Matías blew him a kiss. His phone rang, and he disappeared down the hall. Soon he returned, talking with someone. After mouthing the wordsAntoine, he continued. “Yeah, she’s right here, she’s fine. We slept at Rubén’s place… Tell him she’s with me… Sure… See you at rehearsal.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Lucas is at my building. He showed up there. Apparently he’s been calling you for hours.”
I covered my face with my hands. “Yeah, I turned it off last night.”
“Antoine says he was freaking out because he had no idea where you were.” Matías sat back down as Rubén served our coffees, then excused himself, saying he needed a shower. “What’s going on, Maya?”
“Things aren’t good with Lucas and me. There’s too much distance between us. I think it’s over.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, of course not! But I don’t see a way out, either. You saw what happened last night.”
“You mean the phone calls?” he asked. “Yeah. I get it. It was even getting on my nerves.”
“And then he just abandoned me there and took off running when his ex called him crying about a kid that isn’t even his.”
“I’m sorry, babe,” Matías said.
“I felt terrible when it happened, and I feel even worse because he did it for her child, and he’s just a little baby, Matías. It’s not his fault!”
“It’s not your fault, either, Maya. And if I were in your shoes, I’d feel the same as you do. The whole thing is just crazy.”
“How long have we been here now, a month and a half?”
“More or less,” Matías replied.
“And in all that time, the only thing Lucas has done is scurry off whenever his family’s opened their mouths. If they say stand, he stands. If they say sit, he sits. He spends his days in the office glued to the phone, running errands, solving problems… I get that it’s his family and I have to respect them. And I would if he was doing all this because he wanted to, but he doesn’t! I know he doesn’t!”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you, Matías, his family’s a mess.”
“Every family is, though, Maya.”
“Yeah, but these people are something out of a horror movie. And his ex… She’s just a bad person. I don’t know any other way to say it. And it’s not that I’m jealous, it’s that she’s been playing Lucas their entire lives, and he’s just gone back to letting her manipulate him like an idiot.”
“What do you mean, gone back?” Matías asked.
“Why do you think he left Madrid two years ago? Everything went to shit and he took off running to get away from all of them.”
I told Matías everything Lucas had admitted to me about his family. I knew it wasn’t right to do so, but I needed to get out all those things that had been torturing me for weeks, and I trusted my best friend more than I trusted myself in that moment. I talked about Lucas’s childhood, his father’s illness, the heart attack that had almost killed him and how Lucas felt responsible for it. Matías was shocked at the whole story of Claudia, her pregnancy, and the paternity test. By the time I finished, he was cursing out loud.
“And you think history is repeating itself?” he asked.
“I don’t think it. I know it.”
“Then you need to talk to him.”
“You think I haven’t tried? He just keeps asking me for time, but I don’t have time. I can’t waste my life waiting for him to be braveenough to confront them. I’m living in his apartment, I don’t have a job. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t just stay here indefinitely.”
Matías stared into my eyes. “Do you love him?”
“A lot.”
“But you’re still willing to end it with him?”
