Love, in English

by Karina Halle

  Mateo and I walked down to Plaza Mayor where we were to meet them at an outdoor café that had an assortment of beers on tap. That’s really all I required when the weather was like this—a patio and beer. Though being sticky was never fun, I always took advantage of the sun and heat whenever I could, thanks to Vancouver’s mild and rainy weather. You’d never hear me complaining about hot weather.

  “It will be nice to see them again,” Mateo remarked to me as we waited to cross the street. When the coast was clear, he grabbed my hand and led me across the road. It was the little things like that that made me do an internal squee, that got the butterflies racing. I loved it when he held my hand or put his arm around my waist in public.

  It especially meant something to me because I often saw the looks that other people gave us, the sight of the business man with the tattooed girl. The men looked envious and the women looked disgusted. The good thing was that Mateo certainly didn’t look thirty-eight, so really, it wasn’t that scandalous, people just liked any reason to pass judgment. It also helped that Mateo started dressing down a lot more, like he did at Las Palabras—his signature “business” look was jeans and a blazer—and I’d made sure to start dressing up. It wasn’t a stretch for me, especially in the summer—I loved a good sundress.

  “Look who it is, the Anglo and the Spaniard!” I heard Claudia yell from across the square. Sure enough, there was Claudia and Ricardo, getting out of their chairs, big smiles on their faces. Claudia looked radiant, her skin deeply tanned, wearing a plain green v-neck and a white skirt. Ricardo was clean-shaven, and in shorts and a soccer jersey.

  I hugged her and we exchanged pecks on the cheek. “You look great,” I told her, looking her up and down.

  “So do you. Like Marilyn Monroe,” she said. I was wearing a white retro-styled dress with cherries on it. I wasn’t sure if I looked Marilyn or just very Rockabilly. Either way, the boobs were definitely getting some sun.

  While she greeted Mateo, I greeted Ricardo. “You must forgive me,” he said, pecking me quickly. “Our English has not been so good since we got back from Las Palabras.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Claudia admonished him with a grin. She looked at me, her eyes dancing. “I was promoted the other day to take care of the international accounts.”

  “Congrats!” I told her.

  “That is fantastic,” Mateo said, casually jamming his hands in his pockets. He was wearing black knee-length shorts, Keds (no socks), and a plain white polo shirt, his face erring on the side of stubbly instead of beardy thanks to the heat. “I could barely put together a sentence before Vera showed up.”

  “Oh, that is not true,” I said. I wanted to remind him that we were speaking English and talking on the phone nearly every day until I got here. But even though Claudia already knew that about us, something made me clamp my mouth shut. Maybe because now that I was finally here and we were finally together, all the time leading up to now had been part of an actual relationship. It had been an affair—a short one, a distant one, before he had come clean and filed for divorce—but definitely not harmless.

  We sat down with them, and like that time at Acantilado, Mateo and Ricardo went off to get us drinks. I watched as his tall, broad-shouldered form disappeared into the dark of the bar, unable to take my eyes off of him.

  “Well, look at you, so in love,” Claudia teased.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look at yourself.”

  She waved at me in dismissal. “Maybe a month ago, when Ricardo first got here. Now I’m already tired of him pissing on the toilet seat, never closing the lids on things.”

  “Then I’m sure that will be me soon, so let me have my googly eyes, mmmkay?”

  She smiled and studied me for a few moments while she finished her beer. The she smiled, wider this time, until I could see her canines, and exclaimed, “I am so happy you are here! I never thought you would actually do it, to be honest with you.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted. “Until it seemed like it was the only thing to do.”

  “Well,” she said, reaching out and laying her hand on mine for a moment. “I am glad you did. This must be such a change for you though. How are you coping?”

  “I honestly can’t complain,” I said with a coy smile.

  She wagged her finger at me. “I know that look. You had it on the last day of Las Palabras.”

  “I was crying on the last day of Las Palabras.”

  “We were all crying. But in between your tears you had this same look. Utterly satisfied. Like you just had a great meal.”

  “Satisfied. That’s a good word,” I said, leaning back in the chair. I titled my head to the sun, glad for my shades. Pigeons cooed from below, walking among the cobblestones. I’d been dreaming about exactly this for so long, being in the sun, being where there was life, being with my friends and love again. I needed to soak it up like the rays.

  “When does fall come?” I asked her, keeping my eyes closed and face to the sky. “More specifically, when does summer end?”

  “Are you tired of the heat?” she asked. “Weak Canadian.”

  “Not at all, I love it,” I told her. “But I know that the seasons will change soon. I like to hang on to this—to summer and sunshine—for as long as I can.”

  She peered at her arm, as if her tan could tell her. “I say another two weeks. Then it will start to end. October, you will feel the difference.”

  I didn’t dare think that far ahead.

  Soon Mateo and Ricardo came back with our drinks and we spent the whole afternoon just relaxing under the sun, chasing away the heat with ice cold beers. I was buzzed—summer buzzed, the best kind. And no, not like a bee. We literally sat there for hours and hours, all chatting away like it was old times. Near the end I was starting to feel guilty for having them adapt to my language, so I made them speak Spanish at the end to help me learn. I was lost, but after a while I started to pick up on things here and there.

  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 a
rm 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 Twenty-Four

  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.