And considering he was married, living a life with someone else, in another country than the one I lived in, I knew that my heart would only get broken. I’d slept with my fair share of men, but I hadn’t really cared about any of them. This man, I cared for him, craved him, and if I slept with him, his predicament would destroy me and every defense I worked so hard to build.

He saw me immediately, too. As soon as he closed the doors, his eyes made a straight shot to mine and held me there. For the first time, I could see the want and need in them, terrifying me to the core. I had to get away. I had to make this stop. He started walking toward me, trying to get past Sammy, Polly and Claudia who were all grinding in a circle. He was coming to ask me his question, the one I needed to answer honestly.

I had to act fast.

I reached out and grabbed Dave, who happened to be standing by me. I gave him a squeeze on his arm, smiled up at him, batted my eyelashes. Then I put my hand behind his head and pulled him into me, kissing him hard.

He hesitated for a moment, totally caught off guard, before he relented and started to kiss me back. He wasn’t bad at all—he knew what he was doing—and splices of memories from the week before flooded my brain. I knew I wasn’t as drunk this time around, which was good, because I needed be smart and in control. It’s hard to get over someone when you can’t remember what you did to get over them.

Eventually I caught my breath and pulled away. The party was still raging, people still laughing and talking and spilling their drinks. I could see Claudia over my shoulder, approaching us with a frown on her angelic face. I knew she wanted to have words with me, to tell me that Mateo was there. But I knew he was there—that’s why I did it. If he saw and he cared, well, he was married and he shouldn’t have cared. And if he didn’t care, well, then the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.

Or so I’d been told.

I turned away from Claudia, grabbed Dave’s hand and led him towards my bedroom. I made the mistake of turning around to face the party before I opened the door. I told myself I wanted to see if anyone had noticed, if anyone cared, but the truth was, I was only looking for Mateo’s reaction.

I was counting on it to set me free.

It didn’t. All I saw was him, paused behind the couch. He stared at me with such disbelief, such simmering… anger. As if I’d pissed him off and then kicked him in the gut.

Well…I guess that answered that.

He did care.

And so, I had to be doing the right thing. Right?

I ushered Dave inside my bedroom and closed the door behind us. I pushed him back a few feet and slipped my tank top over my head, and pulled my pants and boy shorts out from under my feet, until I was standing in front of him completely naked. I could tell he was taking a moment to take in my tattoos and my body. Then I walked over to him and shoved him onto the bed. I pulled out a condom from the drawer.

He was naked in an instant, and though I could see the tats on his body, I didn’t care enough about him to know what they were or what they meant. I thought about Mateo asking me to explain mine, I thought about the way he listened to the way I told him my favorite childhood memory, I remembered how my story about Leo put him asleep.

I wanted more than anything to be touching Mateo instead of Dave. But that wasn’t an option—it would never be an option. Not in this life of mine. So I had to make do.

Because Dave was on the drunk side, we had sex for longer than I anticipated. He was better than that Portuguese guy, I’ll give him that. He momentarily filled the empty yearning inside of me, distracted me from my thoughts as I was coming. He wasn’t by any means a bad guy. He just wasn’t the guy I wanted.

After we were finally finished, we must have fallen asleep for a little bit because when we woke up, the whole apartment was silent. We gave each other the nervous, awkward after-sex look and slipped on our clothes before I cautiously opened the door.

The apartment was empty. Messy as all hell with empty beer cans and wine bottles everywhere, but empty.

“Damn,” I said to Dave, keeping my voice down in case Sara was trying to sleep. “They must have gotten bored without us.”

He smirked at me. “Ah, they knew what they were missing.”

I decided to walk Dave to the door. I wasn’t really sure how to treat this, didn’t know if I wanted it to happen again, but at the same time I didn’t feel like telling him to get out of my place because I was going to bed, even though there was no way he was staying the night.

I opened the door and he stood on the landing, staring at me with the kind of smile that told me he had fun, and fun was all it ever had to be. I appreciated that about him—in some ways, we were very much alike.

“Well, good night,” I told him, hanging on the door. “See you tomorrow.”

He grinned at me, boyishly cute, even with the edgy hair and piercings. “See you.”

He ran down the stairs, the black spikes of his hair bouncing. I watched him and even when he turned the corner and I could hear his feet running on the pavement as he ran home, I still stood there, trying to take in the heat and the stars and the moon two nights away from becoming full.

I breathed in deep, the air full crickets and the starlight, then turned to go back inside.

“Vera,” a quiet, emotionless voice said from below.

I froze, recognizing the voice and slowly turned to see Mateo out on the path, as if he was walking home from somewhere down the hill. Half his body was lit from the neon orange lights from the dining hall.

I didn’t know what to say or do. I just stared down at him, feeling like I’d somehow made things more complicated than they were before.

That look in his dark eyes was like hit to the heart.

“You should treat yourself better than that,” he said, his voice glinting with a steely quality.

Then he started walking again, quickly, and in seconds he was out of my view. Gone into the night.

I realized then that I’d been holding my breath the whole time, afraid to move or speak or do anything. Afraid to let myself feel. Because the number one feeling that was waiting to pummel me over the head was damned, dirty shame.

I didn’t talk to Mateo at all the next day. He wouldn’t even meet my eye.

He owed me two questions. I only felt guilt that I didn’t understand.

On the morning of the grand soccer match, we found out all the day’s activities were cancelled. We were to pack our soccer clothes with us in the vans and all of us would be driven out to Acantilado for a day of sightseeing with an English-speaking guide. After the tour around town, then we would walk over to the elementary school field where the soccer match would take place. Later, the winners would return to town for their victory dinner.

This should have pleased me, the fact that we were all getting out of Dodge for the day, but the truth was nothing was making me happy. My whole life felt strained and weird and uncomfortable, like a wet bathing suit. I wanted nothing more than to go back in time, listen to what Mateo was going to ask me and avoid sleeping with Dave.

But there was no such thing as a time machine. I couldn’t undo any of my mistakes, because if I could, believe me, I wouldn’t have started with Las Palabras. I would have gone back a very, very long time ago.

As we all piled into the three vans, I made sure I was sitting with Claudia, Eduardo, Becca and Sammy, and not in the same one as Dave or Mateo. The driver was this older Spanish man named Peter, whom we called Peter the Everything Man since you could find him working the bar sometimes, cooking the dinner, unclogging the toilets, and—according to Sammy—showing up at your apartment with a bottle of wine. I didn’t want her to elaborate on that.