“Más personalidades,” he says into the app then holds it out as he says the word displayed on the screen. “Bipolar?”
For months, I have believed it about myself. I have been angry that my shrink didn’t see what I felt, and that made me not believe that she was capable of doing her job. I was a teenager, yet so are my siblings, and they don’t have epic mood swings, they don’t get depressed to the point that they take a handful of pills so they will sleep. And now, knowing Brisa has a diagnosis, I am irrationally jealous of that. There is no way that is normal. Especially since I desperately don’t want my parents to know just how bad it gets, because I know it hurts them, and as much of a bitch as I can be, it’s not to hurt them; it’s to push them away.
I should be relieved that someone sees it.
I should be embarrassed that it’s the one person whose lips felt good, but at least it’s someone. But he isn’t someone who matters, someone who can quiet the monsters in the dark.
“Please, just go.”
Again, he looks confused as he squats down and wipes a fallen year. “No, estés triste.”
“Go. Away.” I push my chair back and stand.
He looks confused.
“Leave me alone, Matteo. Just leave me alone.”
He steps back and holds his hand over his chest, and the look, although possibly imagined, looks … pained.
When I walk out, I look left and right for Momma Joe and see her talking to … my parents?
No, just no. I will not lose my shit again.
“Miss Steel.” The driver draws my attention to him as he opens the door, and I quickly get in.
I look out the tinted window and see him, Matteo, looking around, and I slump down in the seat and cover my face, desperate to hide from him, from everyone.
When the door opens, I quickly look up and see Momma Joe looking at me sadly as she slides in.
“I just—”
She hugs me. “Don’t be angry. Your mother is having a hard time leaving you, and your father—”
“Can we just go?” I wipe my eyes and see him walking toward the car.
“Do you want to say goodbye?”
“No. No, it’s fine.” I sit back and wipe the remaining tears. “I’ve put them through enough.”
“Then they’ll never know you saw them.” She wraps her arm around me and pulls me in tighter. “Then let’s go.”
I watch as Matteo hurries toward the car and bends down. He’s about to knock on the window when the driver pulls away.
Madrid Spain
Matteo
Holding the black card that Tris left when she rushed out of the restaurant, after I made her cry because of a damn app, I tap my foot on the marble floor of The Principal Hotel as I wait to see if she messages back.
I probably wouldn’t be responding to the incredibly embarrassing amount of text messages that I have sent her after what I called her. Yet, I hold onto hope that she does. It’s a secured kind of hope.
I tap the card on the wooden arm of the chair. If she doesn’t respond, I have a backup plan, yet I would rather not further humiliate myself by using her room number, one in which I received from the concierge for a nominal price. And I would prefer her not know that I searched for her online only to find that, once again, she and I are staying in the same hotel.
I look at my wristwatch. I have two hours to get back to the gallery where several of my pieces are being displayed at tonight’s event.
After several moments, I see a woman walk off the elevators, the same woman who slid into the car that I believe Tris to be in last night while scouring the internet, panic-stricken and suffering from regret after realizing the blunder I made. It is her grandmother, Josephina Steel, followed by Patrick Steel, her cousin, and her bodyguard.
I have no idea what is driving me, or why my heart is now pumping blood faster than normal, but I wait until they have left the building so that I can apologize … alone.
When she doesn’t answer the door, and neither does anyone else, worry consumes me. I have not let worry fester inside of me for nearly two years. It’s unhealthy, like a disease. So, as insane as it seems to me, and although I normally don’t require an answer to my unease, I cannot in good conscience hurt someone who hasn’t done anything hurtful to me.
Except consume my thoughts and deprive me of sleep.
I nod to the door. “Open it.”
“Ñor Arias.” Juan mock-gasps.
I reach in my pocket and pull out a pile of bills, peeling off cien euros and handing it to him.
He stuffs it in his pocket then slides the master key card over the sensor, and I open the door.
“Anything else?”
I look back at him as I step in. “Don’t ever let anyone in Señorita Steel’s or anyone’s room for money again, or I’ll have your job here, as well as any other future employment opportunities that present themselves to you.”
“I beg your pard—”
I shut the door in his face before he has a chance to say anything more.
Hypocritical? Yes.
When I turn around, I see food—no, snacks, baskets of snacks, chocolate and fruit snacks.
Fruit snacks are the one thing I miss the most.
“I thought you were going to the airpor—Wha …? Wha …? What are you doing here?”
Apparently, she’s forgotten she had a large carton of ice cream under one arm and a spoon in her opposite hand, because they both fly about the room when she throws her arms in the air, causing an extraordinary mess.
“Oh my God, why?”
Bending down to grab the upturned carton of ice cream, I tell her what I have been practicing most of the day, utilizing several apps, not the one that got me in trouble to begin with. “You left your grandmother’s credit card at the restaurant. I wanted to see that it was returned, and—”
“And what? Tell me I’m crazy again?”
“I know that you’re—”
“Obviously, I’m right. I left a card on the table, and wigged out, and forgot to pay, and grab my card, and—”
She’s talking so fast, too fast to keep up with, and moving about, grabbing towels to clean as she continues to go on about being crazy.
“I do not think you are crazy. It was a misinterpretation. I came to apologize.” My head begins to pound to the beat of my racing heart.
She’s wearing my shirt and something about that pleases me greatly.
I squat down to take her hands to stop her from cleaning the spot that is already clean. “Stop.”
She looks up at me, appearing angry and shocked. Her eyes, though, they appear tired, so very tired.
“Rest your thoughts. Rest your mind.”
“I can’t!”
“You must.”
“You don’t know me.”
Words, so many words.
Without thought, I take the back of her head as I sit back against the sofa and pull it against my shoulder. “Rest.”
It isn’t until she grips my shirt, as if it’s some sort of anchor, and releases a sound that mimics pain and frustration, that the realization of what my actions must be telling her.