make any motion to ask me on a date or anything; instead, he says for me to call him if I’m ever given extra tickets. I mean, it’s not even his team, but whatever.
“I think you guys had nice chemistry,” Helen says. She’s slurring a little and we’re both tipsy by now. It’s getting late, but I’m ignoring that. Perhaps we’ll kill the night.
I just nod. “Sure.”
My phone beeps and I pull it out of my purse to look at it.
It’s Alejo.
If ur ever tired of ur friend, I know of another thing that will tire u out.
He ends it with a winky face, in case I didn’t know what he meant.
I can’t help but grin at the phone, my stomach doing flips to know he’s thinking of me.
“What the hell has you smiling like that?” Helen asks, and as I prepare to lie and move to put my phone away, she reaches over with crazy quick reflexes and plucks the phone out of my hand.
“No!” I cry out, trying to reach for it, but I end up knocking a glass of wine across the table, where it then goes crashing to the floor.
Someone calls out “Opa!” and I’m trying to get off my stool to get the phone away from her, but it’s already too late and she’s scrolling through the messages.
I mean, every single text that Alejo and I have sent each other.
In the last while, there have been a lot.
And almost all of them are dirty.
“Thalia,” she says darkly, staring at me with a mix of confusion and resentment. “What is this?”
I just grumble to myself and start wiping down the table with the napkins, a waiter coming by to drop off a cloth and pick up the glass pieces that are scattered on the floor.
No point in hiding it now.
That changed so fucking fast.
I thank the waiter, giving him five euros for the trouble, and then nod my head to the door.
“We should go,” I say to Helen, who still has my phone.
I grab my jacket and leave, stepping outside into the brisk air, trying to figure out what Helen is going to do with that information. I mean, I could deny it and pretend it’s some other Alejo. There has to be hundreds of thousands of them in this city. But after the conversation earlier, I know there’s no point. And despite my resting bitch face, I’m a terrible liar.
And I don’t want to lie about him.
Helen eventually steps outside the bar and hands me my phone back.
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” she says stiffly.
“Look, before I tell you anything, can you promise me it will stay between us? That you won’t tell Stewart, or even Kazzy or Liz? Or Frank? Please?”
She gives me a steady look. “I won’t tell anyone on one condition.”
I frown. “What’s the condition?”
“I’ll let you know after. Now, talk.”
We walk through the streets for a while, and I tell her everything.
From the very beginning.
And I have to admit, even though this is less than ideal, it feels good to finally get it all off my chest. I’ve been carrying this around with me for so long.
But Helen doesn’t look impressed in the slightest. Not that I expected her to be, I just thought maybe she could be happy for me, just a little bit.
“I haven’t told anyone else,” I admit when I’m done.
“I don’t blame you,” she says. “And if I were you, I’d keep it that way.”
Ouch. Okay, that hurts a little.
“Listen, Thalia. I don’t know how to say this without coming off as insensitive or a twat, but you’re really disappointing me here.”
Oh god. It feels like I’m talking to my parents.
“Disappointing you?” I repeat, my gut clenching. “Because I didn’t tell you right away?”
“Because you’re shagging a twenty-three-year-old boy!”
“He’s twenty-four.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve lost your bloody mind is what has happened here. You’re drunk on Spanish dick and making some extremely bad decisions!”
I swallow hard. “It’s just sex,” I say quietly.
“Is it? No. It’s not. I just read your texts, I just listened and watched you talk about him for the last twenty minutes. You’re in deep, Thalia, and you know this is only going to end in tragedy for you. The worst is that you can lose your job, which is just so bloody stupid on your behalf. Other than that, he’s going to get bored of you and find someone else, because that’s what boys his age do. I mean, you’re forty!