The Spanish Love Deception

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?”