I was holed up in Claudia’s apartment on the night the rain stopped, lazing around on the couch with Polly and Beatriz as we drank wine and looked over women’s magazines. I had brought a whole bunch with me from home and from London, and earlier in the day had done a one-on-one session with Eduardo that consisted of doing all the quizzes. Turns out that, according to Cosmo UK, Eduardo is an “attention slut.”

“I can’t believe we won’t be here next week,” Polly moaned despondently as she tossed a Glamour magazine at Beatriz. Beatriz was so enamoured with her Spanish gossip magazine, Diez Minutos, that she didn’t even look up when it hit her.

It took me a second to realize what Polly said. “Wait, what?”

She brushed back her bangs and gave me a lazy-eyed look. “Yeah. Think about it. This time next week, we’ll all be home.”

“Wow, time has really flown fast,” Claudia commented. She looked around her at all of us, her lips twisting wistfully. “I am going to miss you guys.”

I gave her an absent nod and murmured the same, but even though I really was going to miss them, miss everything about this place, I couldn’t quite handle the idea that I wouldn’t see Mateo again. This time next week, I would be on a plane back home. Home. I’d be back with my mom and Josh and Mercy and back to my own cold, dead universe, and I wouldn’t have Mateo to make me feel alive.

My chest constricted painfully. Just the thought of not seeing him ever again, not having this world that I clung to, was heartbreaking. All this time I had been keeping my distance because I didn’t want to get hurt, but it was already happening. The heart had no regard for time, no regard for pain.

I felt like I had to cling to every moment, every second, make it count. I feared it was already too late.

A gasp from Beatriz brought me out of my funk. I glanced over at her to see her reading her magazine with her mouth open. Her eyes immediately darted over to me.

“What?” I asked.

She made a clucking sound and showed whatever was in the magazine to Claudia and then to Polly. Polly made a little squeal but Claudia grimaced and then covered it up with an awkward smile.

“What is it?!” I asked again, louder. I started to reach across to snatch it from her but she handed it to me.

I took it in my hands, the front half of the magazine folded behind it, and stared. At first all I saw was a bunch of gibberish (aka Spanish) and a picture of pretty, smiling women eating food. But when my eyes fell to the bottom half of the page, I may have gasped too.

I may have nearly choked.

It was a picture of Mateo, taken at night with a flash. He was walking, an insincere smile on his startlingly clean-shaven face, wearing a slim silver-grey suit and tie. He was holding the hand of a woman. She was wearing a black sparkly shift dress that looked very expensive, had a wide toothy smile, great eyebrows, dark eyes, and short blonde hair.

Below them I recognized the word Mateo and Isabel Casalles and Sin Horquillas, which I knew was the name of his restaurant.

Just…holy shit. Kill me fucking now.

Not only was his wife very pretty, almost Scandinavian looking with her Mia Farrow haircut and high cheekbones, but…she really existed. She now had a face. She was real.

I was in love with her husband. The same man who had told me that he wasn’t in love with her.

The man who would be just a memory in less than a week.

“Are you okay?” Polly asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “You did know he was married, didn’t you?”

I stared blankly at her and managed to nod. I looked to Beatriz. “Why the picture? What is the article about?”

Beatriz took the magazine back. I was glad. I never wanted to see it again.

She scanned it. “Nothing much. Just that his Barcelona restaurant celebrated a two-year anniversary last month and there was a big party. This magazine reports on everyone, especially old football stars. Plus Isabel comes from royalty.”

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed.

“Holyyyyy,” Polly said breathily.

A sly smile came across Beatriz’s face. “You don’t really talk about her very much, do you?”

“Mateo doesn’t like to.”

“Well, I don’t blame him,” she said.

I gave her a sharp look. “Why? Is she a bitch?” And suddenly I was super hopeful that she was some raging psycho bitch so that I’d feel better about having feelings for her husband.

“Not really,” Beatriz said carefully. “People say she is quite nice and pleasant. Polite. Though she probably wouldn’t be with you. Understandably.”

Damn. “So she’s royalty?”

“More or less,” Beatriz said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Isabel’s mother, Paloma, was in line to be heir or something, but then Paloma’s mother, Penelope, renounced her claim to the Spanish throne. I can’t remember why. Something political at the time. I do think her grandmother is still called a Duchess though, but it probably is just a formality.”

“Wow,” I said. Great. So she’s pretty, polite, and quasi-royalty? I could never, ever compete with that.

“Yes,” she said, studying me. “But there have always been rumors and talk about those two.”

I didn’t want to ask but my eyes did it for me.

Beatriz went on. “You see, Isabel is very nice and pretty, but she is not perfect. The rumor, according to Atletico’s owner, was that Mateo was fine to return to play. He was only thirty at the time—he was in great shape, at his peak, as you say. The tear wasn’t all that bad, the one in his knee. But Isabel convinced him to give it all up. To get away from the lifestyle she considered too wild.”

“Wild?”

She smirked. “Oh yes. Our players are known for being a little wild and crazy. Lots of sex and fights and drinking. Mateo was no different than the rest. And Isabel, with her Duchess grandmother and her socialite status, she didn’t want that. The team called her Yoko Ono, for stealing Mateo away from them.”

I had forgotten that Beatriz was a sports reporter, no wonder she knew so much. I looked down at my hands. “But he went along with it. He married her.”

“I know. Everyone found that to be a surprise. I think Mateo lost himself a little after the injury and didn’t know what to do. She showed up at the right time and told him what to do. Soon they were married, and then they had a child. She helped in investing the restaurants. Her brother is chef, so I feel like she had something to do with that.”

It all made sense with what Mateo had said, that he’d just been oblivious to the whole thing. Eight years of oblivion. No wonder that soccer match, his injury, had evoked such a response from him. I had just assumed that he was reliving the pain and humiliation of the injury, not the moment his whole life had changed and he had become something that he wasn’t.

I suddenly wanted nothing more than to go find him. I don’t know exactly what I would have said or done once I did so—I certainly wouldn’t have told him what Beatriz had told me. But I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. That I knew who he was and that was more than okay. I liked the real Mateo with his jeans and boots, the businessman Mateo with his slick suits, the soccer star Mateo in his jersey and shorts. I liked the calm Mateo, the witty Mateo, the lusty Mateo, and the hot-tempered Mateo.

I liked all of him.

No. I loved all of him.

I loved Mateo Casalles.

With my eyes now brimming with tears, I slowly looked up at Beatriz, Claudia, and Polly, who had been watching me lapse into silence, their faces bunched with concern.

I didn’t have to say anything.

Claudia soothed, “Oh, honey,” and came over to my side, embracing me in a hug while the other two girls did the same. I let a few tears fall in anticipation of losing a love, an opportunity that never had a chance to be realized, while Claudia and Polly both cried knowing that they’d have to say goodbye to Ricardo and Eduardo too.

The clock started ticking louder. The countdown to the end had begun.

* * *

“I don’t want to go home,” I wailed into the phone.

“You say that now, but you’ll change your mind when you get back here,” Josh said, apparently munching on an extra crinkly bag of chips. “Besides, if you don’t come back soon, you’ll sound even more stupid. I thought you were teaching English over there, not losing it.”

“They warned us that would happen,” I said, conscious of how I’d started pronouncing words since I started talking to him.

I took the phone away from my ear and checked the time. I was sitting in my bedroom and talking to Josh while wearing the nicest dress I had packed, which happened to be the boobalicious maxi dress with the smocked waist. It was the night after the gossip magazine incident and corresponding tears, and all of the Anglos and Spaniards were being treated to a dinner at a restaurant in Acantilado. I only meant to check in with my brother quickly since I hadn’t all week and hadn’t planned on the phone call going on for so long. I guess I had a lot to say. I wasn’t even saying the half of it.

“When you come back,” he said, “I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

“When you say pick me up, you mean I’m sitting on the handlebars of your bike, don’t you?”

“Nope,” he said proudly. “I’ll pick you up in a three-year-old Volkswagen Golf.”

“And where did you get that? Stealing cars on the east side?”

“Nope again. I bought it. I have a car now.”

“What?” My brother had always wanted a car—sometimes it was crucial for our city—but he never managed to save up enough with his job. “How did that happen?”