I felt some maternal part of me that I had always assumed was dormant starting to flicker.
I felt Mateo’s presence behind me, amazed at the energy he radiated without even touching me. “I told her that Estrella has never been to the zoo before,” he whispered in my ear, “and your favorite animal is the panda.”
“She didn’t question how you knew that?” I whispered back.
“No. What her father says is usually the truth.”
Usually.
Soon, Chloe Ann grew tired of the crowds, so she led me and Mateo toward the tigers, taking both of our hands in hers. I was amazed at how brave and comfortable she was with a supposed stranger like myself. I thought maybe she could pick up on how relaxed Mateo was around me, but I could also tell she was just a happy, adventurous little thing.
Mateo beamed at me, at his daughter between us. My heart did back flips at the content expression on his face—there was nothing but love for this moment. We found the tigers, Chloe Ann telling me all about them. I kept saying, “Grande gato” and she kept correcting me with impatience. When we were done with that, we found a little café to sit at and had something to eat. Chloe Ann only stopped talking when she was devouring her ice cream cone, something she relished so completely that I had the impression she wasn’t allowed treats like this normally. Dad was spoiling her.
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