Page 2

Shit! It's nearly two and I'm still here.

I cross into the living room before heading out of the front door and that's when I see the news on Antenna 3.

Mis abuelos are watching it. Both of them rigid on the sofa, their eyes cutting sideways at me as I walk in.

"Here we are interviewing Cristina who claims that her one-year-old son is Jorge's. Remember Jorge just signed a deal with Real Madrid and has been married for two years. Cristina, so what happened? Well, he was getting married and his friends hired a stripper. I went to the party, I used to live next door to Jorge. Then we ended up having an affair before the wedding day, two weeks in Barcelona, and four weeks in Madrid!"

My hands tremble.

The room is loud with people, and the clatter of the kitchen but it all drops away to nothing. There is the ex neighbor of my husband on screen with a baby on her hip and Jorge's name running along the bottom of the screen. My mouth fills with something sour that I force myself to swallow. My head pounds, my vision blurring at the edges. I count backwards without meaning to. A one-year-old. Barcelona. Our postponed wedding. Two weeks I couldn't reach him and he told me the signal was bad.

It lands in my stomach like something solid and heavy and wrong.

"Elena. It's not like that I can explain!" Jorge says as he storms into the living room and then turns off the television.

He's here. In the room. My family is behind me, his family too, everyone frozen, everyone staring, the music still playing from the kitchen as if the world hasn't just split open.

"You said that you were training. And that it was some camp and team building. This is why I couldn't go."

It's all fitting into place.

"It's not what you think."

I shake my head as memories of us having to postpone our wedding flood back. Because he was with her.

My throat is closing. My pulse is in my ears, so loud I can barely hear him speaking. I think about the clinic. The needles. Lying on a table staring at a ceiling tile with a crack running through it, telling myself this time it will work. I think about every night I cried quietly in the bathroom so he wouldn't hear.

But he has a son.

And that son isn't mine. Just his.

"Elena I can explain."

My face is wet and I hadn't even noticed. The tears are streaming so much I can't control them. Around us nobody moves. My mother's hand is pressed over her mouth. My dad has put his beer down. Even the kids have gone still.

He grabs hold of my arm.

"Elena please."

"Explain this!"

I slap him around the face so hard. I'm not a violent person. I've never believed in it. But my family and his who are always late watch the display of anger. He's done everything I don't believe in. Cheated on me. Hurt me. Lied to me.

And the worst part, she's given him one thing I can't.

And that just hurts the most.

1

JORGE

One Year Later

Men don't cry. Especially the ones in my family. Like my uncle, dad, and his dad before him, we just drink. I've drunk ever since Elena left me. The slap she gave me when she found out still stings on my cheek.

Even now. A year later.

I'm sitting on the edge of the bed in my old room at Mama's house, the one I grew up in, the one that still smells of the same cedar wood polish she's used on every surface for thirty years. My suit is pressed and hanging on the back of the door. Black. Like I'm going to a funeral. Maybe I am.