The next day he asked me what music I listened to. I had a feeling he’d had a one-on-one with Becca before that one came up. As we lay down on the grass in the ever deepening sunshine and I told him I listened to pretty much anything with an edge. The first concert I ever went to was when I was twelve to see the Deftones touring on their self-titled album, stealing Mercy’s ID to get into the show. I liked metal, I liked punk, I liked classic rock—anything with guts and a beat and anything that hummed with sincerity.

In turn, Mateo gave me snippets of himself. He told me that not only did space scare him too, but his first concert was Aerosmith—I didn’t ask how long ago that was. Since then he’d turned to rock with a singer songwriter slant. He loved Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, all the peeps I could totally get behind.

The day after that, during another one of our phone calls—this one, he had greatly improved his business sales speech—he asked me how I thought the world would end. It wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation I thought I’d have with him over the phone but it definitely made me think. I ended up stating that we’d all be wiped out by an asteroid, because it was just fitting that something I was interested in would end up killing me.

Then it was time for question number four. While we were lazing over our last glass of wine at dinner, Mateo asked me about my family, again. Tyler, an uptight ginger from Seattle who had a My Little Pony wallet in a totally non-ironic way, and Paco, had long-cleared the table, leaving just the two of us as the waiters made the rounds to collect the empty plates.

“Tell me, Estrella,” he said slowly, his long, elegant fingers toying with the stem of his wine glass. Oh, he’d also been calling me Estrella for the last few days, something I was enjoying more and more. He gave me a pointed look. “Why don’t you get along with your older sister?”

I laughed into my glass. “Wow, from the end of the world to family matters again.”

He gave me the one-shouldered shrug. “I have fourteen days left, I figured why not. The closer we get to goodbye, the harder this will get.”

Goodbye. I’d first seen him a week ago today, when I got on that bus. Now, goodbye seemed like such a foreign concept. Becca had been totally right about the program and the way people bonded. I couldn’t imagine a life where I wasn’t with all these people, drinking my wine and speaking overly-enunciated English. If this was how I felt after a week, how would I feel after a month?

“You can ask me anything,” he added, as if that would help. Well, it helped a little.

I took a large gulp of wine, really starting to appreciate the effect the alcohol had on me. I exhaled. “Fine. It’s not every interesting though, it’s just stupid family stuff.”

“Everything about you is interesting,” he said sincerely.

I shot him a shy smile, blushing inwardly at the compliment. “My sister’s name is Mercedes but we call her Mercy. As in, Lord have Mercy on our souls because she’s a…” I remembered his shock when I insulted her before and I had to switch up my language. It seemed that the Spaniards had a more respectful view of family than I did. “She’s a handful. Anyway. We used to get along. She’s three years older so I was always the baby to her. And Josh is two years younger than me. I guess Josh and I were closer, even from the start. So, when I was thirteen, we discovered that my dad was having an affair.”

Mateo’s eyebrows quirked up with the new information but said nothing.

I went on, my eyes glued to the ruby wine as it made trails down the inside of the glass. “He was a pilot—still is. She was a flight attendant. Her name is Jude. Apparently this had been going on for years. My parents fought for as long as I could remember, so there wasn’t much love lost between them. But my mother is a very proud person and it humiliated her to know that it had been going on. They got a divorce and my life became very miserable. I was really close with my dad, daddy’s girl…you know? But Jude wasn’t ready for teenagers so my dad and her moved to Calgary. My mother got the house and the kids.”

I took a sip of the wine. The glass was empty now and Mateo immediately refilled it. I had to admit, as scary as it was to talk about the past, even something that was probably quite mundane to him, it felt good. “I started doing drugs and hanging with the wrong crowd, even though they were my crowd. I made stupid choices, mainly with boys, but I was still a good student, straight Bs in everything, so it’s not like I was a major fuck-up. But, you know, I liked tattoos and piercings and I started dying my hair every single Crayola color and my mother hated that. And in support of my mother, Mercy started hating that too. Then, when I was a senior in high school, I invited Josh to come hang out with me and my friends. At the time he had this stutter that other kids made fun of and he was tall and skinny and totally awkward. But my friends were the kind that didn’t care. Every lunch hour, skipped class, before school and after school, the big group of us would take over these steps behind the school gym and just be social delinquents.”

And so, Josh started going down the same path that I did. Smoking, drinking, drugs…sex.” I briefly met Mateo’s eye. He was listening as if he were totally enraptured. I cleared my throat. “And unfortunately he didn’t care so much about school or his future, not like I did. So he just kind of became a slacker. An artist, he liked to draw, but still a slacker. My mother, and Mercy, they both blamed me for his demise, that I ruined all his potential with sex, drugs and rock and roll. So, I became the villain.”

“The black sheep,” he said softly. “Which we know is not true.”

I took another gulp of wine and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. My red lipstick was smeared all over it but I was too comfortable to care. “So that is why my sister and I don’t get along. It doesn’t matter that I’m doing a science degree, or that I’m naturally smart. What matters is that I supposedly ruined my brother and that I’m not the perfect daughter that Mercy is. Especially now. Mercy is marrying a rich jerk and her upcoming wedding is the be all to end all event. I’m not even part of the bridal party! I mean, Jesus, how is that for family. I guess I would embarrass her, ugly up her whole event.”

“Ugly?” Mateo said in fervent disbelief. “No. You are terribly beautiful, Vera. So beautiful that it hurts. You would outshine her like the star you are.”

Whoa.

I felt like lava had been poured down my spine.

I slowly lifted my eyes to meet his and was taken aback by what I saw in them. The last four days I’d felt this thing building between us, always so subtle, so hard to place my finger on it. Even calling me beautiful was just a compliment, albeit a wonderful one. At least, it would have been. Now there was something in his eyes that I’d only seen hints of before. Now, his gaze, his brows, those strong, wide cheekbones, they smoldered with what could only be described as lust.

Lusty Mateo. This was a new side of him.

The most dangerous side of all.

Because I was certain I’d been nothing but Lusty Vera from the moment I saw him. Never acting, always thinking, always feeling. I did not need the temptation from him to make what we had—which was just friendship—into something more.

And yet the carnal way he was looking at me, it seemed inevitable.

Even after everything I had just told him.

I had to look away. I gave him a tight smile and pushed my glass of wine away. “I think we need to get going for the skits we have to do.” Two days ago we’d been broken up into teams of five and had to create our own plays based on things that are “lost in translation.” Tonight were the performances.