Page 82 of One Year Ago in Spain
Soledad said something to her in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Get out, Claire,” Aracely said.
Claire gasped. “No. Please.”
“I mean it,” Aracely said. “And don’t come back until you get your shit together. We’re all suffering, Claire, but the rest of us still show up here. We’ve taken leave from our jobs. We sacrifice sleep. We don’t make excuses.”
Claire turned to plead with Soledad. “You have to understand…”
Soledad crossed her arms and turned away, facing the wall.
Abuela Gloria frowned, her eyes vanishing beneath her wrinkles.
“Go, Claire,” Aracely said.
Claire started to cry harder. She took a step toward Matías to say goodbye, but Aracely moved in her way.
The tears were so thick Claire couldn’t even see by the time she ran past the nursing station and hurled herself into the elevator.
Matías
Two Weeks Ago
Matías sat onthe edge of his bed, shaking. Claire had just left, after telling him she wasn’t going to Madrid with him, and while he’d put on a brave facade while she was there, now his shoulders crumpled. It was too much an echo of Vega, deciding against coming to New York with him.
Could I have done more for Claire?He racked his brain. He loved Claire with his entire soul and tried to be the man that she wanted him to be. He had started using his watch to record reminders for himself so they’d automatically create a to-do list for him that he saw anytime he turned on his phone. He remembered never to put his wallet or keys on the dining table or kitchen counters, because those were clean surfaces for food, and money and keys were definitely not clean. He was even in the habit now of removing his shoes as soon as he stepped in the door. No more sand tracked across the apartment floor.
There’s nothing else,he thought. Matías was willing to do everything and anything for Claire, but he couldn’t think of what he’d missed. She wasn’t like Vega, who had been an open book of demands for gifts and attention and compliments.
Sometimes Matías couldn’t see inside Claire at all. There were still pieces of herself that she kept locked up. In fact, it seemed that the more she fell in love with him, the more she alsobacked away. They no longer went wandering through his professor’s art collaboration to make love in the middle of the forest. She let her work hours bleed later into their time together in the evenings, so that sometimes he was reading on the couch while she typed on her laptop in a separate armchair. And although he did video calls once a week with his gregarious family, Claire had never shown him a photo of her parents. All he knew was they had died on the day she graduated from college. He didn’t even know their names.
Matías had hoped this vacation together to Spain would bring them closer. That he would propose, and an engagement would open Claire up again.
But now she wasn’t coming, and he didn’t know how to reach her.
He let out a long exhale and rested his head in his hands.
All Matías could do was keep being himself, and hope that she would eventually open herself up and let him in completely.
Claire
Claire had nowhereto go but the hotel. She stumbled into her room a tear-soaked, snotty mess and collapsed on her bed, which was still pristinely made from the previous day because she’d spent the night wandering through Madrid instead.
Her computer dinged from the desk.
Every muscle in her body clenched. The last time Claire had been on her computer, it had been because Yolanda warned her that some of the partners were doubting Claire’s abilities. So she had spent all ofthatnight putting out fires on the merger, trying to deputize the other members of the team to take over her parts.
But that was over thirty hours ago.
Still. Fuck it.
There were more important things going on right now.
And yet…Claire could do nothing about the other things. Work, though…That was something she could still control. It was a world where people listened to what she had to say. Her whole life might be cratering, but that part was crumbling slower and she might still be able to fix it.
Claire peeled herself off the mattress, stopping at the minibar for two little bottles of cheap wine before she sank into thechair at the desk. She woke her computer screen as she cracked open the screw-top on the chardonnay.
There were over two hundred new, unread emails. And god only knew how many Slack messages.
