Keep This Promise

by Willow Winters

  I screamed again and collapsed onto the ground, my fingers trying to dig into the floor, to give me something to hold on to.

  “Please,” I cried out loud to no one. “Please make this stop, please make this stop.” I sobbed, my cries getting caught in my mouth, in my throat, in my lungs.

  I barely heard the door opening behind me, barely felt it push against my backside.

  “Vera?” Mateo asked from above me, his voice breaking. “Vera, my god. Are you okay?”

  He shut the door behind him and put his arms under mine, pulling me up to my feet.

  I gasped and stumbled away from him, holding on to the edge of the kitchen counter to keep me up.

  “Stay away from me!” I screamed.

  His eyes widened in fear as he looked me up and down. “Vera, please, Estrella, please, what happened?”

  “It’s over!” I yelled at him, scared at the ferocity of my voice, at the way it was coming out. I had underestimated my emotions.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked with a shake of his head, coming closer.

  I put my hands out to keep him back. I pinched my eyes shut, trying to stick to what I knew was right. But he didn’t stop, he came and put his arms around me, holding me tight to him. I froze, rigid, unable to touch him back.

  “Please, what is over?” he asked softly. “Please talk to me.”

  “Us,” I sobbed into his chest. “We’re over. I’m leaving Spain. I’m going back home.”

  He tensed, standing still. I could almost hear his heart stop. “No,” he whispered. “You do not mean this.”

  “I do,” I said. “I do. I have to leave you.”

  “Why?” he growled. He pulled away and grabbed a hard hold of my shoulders. “Why do you have to leave me? Because of Isabel?”

  “You didn’t defend me last night!” I yelled and pushed him back from me. I walked backward into the kitchen, one hand on the counter for balance. “She fucking spat on me, she hit me, and you didn’t defend me!”

  “I couldn’t,” he whispered, seeming to be in shock. “Vera, please, I couldn’t.”

  “Yes, you could have!” I screamed, my heart shuddering violently. “You could have defended me!”

  “You have no idea what I am going through!” he yelled right back, loud, his eyes burning up. “You have no idea at all. You don’t know what I have to do to keep my chances of having Chloe Ann alive! Don’t make me choose between you two.”

  I felt like I was turning to glass only to be shattered right away.

  “I am not asking you anything!” I roared. “I am not that type of woman! You may all call me a whore and a homewrecker, but I would never ask the impossible of you. And you’ve already made the right choice.”

  He put his hands in a steeple over his nose and mouth, trying to breathe in and out, his eyes locked on mine. So much anger, pain, and frustration in them. Finally he lifted them away and said, “You are not a whore. Isabel was upset, like we all knew she would be. I could not defend you and her at the same time.”

  “I know,” I shot back. “It would explain why I just saw you kissing her.”

  His face fell.

  I crossed my arms. “I saw you. Just now.”

  “Vera,” he said gently. “No, that isn’t what it looks like.”

  I swallowed painfully. “Maybe not.”

  “I am trying to keep the peace.”

  “Are you leading her on?”

  “No,” he said quickly, adamantly. “She knows about us, she knows the marriage is over. She agrees. But I have to play nice. Because of—”

  “I know!” I yelled. “I know, I know, I know. Because of your daughter. And I fucking agree with you. I just wish I knew how fucking difficult this was going to be before I came out here, before I gave up my school and my family’s respect and my future. I gave up everything for you only to finish last!”

  “You are not last,” he cried out. “Don’t fucking pull that shit with me. This isn’t fair or easy for me and you know it!”

  “Shit?” I repeated lividly, my voice raw. “What shit am I fucking pulling? I am getting the fuck out of here and going back to a future I left behind, back to nothing.”

  “You are not the only one to give everything up!” he roared at me, his voice shaking me to the bone. He stepped toward me and I backed up until I was leaning against the counter. “You can go back to school! You can go back to your country! I can never get my family back! I have lost everything!”

  His face was red, the vein in his neck pulsing hard. I was speechless, trying to remember how to breathe again. His anger, his pain, had stolen my breath away.

  I blinked and eked out, “I am sorry. Then perhaps you won’t notice the loss of me.” I tried to move around him but he grabbed my arm.

  “No!” he seethed. “You don’t get to do this. It’s hard, it hurts, but you don’t get to leave.”

  “I get to leave,” I told him, looking him in the eye, staring him down. “I get to leave because it is my choice to make. I will not be the other woman who breaks up a family anymore. The damage is done, but if I can prevent any further damage, I will. You and Chloe Ann and Isabel are a family. You should be together.”

  “But you’re my family,” he cried out softly, pulling me closer to him. “Please, Vera, don’t do this to me. This can work. We just have to push through it.”

  “It can’t work!” I sobbed. “You know it. Chloe Ann has to come first and she will. I don’t want to be the one to ruin her life any further.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes closed. His grip on my arm never lessened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Vera. You don’t. Just trust me that it will all work out—just hang on, please hang on. You promised you wouldn’t give up on us.”

  Tears spilled down my cheeks, part of me wanting to collapse into his arms and believe him, to believe that everything was going to be all right. But it would never be all right. I had to do the right thing. My own pain, my own heart, my own future and my sacrifices, they couldn’t matter. I’d always been the villain, the black sheep, the black hole. But now I finally had a chance to be the bigger person, to put someone else first.

  I had to take it.

  This was my karma for my entire life.

  “I’m sorry, Mateo,” I whispered.

  “Do you still love me?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I lied. To tell him the truth would make everything that much harder.

  He began to shudder, his eyes welling with tears. “You’re lying,” he managed to say, his voice cracking. “You’re lying. You love me.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “And I can’t stay. I can’t stay here and do this to you and your family.”

  “But you’re killing me,” he whispered in agony. He tried to pull me closer to him, but I remained as still as stone, rigid as a tree. Unyielding. I would not yield to this, I would not let my selfish heart and emotions win.

  “Vera,” he went on, now a tear rolling down his cheek. I looked away, unable to handle the sight of Mateo crying. “Vera, you are my star. I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I know this isn’t easy, I know you’re hurting and that I am doing things that hurt or don’t make sense to you. But you must believe me that together we can get through this. It is just a bump in the road, if we just hang on we can make it out alive with each other’s hearts intact. We will be stronger.” He wiped angrily at his eyes and swallowed hard. “Please, don’t leave. Please don’t let this be the end of us. Please just give us, give me, another chance. You are my universe and I have nothing if I don’t have you in my life. Please, Vera. I love you like I love the stars, like I love the sky, like I love the earth. I can’t do this without you. I can’t.”

  His voice cracked over the last word and I could barely hold my resolve in check. He searched my eyes with his tear-filled ones and I felt like the whole idea of love was being obliterated into space, leaving a black hole behind. I never wanted
to leave him, never wanted to hurt him.

  But this wasn’t about what I wanted.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I am sorry, Mateo. I never wanted it to be this way. But I am not strong enough for you. This is just too fucking hard.”

  I wrestled out of his grasp, steeling whatever was left of my heart, and headed down the hall to the bedroom, ready to pack.

  “You don’t get to leave just because it’s hard,” he cried out angrily after me. “You don’t get to pretend you don’t love me because you think that will make it easier on us.”

  But I didn’t stop to answer because there was nothing left to say. My choice was made. I locked the door behind me in case he came after me. I pulled my suitcase and backpack out of my closet and began to pack up my life once again.

  My heart burned beneath the icy glaze, but it couldn’t melt it now, couldn’t break through. I wouldn’t let it.

  Love, our love, had been a shooting star, burning in the darkness, unseen until it got too close, too bright and too quick to capture. It burned out, lost to the deep cold and darkness, to the brutality of space, the infinity above us and in the new emptiness inside of me.

  Chapter 29

  The rest of that day passed by in a blur. In some ways it went too slow—every second I spent packing was a second that terrified me, scared that I would relent, that I would go back into the living room and put my arms around Mateo and tell him I loved him, that I would fight for us, that I wouldn’t leave him.

  In other ways, it went too fast. I wanted to hold on to each second that slipped through my fingers. I loved our apartment, I loved our home, I loved our city. I didn’t want to leave this life behind, even with all the hardships; I wanted to hang on to it and pray for the circumstances to change.

  I wanted time to wind backward, to go back to Barcelona where we wouldn’t leave the apartment, where I would make him tell Isabel right then, or even back further, when he asked me to move to Spain. I would have told him I’d come when the divorce was final. I would have found a way to stay in Vancouver until then, I would have put up with the wrath of my mother. Anything to avoid the pain of having something so beautiful, so fragile, only to be the one to crush it with your own foot.

  Eventually though, I had packed everything in the room and bathroom. The only things I needed in the living room were my laptop, my jacket, and my purse.

  Unfortunately, Mateo was sitting on the couch, head in his hands, right by them.

  I stood there, the suitcase beside me, the backpack hanging off of one shoulder, stuck in quicksand.

  “I need to get my computer,” I whispered.

  He didn’t look up at me. “Then take it.”

  Shit. He was mad. Of course he was mad, I just broke his heart at the same time I broke mine.

  I put my backpack down and leaned over him, quickly snapping up my computer and my purse. I tried not to look at him but I couldn’t help it. My eyes were drawn to him as they always had been. I took in the thickness of his black hair, knowing how soft and smooth it was, how it felt to tug at it with my fingers. His striking eyebrows that were the perfect frame for his teak brown eyes.

  Eyes that were now meeting mine. He had looked up in time to catch my gaze. His eyes were still dark as ever, but bloodshot and full of pain. I stared at him, lost, afraid, and yet certain that this was the last time I’d ever see him.

  “I love Chloe Ann,” he said hoarsely. “And I love you. In very different yet very equal ways. Can’t you trust me? Can’t you trust that I know what is best?”

  I swallowed shards of glass.

  I was too afraid to trust him.

  I straightened up, and finding the smallest pocket of courage, managed to give him a smile. “You are a good man, Mateo. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  He stared at me, dumbfounded now. “You are actually leaving me. I can’t believe this is happening. Did none of this mean anything to you?” he whispered harshly.

  A tear rolled down my cheek. “It meant everything to me.”

  I turned around and walked to the door, taking my jacket off the coat hook. It took every parcel of strength I had left in my ravaged soul to keep going, even when I heard him say, “I love you, my Estrella. Please don’t go.”

  But I opened the door. And I went.

  At first I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Just up and leaving Mateo and my Madrid life wasn’t as straightforward as I had assumed. If I even did assume. All I knew to do was panic and run, and I had no idea where I was running to.

  I had very little money, enough for one night at a hotel.

  Not enough on my Mastercard to buy a plane ticket home.

  In reality, I was totally fucked.

  That didn’t stop me from walking and walking through the grey Madrid streets until I was covered in sweat and my back and arms hurt as much as everything else did. I paused, totally unsure of where I was and quickly called Claudia.

  “Vera?” she answered.

  And then the tears started coming again. I leaned against the cold stone wall of a building, shielding my face from passerby, and letting it all flow until I could speak again.

  “I left Mateo,” I told her.

  That was all she needed. I gave her vague directions, spotting the name of a few stores. She told me to stay put and thirty minutes later she was roaring down the narrow street and helping my bags and my life into the back of her hatchback.

  Claudia didn’t exactly live in the city; her apartment was just to the west, still accessible by metro but things looked a little greener and spread out. It took us about a half hour, and the entire time I cried to her about what had happened—that I had seen him kiss Isabel, that I knew things would never improve, that I was making things harder by staying, that I could ruin his family’s true chance to stay together.

  She never said anything except to murmur her shock or sympathies. She was just quiet comfort, which I appreciated more than I could say. Usually in this kind of case, people gave you unsolicited advice or agreed too much with what you were saying, wanting to help but only making things worse.

  Claudia was more than eager to offer me anything that I needed. She said that she didn’t have much money to spare, but if it turned out that I couldn’t get my brother or one of my parents to fly me back home, then she would lend me what she could and I would pay her back. The only catch was that it would take her until her next paycheck in two weeks.

  I had Claudia’s den as my room for as long as I needed, opting to sleep on an air mattress in there instead of on the couch. With Ricardo living with her, I wanted to give the both of them as much privacy as possible. I set up temporary camp in the narrow room, which Claudia’s fat grey cat Rocco didn’t like too much given that the den was one of his hangouts.

  That night I kept checking my phone for texts from Mateo, having a sick kind of pull toward it, some kind of torturous impulse. He had sent no texts though, no emails, and there were no phone calls. It was pretty stupid to admit how much that destroyed me even further. There was nothing worse than thinking that the painful decision you made was the right one. I guess I had held out a little hope that he would continue trying to convince me that I was wrong.

  I sat on the couch with Claudia and a bottle of wine, and we talked our way through the night. Ricardo decided he was heading out with some buddies of his, leaving us to vent and cry. I went through an entire box of tissues, just talking and talking and talking and just trying to work through everything.

  The only thing I kept getting thinking about, saying over and over again, as if I had willed it to be true, was that we brought this on ourselves, that we were doomed from the start. Ours had been a love that never should have been, that was never meant to be. I wished I had recognized it from the start, that it was too impossible to go on.

  “But you did,” Claudia said, pouring the rest of the wine into my glass. “You resisted until the very end.”

  “I should have tried harder,”
I said. “I should have seen this coming.”

  “But love makes you an optimist,” she said. “That is what love is. It is hope for the future. Love doesn’t want you to lose faith, to view the world darkly, to have no hope. Love makes you believe in the impossible. That is the meaning of the word.”

  “Very poetic.” I sniffled. “But love is misleading.”

  She shrugged. “No one said it wasn’t.”

  Talking with Claudia helped, even if it didn’t make me forget or make me feel any better about what had happened. But as the night wore on and a new day begun, I felt like if I kept talking about it to someone, then perhaps I could understand why I really did what I did.

  Monday rolled around, however, and with Claudia and Ricardo at work, I was stuck alone with Rocco. I had nothing but time to kill with myself, time to feel that pain that kept reaching up from my gut like an icy hand.

  There were still no messages from Mateo. The irrational side of me started getting really mad at his audacity—that he didn’t care. I had to keep reminding myself that this was my doing, my fault, that I had wanted this, that I had done this to us.

  I decided to finally face my fears—admit that I was a failure—and call up Josh and my mother. It wasn’t going to be easy, to try and come crawling back to a home I had given the middle finger to.

  I called Josh’s cell, knowing it was better if I talked to him first. I hated having to ask him for money, I hated for him to worry about me.

  It was about seven a.m. in Vancouver and I was totally waking him up, but I wanted to talk to him before Claudia and Ricardo got home.

  “Hello?” he answered groggily.

  “Josh?” I whispered, as if I didn’t want to shock him.

  He groaned. “Yeah. Vera. What time is it? Are you okay?”

  “I’m…” I started. “I’m not okay.”

  “What’s wrong?” He was waking up now, sounding more frantic.

  I took in a deep breath. “I need to come home.”

  He sighed. “Oh, no. Vera. What happened, man?”