That smirk stretched into a lopsided smile.
Ah, man.Why did it look so good on him? He didn’t smile nearly enough.
Which was not important.
What mattered was that Aaron had talked to my sister, and she never minced her words. Ever.
“So, Aaron,” I started, the words rushing out, “when you talked to my sister, you told her your name. Right?”
He cocked a brow. “Yes, that’s what people do when they introduce themselves.”
“Okay.” I nodded my head very slowly. “And how did you say that exactly? As in, Hey, I’m Aaron.” I dropped my voice, imitating his. “Or like, I’m just Aaron. I’m no one. Hello.”
He tilted his head. “I’m not sure I understand the question, but I’m going to go on a whim and go with option one. Although my voice sounds nothing like that.”
I exhaled through my nose, bringing the pads of my fingers to my temples. “Oh, Aaron. This is not good. I’m …” I blinked, feeling myself pale. “Oh God.”
Aaron frowned. “Catalina”—his blue eyes assessed me, concerned—“maybe I should take you to a hospital, get you checked out. You must have hit your head when you fell.”
He angled his body away, placing one hand on the steering wheel and lifting the other one to the ignition.
“Wait, wait.” I stopped him right before he started the car. “It’s not that. I’m okay. Seriously.”
He cut me a glance.
“I’m fine.”
He looked like he didn’t believe me.
“I promise.”
His hands dropped, falling on his lap.
“But I need something from you.” I watched him nod. Whoa, okay. That was easy. “I need you to tell me exactly what you told Isabel.”
“We talked about this. About a minute ago.” He brought one of his hands to the back of his neck.
“Just do it for me. Humor me.” I gave him a weak smile. “I need to know what you said.”
The man looked at me as if I were asking him to take his clothes off and perform a choreographed dance in the middle of Times Square.
Which I’d be totally down for—but again, not important.
“Please.” I tried my luck with the magic word.
Aaron stared at me for a long moment. And somehow, I discovered that six-letter word turned out to be the key to making him do something for me without putting up a fight.
He sighed, falling deeper into the seat. “Fine.”
“Oh, and be as detailed as you can too. Use her exact words if you can.”
He exhaled again. “After she switched to English, she said that it was nice to meet me. That you’d better have a good excuse for not picking up because that text was scary. That the stupid hippie who was in charge of the flowers was going to ruin her wedding because, now, the linen of the tables wouldn’t match her bouquet.”
That had me snorting. That poor florist was about to pay for his sins.
He continued, “And that she’d see me in a few days. At the wedding.” That last part wiped all humor off me. “Before that, she asked me if I was one of those hipsters who didn’t eat meat. Because in that case, she would have to uninvite me to the wedding. Then, she added that she was joking and told me that I’d better be there if I knew what was good for me. Especially if I loved roasted lamb. I said sure. I do love lamb, to be honest. I don’t eat it often enough actually.”
An ugly, loud, animal-sounding groan left my body.
“Mierda. Qué desastre. Qué completo y maldito desastre.” I brought my hands to my face, covering it with my palms and wishing that hiding from this stupid situation were as easy as that.
“She might have said something like that, too, when she thought it was you on the phone.” Then, with medical curiosity, he asked, “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means shit. Mess. Disaster. Catastrophe,” I answered, my voice muffled through my fingers.
Aaron hummed in agreement. “That would definitely fit the tone of the beginning of the conversation.”
“Aaron”—my hands dropped to my lap—“why did you tell her that you would be there? The wedding is only a few days away. I’m flying to Spain in three days.”
“We just went through this,” he said, sounding as exhausted as I felt. “I did not tell her I’d be there. She assumed I’d be there.”
I shot him a glance.
“After what went down?” I told him, trying a new approach to the topic. “After our conversation and how we agreed that our deal was off? You let her assume you’d be there.”
Had he forgotten about that? Because I had not.
“I told you we would talk about it.”
When?I wanted to ask him. While I was on my way to the airport? We were out of time to talk about anything.
“But we haven’t talked, Aaron.”
Two weeks. He’d had two weeks to reach out to me. And as much as I had hated myself for it, a part of me had waited for him to do that. I had just realized it. Well, at least that explained why I hadn’t brought myself to tell Rosie. Or my family. Yet.
I shook my head. I was so dumb. “And we don’t need to. We have nothing to talk about.”
Aaron clenched his jaw, not saying anything else.
My phone pinged a couple of times, but I ignored it. I was busy shooting daggers at Aaron.
Depleted of energy, I gave up and rested my head on the lush headrest of the copilot’s seat. My eyelids shut, and I wished I could shut down the world too.
The sound of my phone going off again with a couple more texts brought my eyes to my lap.
I ignored it again. “What am I going to do?” I thought out loud. “In a few hours, Isabel will be calling everyone to tell them she talked to Lina’s boyfriend on the phone.” I was screwed six ways from Sunday. “I guess I could always tell them I broke up with you.” I released a long sigh. Then, I turned to look over at him. “Not with you, you. But with—” I shook my head. “You know what I mean.”
At that, Aaron straightened in his seat, further cramping the space inside the car.
Before either of us could say anything, my phone went off again. I lifted it off my lap with the intention to silence it. “Por el amor de Dios.”
An alarmingly large number of messages flashed on my screen, confirming my suspicions.
Isabel: I just talked to your BF. *smirking emoji* What a deep, sexy voice he has. Send pics, pls.
Mamá: Your sister told me she talked to Aaron. If he wants a meatless menu, we can still talk to the restaurant and ask them to prepare a fish option. He’ll have fish, right? That’s not meat, is it?
Mamá: Unless vegetarians eat chicken. Do they? Charo used to be flexotorian? Flexatarian? I don’t remember. But she still had jamón and chorizo. You know I don’t know about all those food trends.
Mamá: If he does, we can also ask for chicken. Ask him.
Oh sweet baby Jesus. How in the world was my mother awake?
Isabel: It’s weird that I don’t know what your boyfriend looks like. Is he ugly? That’s okay. I bet he makes up for it in other ways. *eggplant emoji*
Mamá: Just let me know what he eats. It will be fine. I won’t tell Abuela. You know how she is.
Isabel: I’m joking, you know. I wouldn’t judge your boyfriend by the way he looks.
Isabel: Also, I won’t ask for a dick pic because that’s your business, but I won’t complain if you want to show me one.
I groaned.
Isabel: Joking again. *heart emoji*
Isabel: Not about the sexy voice though. That was *fire emoji*
“So, that leaves us two options,” the man beside me said.
Whirling my head around and almost butting his in the process, I found him looking over my shoulder. Close—his mouth was so very close to my cheek.
I jerked my phone against my chest, the skin of my face heating up. “How much did you get?”
Aaron—my prospective boss—shrugged his shoulders. “Enough.”
Of course he did. This is The Lina Martín Show after all.
“At least, enough to advise against breaking up with me until you hear the options we are left with.”
This man had squeezed himself in my dilemma, right there in the thick of things. I should be mad. Furious. And I wanted to be. But that us, that knowledge of not being alone to deal with the whole mess I had in my hands—one that I had created and had snowballed into this complex web of lies that included him—made me feel a little … better. A little less helpless. A lot less alone.
“We?” I said, hearing the doubt in my voice. The reluctance to believe in what I was saying. The hope to allow myself to.
Aaron pinned me with a look I knew very well. This would be the last time he’d say whatever was about to leave his lips. “I’m not going to force this on you, Catalina. Not when there is something that you are not telling me. Something that made you change your mind so drastically after Jeff’s announcement.” He raised a hand, brushing the top of his hair back, as if he were readying himself for something. “I told you we would talk, and we didn’t. That’s on me. There is an explanation, but it doesn’t matter right now.” He let that sink in for a moment. And it did. It sank to the bottom of my stomach. “We can make it work. We’ll make it work if that’s what you want.” He paused, and a breath got stuck in my throat. “I’ll make it work.”
I stared into blue eyes that gleamed with resolution.
I wanted that. I wanted this to work. He had been right when he declared he was my best option. Because he had been. Even before all of this happened. But things had changed a few days ago.
He is being promoted. He’s becoming my boss. That is a deal-breaker. I learned my lesson with Daniel.
And now, it had all changed again.
Everyone back home will be expecting him. Now more than ever. It’s too late to back down.
Perhaps … if no one from work ever found out about our arrangement, there’d be no risk. No one had a reason to even imagine that we would go anywhere together, much less all the way to Spain for a wedding. No one had learned of the fundraiser.
My mind kept picturing the same scenario over and over again. Filling me with dread. Me, landing in Spain with no one by my side. Alone. Stuck in the past. Smiled at with pity. Glanced at with sadness. Whispered about.
My blood dipped to my feet, reminding me of earlier, when I had almost fainted.
“What’s option A?” I whispered, exhausted from trying to get to a conclusion on my own. “You said we have two options. What’s the first one?”
Aaron’s expression assembled into one that was all business. “Option A is, you fly home alone. As much as I advise against it, it remains an option.” Hearing that from someone who wasn’t me sent a shiver crawling down my arms. “I have no doubt that you will be fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s your easiest route to … whatever you want to accomplish.”
“I don’t want to accomplish anything.”