Keep This Promise

by Willow Winters

“Mateo and I broke up,” I said, choking on my words.

  “Fuck,” he swore. “I’m sorry. Why?”

  “Many reasons,” I said. “It just got to be too hard.”

  He made a funny grunt.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just, you knew it would be hard.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the phone. “No. I didn’t know it would be this hard. You have no idea, Joshua, no idea what the fuck I have been going through since I got here.”

  “Sorry. I had no idea you were this unhappy.”

  “I wasn’t unhappy,” I said, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “I just…I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t you ever think that sometimes love isn’t enough? That it can’t overcome everything?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’ve never really been in love before, not the way that you have. I’d always hoped that love would be enough. Otherwise it’s just a Nine Inch Nails song.”

  “Well, love sucks.”

  But the truth was, not having love is what sucked. Not having Mateo sucked. Mateo was love. Despite all the shit while navigating this whole emotional shitshow, he loved me with all his heart. I felt the passion in his touch, saw his soul in his eyes. That man, that wonderful man who was trying nothing more than to be a good father, even with me in the way, he had loved me.

  And I was turning my back on it, on everything that Mateo had to offer me. He rearranged his life for me and I was bailing when it got tough.

  You’re doing the right thing, I told myself. You ruined a marriage; you don’t deserve his love or anyone else’s.

  This was karma.

  Payback.

  Consequences.

  “I have to come home,” I told him. “I’m doing what’s right for everyone.”

  “And what did Mateo have to say about all of this?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Josh laughed. “Doesn’t matter? Vera, the dude left his wife for you.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did and you know it. He’s mad about you, God knows why. I’m pretty sure if Mateo didn’t think you could have handled it, he would have cut you loose or bailed himself.”

  “No,” I said adamantly. “Because he doesn’t want to hurt me, because he believes so much in making this work.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  I paused, taken aback. “Because my happiness is not as important as a family’s.”

  “Maybe you should let Mateo decide that and not you.”

  “Josh,” I said sternly.

  “Vera,” he said right back. “Things aren’t too late. You’re still in Madrid, aren’t you? Spain, at least.”

  “Yes,” I said warily.

  “Then fucking go back to him and make it work. You love him, don’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, you either do or you don’t,” he added.

  “Josh, I’m coming home,” I said, louder now. “What’s done is done. I need you to be supportive, okay? You were so supportive when I came here.”

  “Because I believed in that crazy scheme of yours,” he said. “I don’t believe in this one.”

  “So I guess you’re not going to lend me money.”

  “No, Vera,” he said. “I am not. And not because I’m being a dick, but I actually don’t have a fucking dime to my name. Everything has been going to the car. He’s a piece of shit, that Herman.” It took me a moment to realize he was talking about his Golf.

  “Well, what the hell am I going to do?”

  “You really don’t have any money?”

  “No!” I cried out. “I don’t have a job.”

  He sighed. “What about your friend? Claudia?”

  “That’s who I’m staying with right now. And she’ll help me, but only in two weeks when she gets paid. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “You want me to ask Mom, don’t you?”

  I bit my lip. “She might say yes to you.”

  “Maybe,” he mused. “But probably not. You’ll have much better luck with Dad. You rarely ask him for anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s like, if Mom gives me money, then she’s pretty much saying I can come back home. If Dad gives it to me, I’ll probably have to live in Calgary.”

  “Or,” he said, “you could just go back to your man and live in Madrid.”

  “Josh, please,” I pleaded.

  “Okay fine,” he said. “Give me a few days, all right?”

  That would have to do. I thanked him profusely and hung up the phone.

  The silence thrummed around me like the cadence of Rocco’s purrs. I didn’t want to think about everything that Josh had said. I didn’t want to think about anything. I didn’t want to feel anymore. I wanted the hollow place in my chest to be filled, to take away the emptiness, that black hole that kept swirling with pain and doubt.

  The doubt was the worst part. It was the part that made me think everything that Josh said was true. That I was giving up too easily and too soon. But the thing was, he could never know what it was like to be me. He had never seen Isabel’s horror right up in his face or the look in Chloe Ann’s eyes when she asked her dad why he wasn’t coming home. I had to see all of that, feel it coming off of Mateo.

  He made all those choices for me, and I was the most undeserving person of them all. He was just blinded by me because I made him feel like a different person. Perhaps the truth was that our love was what it was, that shining star, and it should have remained in Las Palabras. It should have never survived outside those confines, outside of that slice of life we happened upon. We were meant for a certain part of time, and anything else was pushing it.

  I didn’t hear from Josh for a few days. I sank into a deep darkness that even Claudia couldn’t pull me out of. One moment I thought I was going to be fine, that I was going to get through this, and in the next moment, a Lana Del Rey song or a certain smell would bring me crashing to my feet, erupting into a fit of tears. There was no smooth ascent out of this pit. It was a jagged rollercoaster ride with no real end in sight.

  When Wednesday rolled around, just as I was getting into bed, I got a text from Mateo.

  I heard the beep—his particular chime—and my heart smiled. It was automatic, like Pavlov’s dog. I was used to feeling happiness at the sound.

  With my breath held in my mouth, afraid to pass it out through my lips, I picked up my phone and peered at the screen with trepidation.

  I love you. Please come back to me.

  That was all it said. That was enough for my soul to crumble, my heart weeping inside, torrents of agony. Oh, god. How was I ever going to get past this? How was I ever going to go home, knowing that this man was out there, a man who totally and completely owned me inside and out?

  I missed him. No, missing him wasn’t even the right word. I yearned for him, pined for him. I needed him. Something inside me was empty and aching in his absence, like flowers during the night. He was my sun, he was my everything.

  I held the phone in my hand, staring at the text, wondering if I should respond, wondering how I couldn’t. And yet there was this block inside of me, the moral part that was showing its head too late and trying to make up for past grievances. It prevented me from texting back, even though it killed me inside.

  I fell asleep in a river of tears, wondering if I’d ever feel whole again, if this pain would ever make me stop hating myself.

  Apparently, I still needed to be punished.

  Chapter 30

  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 h
im, 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.”