Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mateo
Gina’s lips are pressed into a tight line as we head toward the bus stop beside Florian’s building, and her nostrils flare.
“You can’t be serious!” Gina says, once we’re past the security guard. “You can’t follow your fake boyfriend to Tennessee. Do you know how far away Nashville is from Boston? It’s not nearby.”
“It’s one thousand miles away,” I say.
“That’s practically to San Juan!”
“I know,” I say miserably. “Though you could get there by driving.”
She raises an eyebrow. “How many hours of driving?”
“Seventeen hours.”
Gina shakes her head. She looks angry, and I hate it.
She’s never angry. Teasing sometimes, but not angry.
But her hands are definitely clenched, and her lips are definitely pressed together, like there’s a whole series of things she wants to tell me but won’t.
“I couldn’t say no,” I tell her.
“It’s one syllable!” Gina exclaims. “It’s easy to say!
It’s practically the same word as in Spanish.
I don’t understand what the trouble is. Haven’t you changed your life enough for this man?
It’s getting embarrassing, Mateo. You don’t need to say yes to everything.
You’re the massage therapist. You’re colleagues.
He’s not asking you to fix the copy machine or mail something for him.
He’s asking you to change your life. People in fake relationships don’t move across the country.
People in real relationships don’t do that. ”
Her face crumbles, and I know she’s remembering that her ex decided not to follow her to Boston. Apparently, the one-hour commuter rail trip from Worcester to Boston was too much.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say softly.
“Your job—”
“I’m not leaving my job.”
She gives me a strange look.
“I’ll help him get settled in. The team is going to the West Coast. I’m not on duty then anyway.”
“Oh. I thought—”
I give a wobbly smile. “And that’s what people will think. I’ll go there, introduce myself to people, then help him find an apartment.”
“He’s an adult,” Gina says. “He can find his own apartment. He has an NHL team to help him. I’m pretty sure there is someone on the management side whose job it is to help players get settled.”
“I know.” I look down. My chest hurts. I did something foolish, and everyone knows it. Probably Florian wasn’t even expecting me to say yes.
In fact, he definitely wasn’t expecting me to say yes. I remember his expression—he was surprised.
Oh, God.
Embarrassment curdles within me, bubbling through every previously normal cell. I turn away.
“I’m sorry, Mateo,” Gina says. “I don’t want to upset you but—”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly. I turn around, then smile. See? I’m fine. I’m smiling and everything. “I was being impulsive. I guess I have a habit of being impulsive.”
She studies me, then shakes her head. “No, you don’t. You’re careful and thoughtful. The only thing you’re impulsive about is—”
Him.
Florian Richter.
I hate it.
“He’s going to break your heart,” Gina says.
“Then let me get a few more memories with him. I’ll feel less pathetic if I have different ones cycling through my mind.” I clamp my lips together before I add “for the rest of my life.”
Gina’s eyes are filled with sympathy, and I might as well have said the words.
They sell posters of Florian in the gift store. He’s someone for teenagers to tape to their locker or walls.
There are no pictures of me in any gift shop, and there will never be.
“Okay,” Gina says finally. “Help him get settled in. But then come back. Start dating people who live in Boston. Don’t postpone your life. And tell him that he shouldn’t postpone his. I know he’s nice and sweet, but—”
She doesn’t say that Florian can do better than me. I mean, that would truly be pathetic to have my sister remind me of that.
But the implication is there all the same.
For the first time, I wonder what the men she set me up with told her after they realized that dating me would be a waste of everyone’s time.
Did they say I wasn’t cute enough to make up for my lack of degrees? Did they say that I wasn’t amusing enough? Wasn’t clever enough? Did they ask her why, when they asked if she knew anyone they could date, she had suggested me?
“I’ll remind him,” I say finally. “I need to pack.”
Gina and I take the bus back to Somerville. The fancy brick buildings disappear, replaced by wooden laminated sidings in beige and white, the colors of dirty snow.
The bus bumps over the imperfectly paved streets, and I turn to my phone, because the unmanicured lawns are no longer pretty.
Gina is right.
I shouldn’t go to Nashville.
I open the ticket Florian sent me. I could call him. I could say I can’t go.
But instead, I stare at it.