Love, in English

She looked at me and I stuck my lower lip out, as if to say, “such a shame.”

She snapped out of it and looked at him. “Your name please?”

“Mateo Casalles,” he replied.

Damn. I was hoping it was something less sexy than something that not only rolled off his tongue but made it sound like he could use that tongue in many interesting ways.

Perhaps I needed to cancel my bar tab.

“Mateo Casalles?” she repeated, a weird sort of recognition in her eyes.

He gave her a quick smile but that was it. She reached underneath the counter for the envelope and gave it to him. He opened it up with deft fingers and stuck the nametag and lanyard so it was hanging out of his pant pocket.

I wanted to ask him if he was trying to draw attention to his crotch, but I had a vision of that going horribly wrong in translation so I just said, “You’re supposed to wear that around your neck, I think.”

He gave me a steady gaze as we moved out of the line. “This is good.” Then he brought out his room key and peered at it. “Room numero tres.” He waved his hand like he was erasing the Spanish from the air. “Sorry, sorry. Three. Building five.”

I looked at mine and hid my disappointment. “Room two, building one.”

“At least we are close to each other, no?”

I gri

Until Claudia joined our side.

“Hey, Claudia, how are you?” he greeted joyfully as if he hadn’t seen in her in a long time. My smile diminished slightly. He treated her the same way, like she was an old friend, too. Mateo was just a really personable, gregarious man. There was no us. There was just Mateo.

I took in a deep, steady breath and suddenly I was okay with that. I was just really grateful to have friends, to have people to be comfortable with and to talk to.

Especially when I noticed someone standing in the corner of the room, someone I’d only briefly gazed over early. He was an Anglo, it seemed, it was hard to hear his voice from where I was, and judging on looks alone he was, well, right up my alley. Whereas Mateo was fit, muscular and athletic, sporting a body he carried around with ease, this guy was thin and wiry. Lean but sexy in that rocker heroin chic kind of way. He had black hair that spiked up around his forehead, a hoop nose ring and a lip ring. Pale as an albino ghost, wearing tight black jeans, mean boots, and a black thermal shirt from an ISIS concert, the print so faded I could barely read it.

The guy looked over, sca

His eyes lit up and he gave me the cool nod of acknowledgement that guys like him were so good at. Perfect. Someone to already distract me from Mateo. I hoped he wasn’t married, either, or I was going to have to give up on men this trip. Perhaps this could be my twelve-step, no sex program. At least I had remembered to pack one of my vibrators.

“I knew it!” a thickly accented voice said at my ear.

I turned in surprise, expecting to see someone talking to me. Instead it was the short man who was in line earlier, the one who kept giving Mateo the eye. Up close his eyes were bulging, like a cartoon frog and he had the goofiest smile on his face. He pointed at Mateo’s face, then down at his crotch. Well, at his name tag.

“I knew it, you are Mateo Casalles,” the man said. “I thought you looked familiar.”

Mateo nodded and gave the man a polite smile, the kind that politicians gave.

So…who the hell was Mateo Casalles?

Claudia picked up on my confusion for she lay a hand on Mateo’s chest—something I had wanted to do—and tapped him there. “Of course, you don’t watch football do you?” she addressed me.

I grimaced. “Canadian football or American?”

“No, football,” she said. “Soccer.”

Oh right. Football was called soccer here, which makes more sense when you think of it.

I shook my head. “I don’t really know a lot about sports. I played soccer as a kid but I got in trouble for kicking shins instead.” True story. My coach was so upset with me that ba

“Casalles was part of our team,” the frog-eyed man said. I peered closer at him. His name tag said Jose Carlos. Froggy Carlos was more apt.

I tried to think about what I knew about Spain and soccer. Suddenly it hit me. “Oh my god,” I cried out. “You were on the same team as David Beckham!”

Mateo gave me a chuckle, his eyes softening. “No,” he explained. “There are two teams for Madrid. I was part of Atletico de Madrid. It’s…not the team you would have heard of.”

Aw. No Beckham. Though to be honest, the dude did have a higher voice than I did. Still, if Mateo had been on a soccer team—one important enough for someone to recognize him—that meant he might have a body like David Beckham, something I had suspected anyway.

Oh boy. His wife was one lucky bitch.

“He was the best centre-back we ever had,” Froggy Carlos said excitedly, pride practically pouring out of him. “He could stop everyone.”

Mateo’s smile faltered slightly. “More or less.”

Froggy Carlos’s expression faded to somberness. “Yes. More or less.”

Okay, so there was some story here that I wanted to know. What had happened to Mateo? Why was he in the restaurant business now and not being the best centre-back they ever had? Just how old was he? And did he wear David Beckham underwear, because those boxer briefs were sexy as fuck.

My thoughts—probably everyone’s thoughts—were interrupted by the screechy call of Jerry.

“Listen up, mates,” he said, climbing on top of the antique coffee table in the middle of the room. I wondered if he was going to damage it in some way, but he seemed so sickly and frail that it was deemed impossible. “We’re going to play the icebreaker game. It’s simple, it’s easy. And it’s fun! So don’t worry.”

I was worried.

He went on, as if we were all eight-year olds at our first day of camp, “You’ll take the card out of the little envelope that’s inside the big envelope and—without looking at it,” he jabbed his finger at us like we’d already made a mistake, “you put it up on your forehead. Your goal is to go to each person and ask them one question to try and figure out who you are. No cheating! I’ll be watching you.”

Well, what else would he do?

He clapped his hands together and told us to commence the game. With a sigh, I exchanged a caustic glance with Claudia and fished the card out. I immediately put it on my forehead and held it there and turned to look at her.

She was holding a card that said Napoleon on it. I was already smiling.

“Do you want to go first?” I asked her.

“Okay,” she said, her eyes darting up to the ceiling in thought. “Am I…a man?”

Good question. “Yes, you are.”

She nodded, knowing that didn’t really narrow it down.

My turn. “Am I a man?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No. you’re a woman.”

Okay, so quite a feminine woman and probably not a girl or a child. I was putting my deduction skills to good use.

An older Spanish man with the name Pablo and the card of Steve Jobs tapped her on the shoulder, sequestering her attention. I turned around and looked at Mateo who had just finished asking Froggy Carlos something. His face broke out into a huge, panty-melting grin the moment he saw me. Meanwhile he was holding a card to his forehead that said Muhammad Ali. Floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Seemed about right.