The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📗

had unquestionably put that concern I could hear in her voice.

“No …” Clearing my throat, I ignored the heaviness that felt a lot like shame settle in my stomach. “I’m okay.”

I heard her sigh. It was one of those sighs that smacked into you. Making me feel bad about myself. As if I could see her looking at me with eyes filled with defeat and a little sorrow, shaking her head. I hated it.

“Lina, you know you can talk to me if something happened.”

My guilt deepened, souring my stomach. I felt awful. Stupid too. But what could I even do besides keep lying or coming clean?

“Did you guys break up? You know, it would make sense because you have never talked about him before. Not until the other day at least.” There was a pause, in which I could hear my heart drumming in my ears. “Your cousin Charo said something yesterday, you know.”

Of course Charo knew. Anything Mamá knew, the rest of the family knew.

“So, she said that,” she continued when I didn’t say anything, “you don’t have any photos of him on Facebook.”

I closed my eyes.

“Nobody posts anything on Facebook anymore, Mamá,” I told her in a weak voice while I kept battling with myself.

“And Prinstanam? Whatever it is that you young people use now. No photos there either.”

I could picture Charo scouting all my social profiles, searching for this imaginary man and rubbing her hands when she hadn’t found any.

“Charo said that if it’s not Prinstanam official, then it’s not serious.”

My heartbeat hammered louder in my chest. “It’s called Instagram.”

“Fine.” She sighed again. “But if you broke up with him or if he ended things—I don’t care who did what—you can talk to us about it. To Papá and to me. I know how much you have struggled with this dating thing ever since … you know, since Daniel.”

That last comment was a knife to the chest. It turned that heavy sensation into something ugly and painful. Something that made me think of the reason why I’d lied, why I struggled—as my mother had put it—and why I was in this predicament in the first place.

“You have never brought anybody home in all these years you’ve been away. Never talked about a man you were seeing. And never talked about this one before you told us you were dating him and that you’d bring him to the wedding. So, if you are alone again …”

A very familiar and very sharp pang pierced my chest at her words.

“That’s okay.”

Is it?

If it was really okay, I could tell my mother. I had the chance to end this lying circus, bury all that regret somewhere deep and dark, and breathe. I could tell her that, yes, I was no longer in a relationship, and consequently, I was no longer taking my—nonexistent—boyfriend home. That I’d attend the wedding alone. And that it was okay.

She had said it herself. And maybe she was right. I just needed to believe she was.

Taking a deep breath, I felt a surge of courage and made up my mind.

I’ll come clean.

Attending alone wouldn’t be fun. The pity looks and whispers of a past I didn’t want to think of would certainly suck. And that was putting it lightly. But I had no options.

Aaron’s scowling face popped up in my mind. Unannounced. Definitely unwelcome.

No. I kicked it out.

He hadn’t even mentioned it again since Monday. It had been four days. Not that if he had, it would have changed anything. I was on my own. But I had no reason to believe he had been serious.

And it was okay; Mamá had said so.

I opened my mouth to follow up with my decision of growing the hell up and to stop acting like a compulsive liar for something I should have the maturity to face alone, but of course, luck wasn’t on my side. Because my mother’s next words immediately killed whatever I was about to say.

“You know”—the way her voice sounded should have tipped me on what was about to come—“every person is different. We all have our own pace to put back together our lives after going through something like that. Some people need more time than others. And if you haven’t managed to get there yet, then there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Daniel is engaged while you are not. But that isn’t important. You can come to the wedding alone, Lina.”

My stomach dropped to my feet at the thought.

“I’m not saying Daniel needed to put his life back together in the first place because, well, he jumped off that boat, unscathed.”

And wasn’t that the damn truth? Something that, on top of everything, would make things even worse. He had merrily continued his life while I had … I had … gotten stuck. And everybody there would know. Every single person attending that wedding would know.

As if reading my mind, my mother uttered my thoughts, “Everybody knows, cariño. And everybody understands. You went through a lot.”

Everybody understands?

No, she was wrong. Everybody thought they understood. Nobody did. They didn’t realize that all those pobrecita, poor little Linas, accompanied by all those pitiful looks and nods, as if they got why I had been scarred and not able to find somebody else, were the reasons why I had lied to my family. Why I wanted to crawl out of my skin at the prospect of showing up alone when Daniel—my first love, my ex, the groom’s brother and best man—being there with his fiancée would only reinforce their assumptions of me.

Single and alone after fleeing the country, heartbroken.

Stuck.

I was over him; I truly was. But, man, all that had happened had … messed me up. I realized that now—not because it’d suddenly hit me that I had been single for years, but because I had lied—and what was worse was, I had just made up my mind not to go back on my lie.

“Everybody understands. You went through a lot.”

A lot was a very gentle way to