That night I kept checking my phone for texts from Mateo, having a sick kind of pull toward it, some kind of torturous impulse. He had sent no texts though, no emails, and there were no phone calls. It was pretty stupid to admit how much that destroyed me even further. There was nothing worse than thinking that the painful decision you made was the right one. I guess I had held out a little hope that he would continue trying to convince me that I was wrong.

I sat on the couch with Claudia and a bottle of wine, and we talked our way through the night. Ricardo decided he was heading out with some buddies of his, leaving us to vent and cry. I went through an entire box of tissues, just talking and talking and talking and just trying to work through everything.

The only thing I kept getting thinking about, saying over and over again, as if I had willed it to be true, was that we brought this on ourselves, that we were doomed from the start. Ours had been a love that never should have been, that was never meant to be. I wished I had recognized it from the start, that it was too impossible to go on.

“But you did,” Claudia said, pouring the rest of the wine into my glass. “You resisted until the very end.”

“I should have tried harder,” I said. “I should have seen this coming.”

“But love makes you an optimist,” she said. “That is what love is. It is hope for the future. Love doesn’t want you to lose faith, to view the world darkly, to have no hope. Love makes you believe in the impossible. That is the meaning of the word.”

“Very poetic.” I sniffled. “But love is misleading.”

She shrugged. “No one said it wasn’t.”

Talking with Claudia helped, even if it didn’t make me forget or make me feel any better about what had happened. But as the night wore on and a new day begun, I felt like if I kept talking about it to someone, then perhaps I could understand why I really did what I did.

Monday rolled around, however, and with Claudia and Ricardo at work, I was stuck alone with Rocco. I had nothing but time to kill with myself, time to feel that pain that kept reaching up from my gut like an icy hand.

There were still no messages from Mateo. The irrational side of me started getting really mad at his audacity—that he didn’t care. I had to keep reminding myself that this was my doing, my fault, that I had wanted this, that I had done this to us.

I decided to finally face my fears—admit that I was a failure—and call up Josh and my mother. It wasn’t going to be easy, to try and come crawling back to a home I had given the middle finger to.

I called Josh’s cell, knowing it was better if I talked to him first. I hated having to ask him for money, I hated for him to worry about me.

It was about seven a.m. in Vancouver and I was totally waking him up, but I wanted to talk to him before Claudia and Ricardo got home.

“Hello?” he answered groggily.

“Josh?” I whispered, as if I didn’t want to shock him.

He groaned. “Yeah. Vera. What time is it? Are you okay?”

“I’m…” I started. “I’m not okay.”

“What’s wrong?” He was waking up now, sounding more frantic.

I took in a deep breath. “I need to come home.”

He sighed. “Oh, no. Vera. What happened, man?”

“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.