“Let’s hear it for dinner!” Wayne yelled and clapped his hands together, happy to have a segue off of whatever the fuck was going on with Lauren. “Okay team. Let’s go, let’s go.” While he waved everyone over to him to huddle and pick positions, I reached out and grabbed Lauren’s shoulder.

Kind of hard.

“What the hell is your problem with me?” I whispered as I spun her around to face me. Seriously, I had enough of her and her snarky, hateful attitude. She was pretty much the one thing that was putting a damper on Las Palabras.

She leaned in close. She smelled…not good. “I don’t like you,” she seethed, eyes wide and bright, like she was about to go apeshit on me.

“Why?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

“Yes you have. You’ve done something to the whole female gender.”

Oh my god, what the fuck.

“I don’t like women who use sex to achieve what they want. Women are better than that.”

“What sex?” I asked, befuddled, pissed-off and a whole bunch of things. “I’m not having sex.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know his wife could find out everything.”

“There’s nothing to find out!” I yelled at her. By now it was quite apparent that we were having a little war on the corner of the lawn and the rest of our team was watching us impatiently. Thank goodness the Spaniards were further away and Mateo wasn’t picking up on any of this.

“You keep telling yourself that,” she said. “But I know girls like you. You make my life harder every single day.”

“Do you ever stop and think,” I said, waving my finger in her face, “that you make your life harder on yourself?”

She put her hands on her hips. “You have no clue, do you?”

“No,” I said just as I looked past Lauren’s shoulder and saw Sammy kick the soccer ball in our direction. I took a step back from Lauren and watched as the soccer ball slammed into the back of her head. “You have no clue.”

Lauren cried out, her glasses falling off her face and onto the grass.

“Heads up!” Sammy yelled with a smirk on her face.

I left Lauren to pick up her glasses and ran along to join the team, cleavage be damned.

* * *

After the little kerfuffle with Lauren, the rest of the game went pretty smoothly. Even though it was just supposed to be a practice match, Jerry was acting as ref and he was so into the game that he decided to cancel everyone’s first business session of the day and continue with the game instead. Everyone that wasn’t playing got to pull up the wicker chairs and watch from the sidelines.

I wished that’s what I could have done, instead I was running back and forth and pretty much fucking things up until Wayne put me in as goalie. Which would have been an okay gig if you were on the Spanish side, because none of the Anglos were even coming close to the net.

And the Spanish team had Mateo.

And Mateo was a fucking soccer god.

The one good thing about being in goal was that I had a very clear shot of the field (well, lawn), and the ball and wherever the ball was, Mateo was.

Even though we were playing on a lawn like bunch of grade-schoolers and the goal posts were nothing more than two orange traffic cones and Mateo was playing in jeans, he moved with the grace of a dancer, executed kicks and plays like he was in the stadium playing for Madrid. Everyone was kind of in awe, more watching him than actually playing seriously. And no one cared, because this was something you didn’t get to see every day.

The most amazing thing about the whole experience was the look on Mateo’s face. It was constantly lit up, like a spectacular sunrise that you never expected to catch. I sometimes caught glimpses of that look when I was talking to him but for the most part, Mateo came across as charming, witty, relaxed—and distant. There was always some edge, some darkness to him just rolling beneath the businessman exterior. But here, on the field, the way the ball danced with his feet, the way his supple body moved like he was in an intricate dance, it was like he’d come alive again.

And, perhaps inappropriately, my heart squeezed a bit for him. It couldn’t have been easy to give up what you loved doing for something else that didn’t give you joy.

Ironically, though Mateo was always considerate and thoughtful, he didn’t show any of that on the field. He moved through people, bowling them over with no apologies, all so the ball could be at his feet again. And, as goalie, he showed zero compromise with me. He kicked that ball at me like he was trying to take my head off.

As such, I spent a lot of time leaping for the ball but making sure my timing was just a bit off, so the ball never collided with me. I looked like I was putting in an effort, but really I was just letting Mateo make every single goal on purpose. His smile was so blinding after each goal that it warmed me inside and out, and besides, there was no way I was going to get bruised up in exchange for that. I couldn’t stop him, even if I was trying.

Naturally, the Spaniards won the game (so much for a practice match) and Jerry promised us all that next week we could probably have the official match on the field of the school in Acantilado. At least the goal posts would be bigger.

I wanted to talk to Mateo when it was all over, but he had a crowd of people around him now. I wondered if it made him feel like he was back in the day, back in the glory.

It was just as well. The game did nothing to clear my head or get out my sexual ya-yas. I had a business session with Claudia next and I knew for sure we weren’t having any kind of meeting.

“Great game,” Claudia said, coming up to me with the binder in her hands. She had opted to sit and watch, which was the wiser choice. “Do you want to do the interview or the phone call?”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Do you have any beer at your apartment? Or wine?”

She frowned. “I have wine.”

“That will do. Let’s go.”

Minutes later we were sitting on her couch, a glass of wine white each. She kept flipping through the binder until I told her to put it away, we wouldn’t be needing it.

“I just want to talk,” I said. “Not about business.”

“Okay, yes.” She looked a bit relieved—the sessions were the hardest parts of the day. “What about? Are you okay?”

I nodded and craned my head around to look at her roommate, Polly’s, door. It was open, room empty.

“She’s not here,” Claudia said. “What is wrong, Vera?”

I sighed and swirled the wine around in the glass. “Nothing really. I just need to talk to someone and you seem so open-minded, maybe you would understand.”

“I am not Lauren,” she said seriously.

“No, you aren’t.” I folded my leg under me, my thighs sticking to the couch. Each day here it was growing warmer and warmer, my skin more and more tanned. “I talked to Becca last week and she said that this place has a way of…making people fall in love. Or at least fall into bed together.”

A knowing smirk came across her face, her brown eyes dancing. “Oh, yes, I can see that is true.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “Has this happened to you so far?”

Her face turned red and she smiled sheepishly, looking down. Oh, how very interesting.

“Who?” I goaded.

She bit her lip and shyly met my eyes. “Ricardo.”

“Ricardo!” I exclaimed. Ricardo was very tall, mid-twenties, with a large roman nose and a buzz cut, but he was very cute. Still, it surprised me. “I would have thought Eduardo,” I told her.

The color in her cheeks deepened. “It was Eduardo. The second night. We just kissed, so…But he is with Polly now.”

“I thought he’d go with Becca. Doesn’t Polly have a boyfriend?”

Claudia shrugged and pulled down at her yellow tee. “Not my problem. Eduardo is nice but Ricardo is really nice.”

“How did it happen?” I asked, kinda wanting the sordid details.

She was coy. “The way it usually happens.”

“Did you make the first move?”

Another shrug. “Why not?”

I swear, a shrug and a “why not?” were the Spaniard’s go-to answer for everything.

“Well, then I guess it seems safe—and a little boring now—to tell you that I have a crush on someone.”

Her brows quirked up. “Other than Mateo?”

“What?”

“You are sleeping with Mateo, no?”

“WHAT?!”

“No?”

“No!” I exclaimed, appalled. “Why does everyone keep thinking that?”

“Because you are always together,” she said simply. She took a sip of wine. “The attraction is very obvious. So, I figure you must be sleeping together.”

“He’s married!”

“Yes, but you are not.”

I shook my head adamantly. “It’s wrong. I don’t want to be the other woman. I’ve seen my dad go for the other woman, I can’t put his daughter through that,” I said. “Or his wife,” I quickly added.

“That doesn’t mean that you can’t have feelings for anyone else.”

“Yes, it does mean that.”

“Maybe you are meant to be together.”

“We’re not! There isn’t even a together. We’re just friends. I haven’t done anything about it and so far my feelings are totally one-sided.”

Claudia got up off the couch and brought a pack of cigarettes out of her front jean pocket. “If you think it is on the one-side, you have not seen the way that he looks at you.”

She walked over to her small patio and pulled up a chair. I got up and stormed after her, my nerves dancing excitedly.

“What do you mean, the way he looks at me?” I asked, lowering my voice in case there were people around, listening. I felt like bouncing off the walls.