Chapter 26
I sneak into my apartment well past midnight.
I went to the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s in Las Mercedes for dinner and sat by the window on the second floor, watching the cars drive by.
After one of the workers came around my table to ask if I’d like anything else for the third time, I decided it was time to go.
Now, my bare feet freeze as I tiptoe to my bedroom.
Slowly, I open the door and slide in before shutting it behind me.
Once I’m safe inside, my body relaxes. I flip the light switch on and—
“Qué pasa?” my mom asks from under the sheets—my sheets—before she pokes her head out.
I yelp and back away until I’m pressed flat against my door, whimpering like a wounded dog, rubbing my chest in an attempt to put my heart back where it belongs.
“What are you doing here?!”
My mother looks at me through narrowed eyes, scowling. “Sleeping, pues.”
OH! That explains it! Never mind that I gave her a room of her own to avoid this exact situation.
“Madre, why are you in my room?” I ask.
“Because Simón is in mine.” She utters those words like it’s obvious.
My heart stops. I heard her wrong. I must have heard her wrong because I think she said Simón is here? As in, sleeping here? Inside the apartment I live in?
“What?”
Mamá sits up, annoyed. Well, that makes two of us. “Qué?”
“Did you say Simón is here?”
“Sí.”
Sí. My left eye twitches. “Why?”
She shrugs one shoulder, with feigned innocence. “Because it was too late for him to go home.”
I rub the space between my eyebrows with my middle finger. Too late for him to go home? What is he, according to my mom, six? Instead of, I don’t know, a grown-ass man? I could scream. I want to scream. But apparently Simón is asleep in the next room.
I march to the bed and rip a pillow from under her head, startling her. “Pero bueno, Maria Antonieta, qué te pasa?”
I ignore her.
After grabbing a spare blanket from the closet, I move to the living room, flipping the lights off on my way out.
The couch creaks when I sit, loud in my ears now that I know Simón is here.
I listen for Mamá’s footsteps, sure she’s going to come and beg me to take the bed or talk things out, but she doesn’t.
She’s probably going to wake up tomorrow thinking it was a dream.
Moonlight streams in through the windows, bathing the living room in a glow brightened by the streetlight outside the building.
Quietly, I slide down on the couch until I’m fully on my back. The ceiling fan I never turn on stares back at me and I imagine it turning on its own.
I’m 50 percent sure this apartment is haunted.
That’s why I have a mini fridge in my bedroom.
I don’t even come out for water after ten.
I’m fairly certain that, even if the fan did start turning on its own, I wouldn’t go back to my room.
That’s how angry I am. I sigh, sinking deeper into the couch.
The events of the night play in my head like a movie in a torture chamber.
Alejandro and I broke up. Really broke up this time.
I should be sad, but I’m not. I should be waiting for him to text me, asking me to reconsider, begging to take me back, but I left my phone in my purse, and for the first time in years I’m in no rush to get it back.
Tonight, I threw the life I always thought I wanted overboard along with the opportunity to get my job back.
The old me would be screaming, crying, throwing up.
The new me—and how new is she anyway?—is…
okay. Out of all the things that happened tonight, this is the most surprising.
I’m okay. The world didn’t end, and it won’t end tomorrow either.
After God knows how many minutes staring at the ceiling, my eyelids grow heavier and heavier, until I can’t keep them open anymore.
I’m almost asleep when my eyes snap back open.
A doorknob rattles. I think. Or did I dream it?
No, there it is. I push myself up on my elbows as the squeaky sound of a door opening reaches me.
Took my mother long enough. I wouldn’t put it past her to have waited just so she could enact revenge on me for waking her up.
I start to sit, bracing for the conversation I’m about to have, but quickly duck back down. It’s not my mother.
It’s Simón.
Shirtless.
I gulp down a breath so fast I nearly choke on it.
He’s shirtless. Walking down my hallway, toward my bathroom. He rubs sleep off his face with one hand, pushes his hair back with the other. It’s the sexiest movement I’ve ever seen a man do. Men rubbing sleep off their faces while pushing their hair back is now my specific type.
Heat creeps up my cheeks first, spreading to the rest of my body just as fast. Thank God Simón doesn’t seem to know where the light switch is.
The light pooling into my apartment reaches him when he gets to the bathroom door, turning his pale skin silver.
Simón is…human. No six-pack or shoulders you could build a house on.
Defined? Yes. A musician’s arms—lean and strong, yet soft.
The torso of someone who doesn’t spend every waking moment in the gym but has an active life.
He has a tattoo by his rib cage, but I can’t make out what it is.
His boxers’ waistband peeks out from his jeans, which hang low on his waist. It’s like he was pulled out of a photo shoot for Rolling Stone Colombia.
I shouldn’t be looking at him like this, but I can’t help it. I’m frozen. My brain burns the image of him here, in my apartment, surrounded by things that make up my entire life, to use for future reference.
Simón struggles with the door. It has a trick my mother must have failed to teach him. I hope he doesn’t have to go too bad. I would sooner let him pee on himself than reveal my presence.
“Cómo se abría esta vaina?” he says, leaning to get a closer look at the door.
I wince. He has to give it a little kick at the bottom right corner because it sticks.
Five seconds. I’m going to give him five seconds to figure it out and if he doesn’t, I’ll help.
The door opens, thank God, and Simón sighs with triumph, while I collapse on the couch from relief. The bathroom door clicks shut.
I stare at the ceiling, then turn my head in the direction of the hallway.
In reality, my eyes land on the leather surface of the couch, but my brain is still on Simón, longing.
This is ridiculous. I should be mourning the four-year relationship I ended less than twelve hours ago, not wishing I was deep into a decades-long marriage with the man currently using my bathroom.
I’ve known him for, what? Two months? Wishing I could have walked up to him and kicked the damn bathroom door while running a hand down his bare back is unacceptable.
I don’t know what happened to my brain when I met Simón.
People do not behave this way. I don’t behave this way.
Too soon, the bathroom door opens again. This time, I lie as still as a statue until I’m sure he’s back in the spare bedroom.
Diooooos. I press my wrists to my eyes. If this place wasn’t haunted before, it is now. I’ll live with the ghosts of a thousand what-ifs my imagination will conjure every time I sit on this couch, walk down that hall, kick the bottom right corner of that door.
I wish this thing was simple attraction.
It’s so much easier to get over someone if you merely want to sleep with them.
But how do you get over someone who makes you believe in eternity?
Not in the I’ll be with you forever kind of way.
In the there was a beginning, and in the beginning, there was you and there was me and the world has only gone on this long so you and I could finally meet kind of way.
I let my eyes flutter closed. Tomorrow will be better.
I hope I’m too tired to dream; I don’t trust my brain not to give me impossible scenarios. There is an 80 percent chance I’ll never sleep again after tonight.
“Come on, brain,” I whisper. “Shut up and shut down.”
Not even a second later, the atmosphere in the living room changes. I feel him before I see him. Please, let it be a ghost.
Simón clears his throat. I pretend I’m asleep. Maybe he’ll go away.
“I know you’re pretending to be asleep, but you’re not breathing,” he whispers, right next to my ear.
I open my eyes with a jolt at the sound of his sleepy voice so close. He smiles, kneeling next to me, the corners of his eyes wrinkling.
“Hey. Go sleep on the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
I wrap myself with the duvet. “I’m fine here. Go back to sleep.”
Instead of obeying, Simón sits on the opposite end of the couch. I notice he’s carrying the pillow and blanket I bought for the guest bedroom forever ago.
“Simón.” I try to channel an ounce of authority while whispering and being covered up to my neck with a duvet. “Go to bed.”
“I am,” he says, settling into his corner.
He closes his eyes. I press my lips together to keep from smiling.
“Simón.”
“Shh. I’m trying to sleep. Big day tomorrow,” he says.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” I ask, my voice so low it barely qualifies as a whisper.
He has tomorrow off. If it’s a big day, I should know. Shouldn’t I? Unless it’s something private. Like a date. He’s going on a date. And that’s fine. I just broke up with my boyfriend of four years. Simón can go on a date.
He abandons his act, sitting up. “I’m buying a suit to wear to your impending nuptials. What color should I get?”
“The men in my Pinterest board are wearing burgundy,” I say.
Simón tsks. “I don’t look good in burgundy.”
I fake a frustrated sigh. “I guess black will do. Do you know what you’re singing at my wedding?”
Simón chuckles. “Do you have money to pay me to sing at your wedding?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
A grand total of zero dollars, as there will not be a wedding.
“Right, I forgot you’re a personal assistant to a mildly successful singer,” he says with a smirk.