Chapter 24 Claire
Claire
When Claire arrived at the hospital the next morning, there was a heated argument going on outside Matías’s room between Aracely and possibly the most beautiful woman Claire had ever seen. She had huge Ana de Armas eyes and thick black waves of hair. Her bold floral maxi dress dipped low at the neckline, then hugged the curves of her chest before billowing around her feet like rippling waves. Every man in the hospital ward was transfixed by her; every woman both hated her and wanted to be her at the same time.
Except Aracely, who seemed like she just hated her as she pointed repeatedly toward the elevator.
“?Las visitas son solo para los familiares!” Aracely declared, practically shouting.
“Pero yo casi fui parte de la familia,” the woman said.
“Exacto, ‘casi.’ Tomaste tu decisión y le rompiste el corazón a mi hermano. Por eso él salió del país; no le dijiste nada después.”
A nurse behind the beautiful woman motioned with her hands at Aracely and whispered something in Spanish that Claire assumed meant Please keep it down !
“Hola, Claire,” Luis said, slipping next to her. “You are just in time for the show.”
“Who is that, and what’s going on?”
“That is Vega Castillo, Matías’s ex. She wants to see him, but Aracely won’t let her.”
Oh. Vega. Matías had mentioned her name a couple of times, but he didn’t like talking about her. Claire knew that he and Vega had met in art school and been together for a little while, but he’d never said what happened to them, only that the past was the past.
Was it, though? Because Vega was beginning to cry. She fell to her knees onto the linoleum, begging as she sobbed.
Aracely rolled her eyes.
“Vega is very dramatic,” Luis said in a conspiratorial voice to Claire.
But Claire saw actual pain in the woman’s posture as she reached out and clasped Aracely’s hands. Vega’s body trembled, not overly exaggerated like someone fake-crying, but in the way that Claire had experienced herself on the plane flight to Madrid, when her emotions were so frayed it felt as if all the nerve endings in her body were exposed and even a puff of air could send her into shock.
But Aracely wrenched her hands away and planted her feet even more firmly in front of Matías’s door.
“Would giving her a few minutes hurt?” Claire asked Luis.
Luis sighed. “Matías asked Vega to marry him when they were only twenty years old. She said yes but would never commit to a wedding date, no matter how often he tried to set one. When he received the invitation for the visiting professor position in New York a year and a half ago, he asked her again for a wedding date so she could go with him to the United States as his wife, but Vega gave him back her ring and told him to go alone.”
What?
Claire clutched the back of a nearby chair. Matías and Vega had been engaged for fifteen years? And presumably together for longer than that? Claire had thought it wasn’t an important relationship since she knew so little about it.
But looking back, she realized she’d only thought that because Matías never talked about Vega. Which wasn’t all that weird because Vega was, after all, an ex—not exactly the most popular topic to discuss with your current girlfriend.
Yet Claire’s chest tightened as she compared the lengthy history Matías had had with this beautiful artist to the eleven months and one week he’d had with boring, tight-laced Claire. And the fact that he had hardly ever mentioned Vega meant the opposite of insignificance. Other than the last year Matías had spent in New York, Vega had been a part of all of his adult life.
Did he still love her?
Oh god…Was the engagement ring Claire found in his dresser the same one that Vega had once worn?
Feeling suddenly nauseous, Claire looked away from Vega kneeling on the floor. Even desperate, Matías’s ex-fiancée was painfully beautiful.
“Aracely will never forgive Vega for breaking Matías’s heart,” Luis said. “And she definitely will not let Vega into that room.”
The nurse who’d been imploring Aracely and Vega to keep the volume down had finally given up on them and called hospital security. The next time the ward doors opened, two very large men in uniform stepped through.
They strode over to Vega and said something quietly to her.
She answered them, loud enough to carry across the room.
“?Ay, por favor!” Aracely said, throwing her arms in the air.
Even though Claire didn’t want to look, it was impossible not to. “What happened?” she asked.
Luis shook his head at the scene; one of the security men was crouching to scoop Vega up into his arms. “Vega says she is too weak with grief and must be carried. As I said—very dramatic.”
Vega draped herself elegantly across the guard’s body, as if she were aware of the picture she was creating. Every man—except for Luis and his father—leaned a little bit forward, like they were hoping this might become one of those human chains, where, in order to help Vega, she must be passed from one man’s arms into another until she reached safety downstairs.
But all Claire could think about was how Vega used to drape her body all over Matías . Whereas Claire had never been so performative or clingy. She prided herself on being independent, but looking from the outside in, she saw how stiff she must be compared to Vega.
Why would Matías have ever chosen me when he could have had a woman like that? One who lived her life as large as he did?
The guards took Vega into the elevator. As the doors shut, the men left behind exhaled their disappointment all at once.
Aracely, though, leaned her head against the door of her brother’s hospital room and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw Claire and gave her a weak smile.
“Come on, Claire. You are welcome to see Matías.”
Claire took a step in that direction, but then she realized something, which she honestly wished she hadn’t thought of.
With a sigh, she glanced back at the elevator.
“I’ll be right back. Unfortunately, I need to have a word with Vega.”
—
“Perdón,” Claire said as she caught up with Vega in the hospital lobby, where she now had no trouble walking on her own.
“?Sí?” Vega turned around and looked straight at Claire with her huge eyes, mesmerizing even though they were smudged with eyeliner.
“I’m Claire Walker, Matías’s, um…” Suddenly she felt shy claiming him when he had been Vega’s for so much longer.
“No hablo inglés,” Vega said. She pulled out her phone and opened a translation app, turning on the mic and holding it up to Claire.
“I am Claire Walker. Matías’s girlfriend.”
The app said in a slightly robotic voice, “Soy Claire Walker. La novia de Matías.”
“Ah,” Vega said. “Aracely te mencionó.” She stuck out her hand matter-of-factly. “Mucho gusto conocerte, Claire.”
Claire shook Vega’s hand. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
The app translated for her. It was so much better than the basic one Claire had been using since she arrived in Madrid.
Vega shrugged and spoke into her phone, which said, “I may regret my choice to break up with Matías, but I made it. And women do not need to be enemies simply because they love the same man, do they?”
Claire flinched at Vega’s use of the present tense. Love the same man. Claire had hoped that when Matías said the past was the past he’d meant it. But apparently Vega still loved him, even though she had let him put an ocean between them. And Claire had no idea whether Matías still had feelings for Vega, since he’d never really mentioned her.
But she couldn’t deal with those kinds of thoughts right now. She’d run down the stairs to reach Vega for a reason. And if they had to keep passing a translation app between them in order to achieve that, Claire would deal with it.
“I agree,” Claire said. “Women shouldn’t be enemies because of a man. And that’s actually why I’m here. I was wondering if you could tell me what Matías’s life was like when he was still in Madrid.”
Vega tilted her head. “Sí ?pero por qué?” Yes, but why?
“I guess I’m just scared of losing him. I’m greedy for the details of his life.”
The real reason was because knowing the places Matías worked and lived—where he bought groceries or liked to grab a bite to eat—might help Claire figure out how to find him again. She couldn’t count on Matías just appearing anymore. She had to be proactive, even if it meant facing another woman he’d loved—and perhaps loved more .
But of course she couldn’t tell Vega I’m hunting for Matías’s soul.
Vega sighed heavily, then spoke into the phone. The robot Spanish woman said, “How about if I show you, instead of tell you? I would not mind revisiting my memories of him, either.”
—
The Malasa?a neighborhood appeared to be the artsy part of Madrid. Vega led Claire past Bohemian vintage clothing shops, a used bookstore whose front window display was a collage of old punk zines, small cafés that looked like they were all venues for live music or open mic poetry readings, and mysterious doors painted in riotous colors that Vega explained were the entrances for clubs with some of the best DJs on the continent.
“That,” Vega said as she pointed across the street at a window full of paintings, “is the art supply store Matías and I like. They have the best paints for him, and clay for me. I am a sculptor.
“Next door,” she said, waving toward a bar that didn’t open till later, “is where I got so drunk as a freshman that Matías had to carry me back to my apartment.”
Common trick of yours? Claire wanted to ask, thinking back to Vega at the hospital.
But there was no reason to be rude when Vega was taking time out of her day to teach Claire about Matías’s past. Plus, they’d agreed that rivalry between them would be…what? Immature? Moot because Vega had broken up with him? Unnecessary because Claire was the one Matías was with now?
Yes to all of the above, and yet Claire couldn’t help feeling insecure in her ponytail, plain T-shirt, and jeans, next to an artist who oozed sex and confidence with every sway of her hips and swish of her skirt.
At that very moment, someone whistled at Vega and shouted, “ ?Qué guapa! ” How pretty! Claire didn’t need the app to translate that.
Vega just laughed and waved the man off, like this happened to her all the time. But then, it probably did.
Not that Claire wanted random guys whistling at her in the street, but no one would ever even think to do that to her. Her best trait was her intelligence. Otherwise, Claire was good-looking enough to get by, but never to stand out.
Maybe that was why Matías preferred Claire: He didn’t have to fend off other guys like he must’ve when he was with Vega.
Yay. One point for Claire. What a depressing victory.
They walked several more blocks before Vega stopped in front of a bakery with a bright yellow tiled storefront that read La Mantequilla y el Huevo. She rattled off several sentences into her app. “This is The Butter and the Egg, our favorite place for breakfast. He liked sweet and I liked savory, so he ordered magdalenas or churros con chocolate. And I would order a tortilla. But by the end of the meal, he always ended up feeding me one of his churros dipped in hot melted chocolate.” She closed her eyes and made a small moaning sound.
This might not be an entirely friendly trip down memory lane on Vega’s part.
Claire’s heart twinged. She’d thought that churros and chocolate was something special that Matías liked to make just for her, but now here was another woman—one he’d been with for more than a decade and a half and had wanted to marry—making not-so-subtle comments dripping with innuendo, and Claire felt so…stupid.
And small.
Plain Claire, an orphan and foster kid from Florida who thought she could change who she was by moving to the big city and dressing herself up in fancy lawyer duds. But underneath, she was still Just Claire.
Sure, Yolanda would argue that Just Claire managed to snag Matías de León, so who cares about the sultry artist who used to sleep with him?
But the problem was that Claire now had to win Matías over again. She had to not only find his soul but also make that version of Matías fall in love with her. What if this time she couldn’t tap into whatever had attracted him to her in New York? Here in Spain, Claire wasn’t a dynamo lawyer, she had worn the same two pairs of dirty underwear for several days before she managed to pull herself together to buy new ones, and she was illiterate! And what if—
Oh god.
What if Matías’s soul also appeared to Vega? He was tied to his life in Madrid from a year ago. She would have already broken up with him by then, but still…If he still loved her before he left for New York, if he would’ve been willing to take her back…
But how could Claire ask? If Vega’s answer was no she hadn’t seen Matías’s soul, then Claire would sound like a delusional fool. But if Vega’s answer was yes…Maybe she was the one who could bring Matías back.
“I…I think I’ll return to the hospital now,” Claire said. “Thanks for showing me around some of the landmarks of Matías’s life.”
Vega let her eyes flutter open slowly and looked at Claire through her lashes. “?Qué?”
Claire took a deep breath and repeated herself into the translation app.
Vega cooed. “You do not want to see our apartment? Well, it’s mine now, but we lived there together for many years.”
Claire swallowed the bile rising in her throat. If Vega wanted to play mean, fine. But Claire didn’t have to take it. And she swore to herself that she would be the one to reconnect Matías to reality.
“I’m good. Thanks.” Claire pivoted on her heel.
“His studio is still here in the neighborhood,” Vega said, her tone suddenly softer. Sadder. The app didn’t convey that, but Claire heard it clearly.
“It is?” She turned back around.
Vega nodded. “The landlord had a crush on him, so she let him keep the space rent-free while he was in the United States. He couldn’t pack all of his pieces, and this was her way of ensuring he would come back after two years. The landlord, by the way, is eighty-six years old.”
Despite herself, Claire laughed.
“The studio is three blocks that way,” Vega said, pointing in a direction they hadn’t ventured yet. “Armando probably has the key, if you want to visit.” Vega had a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were remembering a time when she could come and go from the studio whenever she pleased, without Matías’s family as the gatekeepers. When she could see and touch and immerse herself in his imagination.
But Vega’s time with him was past, and Claire was not going to invite her into the studio when she got the key. Not after that churro story.
More important, though, Claire hoped that she would find Matías—or, more accurately, his soul—at the studio.
After all, he’d said he needed to pack up his paintings and get ready to send them to the Rose Gallery in New York, right?