by Karina Halle
“Who was there?”
She frowns. “Claudia. Ricardo. His friends.”
“Are his friends your friends?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Any of them stand out to you in particular?”
“Mateo . . . what are you talking about? What’s going on?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, Vera. I would like some answers though.” I take the magazine and toss it on the table. “Flip a few pages in and give them to me.”
She stares at me for a few moments, and now she’s worried. She bites her lip and turns the magazine over, flipping through it. The page is already worn and wrinkled from my hands and comes easily to her.
She gasps, her hand shaking near her mouth. “What the fuck?” she whispers as she stares down at it with the same kind of horror that I had.
“Yes. What the fuck.”
She slowly looks at me. “Mateo, you can’t . . . this is Paulo, one of Ricardo’s good friends. You’ve met him. I don’t . . . I was just dancing with him.”
I stay silent. It has the most power.
Her expression has turned from confused to pleading. “Are you mad over this?”
My eyes burn into hers. “Am I mad? I’m a bit mad, Vera. A bit upset. A bit confused. And a lot embarrassed. Do you know how I found this out? Because my new boss, Pedro del Torro, owner of Atlético, showed it to me, telling me that my girlfriend was going after other men, and it was making the news.”
She stands up, her face growing red, and throws her arms out to the side. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? Not go out, ever? Not dance, ever?”
“Why is he touching you like this? Why are you with him like this?”
She shakes her head frantically. “No, no, no. Mateo, it’s not what you think.”
I wish my heart would stop beating so fast, so loud, like it’s teetering on the edge. “Then tell me what I think and tell me how I’m wrong. Please.”
She walks around to me and reaches out for my arm. Her grip is tight and desperate. I want so badly to believe whatever will come out of her mouth. “I was just dancing with Ricardo’s friend. He’s my friend too, I guess. He’s touchy-feely, but then again, so are you.”
That was the wrong thing to say and she knows it. Her lips clamp shut for a moment and she looks panicked.
“I am this touchy-feely with you because you are mine to touch,” I say, trying to keep my voice measured and steady. “Not his. Not anyone else’s.”
Her eyes widen momentarily. “Mateo, you can’t get mad because someone touches me.”
I match her look. I’m not sure I can believe what she’s saying. “Of course I can get mad. I have the right to.”
“Well, where I come from, things like that don’t mean anything.”
“Where you come from is very different from here, with people different from me. You made me look like a fucking fool, Vera.”
The ferocity in my words catch both of us off-guard. “I didn’t know someone would take my picture,” she says.
“So the only problem,” I say, “is that you got caught?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she cries out, angry now, all curled fists and blazing eyes. “It was just a fucking dance. What the hell are you so bothered about then, is it that everyone is reading this shit and believing it, or that I go out and have fun without you, that other men happen to find me attractive?”
I blink and raise my hands, stunned. “Whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? Why is this something you’re angry about?”
“I’m angry,” she says, “because you treat me like property sometimes.”
I am aghast. My heart lurches uncomfortably in my chest, and I only now realize we are having a very loud argument outside on the balcony.
“You are my property,” I tell her, completely genuine. It’s not exactly what I mean to say – it’s her heart and soul I wish to own – but it’s the closest word in translation to me. It doesn’t go over well with her.
“You’re a caveman.”
I smile coldly. “Cavemen fall in love, too.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” she sneers, folding her arms.
“And I don’t like that you don’t seem to have any respect for me,” I retort, then remember to lower my voice. It doesn’t matter, it looks like I’ve slapped her across the face.
“No respect?” she whispers raggedly.
“Hanging off of other men, going out, getting drunk,” I go on.
“First of all, I am not hanging off of other men,” she says, pointing her finger in the air. “That was a picture taken at the wrong time.”
I both bite my tongue and raise my brow.
“Second of all, going out, getting drunk? That’s just what I do. That has nothing to do with respect for you, Mateo. I find those things fun. Jesus Christ, you think you can just lock me up in your apartment and swill scotch all night, or maybe take me to your parents or to some of your so-called friends who look at me like I’m nothing but a slutty homewrecker, and who are boring as fuck? It’s not my fault that I’m still young and you’re not anymore.”
Now it feels like I’m the one who has been hit. Not a slap, but a wrecking ball right into my chest.
Vera sees it. Her face falls slightly, torn between wanting to battle and wanting to sympathize. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You meant it enough to say it,” I say quietly, tearing my eyes away from her. The irony is that Vera is always the one telling me that I’m not old, that I’m still in my thirties, that when I hit forty the forties are the new thirties. But how could she even know that? It’ll be another six years before she’s even thirty. We’re on totally different wavelengths.
I thought she’d found herself when she found me. Now I am not so sure.
“We both say things we don’t mean when we’re angry,” she explains.
I still avoid her eyes. “And why again are you angry?”
“Because I don’t like having to defend myself against something I shouldn’t. I don’t like feeling guilty for trying to live my life the only way I know how. It’s like the only time we’re really together, really a couple is when we’re both here. Other than that, our lives don’t mesh at all, and whatever way I’m living it is all completely wrong to you.”
I don’t like the tone her voice is taking, full of regret and resignation, of months of things unsaid. It makes me bleed, undoes me, to think that all this time she’s been suffering her days in some way or another, keeping her true feelings to herself.
“So what are you saying?” I ask her, my voice surprisingly level. “That you’re only mine when you’re here?” I glance at her, and she’s flicking her fingers against each other, leaning from one foot to the other. “And out there you’re free to belong to whoever?”
She stares at me for a few moments, still fidgeting. “I always belong to myself.”
“And to me second . . .” I rub my hand along the back of my neck and feel only sweat and heat. It’s getting too hard to breathe anywhere. The month is suffocating us.
“I can belong to both of us at the same time,” she says, though it sounds like she’s conceding. I watch her carefully. Her shoulders seem to relax a touch.
“Just promise me you’ll watch yourself,” I say warily.
She shoots daggers at me, back on the defensive. “I’m not fucking twelve years old.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not saying you are a child, Vera. I’m saying just have some respect for me when you’re out there, and this will all be over. We won’t have to discuss this again.”
“No, it won’t be over,” she says. “Because I do have respect for you. I’m fucking in love with you, you big idiot.”
Her words don’t have their intended effect. I turn suddenly and snatch the magazine up from the table, shoving it in her face. “This is not a picture of woman who is in love with me. This is a picture of . . .” And she is right in that we say things we don
’t mean when we are angry. I at least manage to hold my words in. But she can see right through me in that uncanny way of hers.
Her pupils are shocked into pinpricks. “A drunken whore, that’s what you were going to say.”
I was not going to say that, not exactly. My thoughts had been more polite, but that was close.
“There is a difference,” I say carefully, “between being something and acting like something.”
“Is there?” she asks. “Because you’re being a chauvinistic asshole right now and acting like it, too.”
“Why don’t you call me old again, or is there no venom left in you?”
“Oh, there is plenty of venom.”
I step over to her until she’s backed against the table. She looks unnerved for a moment until I grab her hand and press it to my heart. I peer down at her, my gaze unwavering.
“This is me. This is who I am. You knew that when you met me.” I lean in closer until I feel submerged in the gold flecks of her eyes. “You know the things I care about. Pride, yes. Respect. For me. For family. For relationships. If these things cause me to be, what did you say, a chauvinistic asshole, then it can’t be of any surprise to you.”
There’s something about the way she’s staring up at me—feral and subtly violent, like a cornered wolf—that’s turning me on. The heat is no longer just the thick dusty air or the sweat on my skin, or the anger simmering in my heart—it’s a warm tidal wave pushing through the center of me. Before I know it, I’m hard and my breathing has become heavier.
It does nothing to temper the wildness in her eyes. It doesn’t have to.
“You surprise me each day,” she says, voice flinty but drawn-out. Her gaze drops to my mouth.
The pressure inside me builds, my eyelids becoming leaden. I put my hand to the back of her neck and grip her there. She’s infuriating me, this inability of hers to understand how I feel. Sometimes I feel she has less at stake in our relationship than I do, though I know that’s not always true.
“You need to understand that you’re mine,” I tell her. It comes out more as a hiss now, and my lips are at her ear, inches away from the moisture of her skin. “Only I can do this to you. No one else. Not anyone else.”
I reach down and unzip my fly. She stiffens slightly at the action, and I pause, letting her reactions cue me. She relaxes, and that’s all I need to lift her up and place her ass on the edge of the wrought iron table. It teeters a bit under her weight, but it holds.
Her eyes are now a mix of lust and fight. She’s still angry, still ready to battle. So am I. But it’s coming out in a different way now. I don’t normally associate anger with sex, so this is new to me. As I stare into her eyes, slipping my hand between her skirt and legs to push her underwear aside, I can see it surprises her too. I guess I do surprise her every day.
“This doesn’t fix things,” she says defiantly, but she’s wrapping her legs around me as she says it, tugging me toward her. The table wobbles.
“How do you know?” I whisper, and simultaneously guide my cock toward her while laying my lips and teeth on the side of her neck. At the moment, I feel like it might fix things for me. I feel like I could drive all other men out of her, make myself permanent in her temporary world. We are outside, within earshot of neighbors who just need to peek around the partition to see us; we are in plain view of any apartments across the street.
I wish the photographer was there, taking a photo of this. I’d show them who she really belonged with. I’d show them I am up to the task.
I push myself into her. She gasps, her face laced with pain. She is not wet enough for me, and though the pleasure that radiates through me from my balls to my neck feels like nothing else, I hesitate, about to pull out. I want this rough and fast and hard, but I will not make her suffer.
But she tightens her legs around my hips and holds me to her possessively. I go in slower this time, my lips back at her neck, wanting to make a mark. I bite and nibble and suck the blood to the surface. My thrusts now are sharp and deliberate. The table rocks noisily, and her breathless gasps turn to breathless moans.
It feels impossible to shed the fire burning inside me yet I try, faster, harder, more desperate, more angry, more lost. In the heat of day, I am wet to the touch, and she is tight around me, and the air feels like a damp wool blanket; it only fuels the madness.
She is mine, she is mine, she is mine.
I am hers.
Even in this simmering frustration, I remember to be a gentleman. I slide my fingers between her legs with one hand while I hold the back of her neck with the other. The minute that I feel her tense, her breath catching in her throat, I let myself go inside her. I am straining, holding on to her, not caring that my own cries are soaring over the busy street below.
We are both breathing heavily, and I pull back to look at her. She’s drowsy with sex, but there is something still rebellious in her eyes. Though my body is relieved from coming, my heart is not. I pull out of her, zip up my fly, and help her off the edge of the table. Then I turn away, confused. She was right—it didn’t fix anything.
I leave her there on the balcony and walk into the house. Out of habit, I check to make sure my wallet is in my pants, and grab my keys.
“Where are you going?” she asks after me. She sounds hardened but slightly panicked.
“I need to clear my head,” I tell her, and leave, shutting the door behind me.
Of course, there is no place for me to go. Vera has Claudia and the people she works with. I don’t have anyone. Maybe my parents, my sister. Every other friend I had I lost when I left Isabel. Even the great friends turned out not to be so great, and subtly distanced themselves from me, perhaps afraid of being sucked into a scandal, perhaps worried that my behavior would rub off on them. I’m sure many of their wives had been behind it, threatening their husbands that if they should ever hang out with a man who would toss aside his wife for a younger girl, they might do the same.
I had so many friends that I’d lost just because they didn’t want to understand what it was like to fall in love with someone you’re not supposed to. So many friends who chose to judge me than to love me.
I go out into the streets instead, walking and walking until the sun sets, and I find a small, quiet bar to have a drink at. I order a gin and tonic to deal with the heat, extra gin to deal with my heart. Everything weighs so heavy right now, I can feel it pressing down on my shoulders. There is Vera, and then there is loneliness. Sometimes I have both but now it only feels like I have the latter.
I want so badly to read over my letter, but that is back at the apartment with her, and I am here. She hasn’t texted me—there are no “where are yous?” and “when are you coming backs?” or “we need to talks,” or even “chauvinistic assholes”—so I feel no urge to return. I want to stay out on the streets of Madrid until the sun comes up. I want to drink and walk down narrow streets filled with dubious people until I feel like I have an answer to the buried question that is plaguing me.
Can you adapt to something without changing? Can you give without losing all of yourself?
I am not sure.
Eventually though, my feet hurt—my work shoes are brand new and not meant to broken in in one go—and my bones are tired. It must come with old age.
I trek back to the apartment and enter as quietly as possible. It is dark and silent excerpt for the hum of the fridge.
Vera is in bed but she is not asleep. She is sitting up, her shoulders slumped forward, and wearing one of my t-shirts. The curtain is open and the light spills in, illuminating one side of her and leaving the rest in shadow. Her cheeks glisten. She has been crying.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers as I stand in the doorway. All at once, my anger is gone, replaced with nothing but love for this scared little girl.
I come over to the bed and pull her into my arms. I kiss the top of her head as hard as I can. “I am sorry.”
“I’m just being stubborn,” she sniffle
s into me. “I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid, and I’m frustrated, and I feel so, so trapped.”
I stiffen. “Trapped?”
“Not by you,” she says adamantly. “Never you. It’s . . . I don’t know my place here yet and I feel like everywhere I turn there is just something trying to push me away. I don’t belong in Vancouver, and yet I don’t feel like I belong here either.”
“You belong with me,” I tell her, my voice raw with passion, with longing.
“I know,” she says, nodding, “I know I do. But sometimes that isn’t enough. I need more than just you, Mateo. I need you, and I need a life of my own that I feel secure in. I need a place to plant my roots.”
“Can’t that be here?”
“I hope so. I’m just afraid that Spain doesn’t want me to stay.”
I run my hand down the back of her head. “I will talk to your boss. You will be able to stay.”
“Mateo, that’s okay.” She says even though it’s not, even though I will do whatever I can.
Yet as I kiss her, bury myself inside her, fall asleep with her, I’m only left with more questions.
Chapter Five
By the end of the week, I’ve settled nicely into my new position. Not being a coach at this point, just an observer, comes easily. The players are elated with me, which will make things smoother in the long run. At least, it will be smoother until I actually step up to the plate in January. I am sure once I am bossing them around, their attitudes will change. I already knew before I even went into this gig who was going to need the most work and who was going to be the most trouble. Thankfully, they aren’t the same player.
Thursday night I go out for dinner with Vera, Claudia, and Ricardo. I know Vera is making an effort to include me in her other life, and I make an effort to be a part of it. It’s a bit awkward though, sitting across the table from Ricardo when all I can think about is his derelict friend. Luckily, no one brings up the picture in the magazine, though I know by now everyone has seen it.