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

“Eso es.” I heard my mother chuckle. “I’ll let you get back to work. You’ll tell us about this man you are dating when you two come for the wedding then, okay?”

No, I wanted to tell her. What I’ll do is die, choked in my own web of lies.

“Of course, Mamá,” I said instead. “I love you. Tell Papá I love him too.”

“Love you too, cielo,” my mother said right before hanging up.

Filling my lungs with much-needed air, I glared at the man who had just complicated my life tenfold and dropped my phone on the desk as if it were burning my palm.

“So, your mother.”

I nodded my head, incapable of speaking. It was better that way. God knew what would come out of my treacherous mouth.

“All good at home?”

Sighing, I nodded again.

“What does it mean?” he asked me with what might be genuine curiosity. “What you said in Spanish at the end.”

My head was still swirling with that horrible, catastrophic phone call. With what I had done and how big I had messed up. I didn’t have time to play Google Translate with Aaron, who, on top of everything, was the last person I wanted to chat with at the moment.

Jesus, how did he manage to do that? He showed up, and in the span of a few minutes just—

I shook my head.

“Why do you even care?” I snapped.

I watched him flinch. Only slightly but I was almost sure he had.

Immediately feeling like a jerk, I brought my hands to my face as I tried to calm myself.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a little … stressed. What do you want, Aaron?” I asked him, softening my voice and fixing my eyes somewhere on my desk. Anywhere but on him. I didn’t want to face him and give him a chance to see me this … unsettled. I hated the idea of him seeing me at my lowest. If it wouldn’t be completely inappropriate, I would drop to the floor, crawl under my desk, and hide from him.

Given that I refused to look at him, I could only notice the difference in his tone when he said, “I printed out some more documents you can use for one of the workshops we outlined.” His voice was almost gentle. For someone like Aaron, that was. “I left them on your desk.”

Oh.

My gaze tracked down the wooden surface, finding them, and I felt like an even bigger jerk.

That emotion churned in my gut, turning into something way too close to helplessness for me to feel any better.

“Thanks,” I muttered, massaging my temples with my fingers and closing my eyes. “You could have just sent them by email.” Maybe that way, all this could have been avoided.

“You highlight everything by hand.”

I did. When something required my full focus, I needed to print it on paper and then review it with a highlighter in hand. But how … oh hell. It didn’t matter that Aaron had somehow noticed. He probably had because it was a waste of paper or bad for the environment anyway. And that didn’t change that I was still a jerk for snapping at him like that.

“You are right, I do. That was …” I trailed off, keeping my gaze on the desk. “That was nice of you. I’ll go through them over the weekend.”

Still not lifting my head to look at him, I reached for the thin stack and placed it in front of me.

A long moment passed where neither of us spoke.

I could tell he was still standing there, all statuesque, not moving and just looking down at me. But he didn’t say anything, not giving me an excuse to look up. So, I kept my eyes trained on the papers he had so nicely printed out for me.

That long moment seemed to stretch into a painfully awkward amount of time, but right before I was about to lose the weird battle and look up, I sensed him leave. Then, I waited a full minute until I was sure he was long gone. And … I let it all out.

My head fell on my desk with a muffled thud. No, not on the desk. My head had fallen on the stack of papers that Aaron had come to deliver—very nicely—right before I put my foot in my mouth and somehow told my mother that the name of my made-up boyfriend was Aaron.

A groan slipped out of me. It was ugly and miserable.

Just like I was.

I softly bumped my head against the surface of my desk.

“Estúpida.” Bang. “Idiota. Tonta. Boba. Y mentirosa.” Bang, bang, bang.

That was the worst of all. Not only was I an idiot, but I was also a lying idiot.

The realization pushed another groan out of me.

“Whoa,” came from the door. It was Rosie’s voice.

Good. I needed someone I trusted to retrieve me from this madness I had gotten myself into and register me into the closest mental facility. I couldn’t be trusted to … adult properly.

“Is everything okay, Lina?”

Nope.

Nothing about what I had just done was okay.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Rosie shoved her hand between us, making the universal sign to hold your horses. “You told your mom what?”

Gobbling down the rest of my pastrami panini, I shot her a look. “You gnow whatf I saifd,” I told her, not caring that my mouth was still full.

“I just want to hear that last part again.” Rosie leaned back on her chair, her emerald eyes wide with shock. “You know what? How about you start from the beginning again? I must be missing something because this whole thing sounds a little too much, even for you.”

Narrowing my eyes at her, I gave her a fake, toothy smile that I was sure showcased some of the contents of my lunch.

I didn’t care that anybody in the coworking space on the fifteenth floor, where we were having lunch, could see me. At this time, there weren’t many people left on this floor anyway. Leave it to a company