The Spanish Love Deception

Meat. Yeah. That was something I also loved. We should eat meat together, Aaron and I. My mind wandered away for an instant, thinking of juicy and crispy lamb and Aaron too.

“Okay. Thank you, and likewise, Isabel. Bye.”

Wait. Wait.

Isabel?

Isabel as in my sister, Isabel?

More confusion tugged at my still-foggy mind. I felt one of my eyes flutter open. I wasn’t in my bed. I was in a car, which was immaculate. Obsessively so.

Aaron’s car.

I was in Aaron’s car. Not a dream.

And … Isabel. She had called me earlier today, hadn’t she? And texted me. And I had ignored all of it.

All at once, the events of the last hours snowballed down my mind, overwhelming my half-functional brain.

No. My eyes blinked fully open, and my body sprang up.

“I’m awake,” I announced.

As I whirled my head from one side to the other, my gaze stumbled upon the owner of the car I had been napping in. He passed both his hands through his hair, looking as humanly tired as one could.

His head turned in my direction. “Welcome back,” he said, looking at me strangely. “Again.”

My heart squeezed. Why exactly, I didn’t have the slightest idea.

“Hi,” I managed with my scattered brain.

“Your sister called,” Aaron told me, making my whole body tense. “Five times in a row,” he added.

I opened my mouth, but my tongue didn’t work through the words. Any words.

“It’s okay. Something about a weird text you sent her,” he explained and offered back my phone.

I clasped it, grazing Aaron’s fingers very briefly.

Feeling Aaron’s gaze on me, I checked on the text. God, it was intelligible. Alarmingly so.

Aaron continued, “Then, she went on about the seating or the tables, I think? Maybe something about the napkins too.”

I looked over at him, catching one of his hands shooting to his hair again. The muscles on his arm flexed, and my still-sleepy eyes seemed to be absorbed by that motion and that motion alone.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have picked up,” Aaron said, bringing my gaze to his face once more.

“It’s okay,” I admitted, shocking myself. “If she called me at three or four in the morning, Spain time, that meant she was genuinely worried. She would have probably sent the New York City Fire Department to my place if you had not answered.”

Something odd shone in his eyes. “I’m glad to hear that because your phone rang and rang. And you …” He shook his head lightly

. “You sleep like the dead, Catalina.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Not even the arrival of the apocalypse—even if the very same Four Horsemen were galloping in my direction, shouting my name—could shake me awake when I was deeply asleep. Which was ironic really because Isabel talking to Aaron on the phone was my idea of a world-ending event.

My eyes widened with a realization.