Love, in English

“Come on, Vera, you can do better than that!” Josh yelled at me.

“Fuck you!’ I yelled back. I couldn’t even look up to see his face because the moment that I did was the moment I was going to break my neck and legs. I was currently going down Whistler Mountain on a run that was way more challenging than it should have been. While I was a skier in my youth, I’d totally forgotten how to do it. As a result, I’d gone down most of the mountain in a snow-plow position. Several times the tips of my skis started to cross and I freaked out and launched myself into the snow.

In short, it was hell, and I didn’t appreciate my brother yelling at me. He was on a snowboard and was actually really good at it. He drove me crazy zooming down the hill and yelling at me to keep up.

Now I was pretty much near the end and I could see the sprawl of Whistler Village at the bottom of the hill. Most importantly, I could see the large patio where skiers and snowboarders were having their après run beers under the heaters, languishing in the high altitude sunlight.

Beer was my biggest motivator.

Somehow I made it to the bottom and immediately snapped off my skis and then brushed off my ski pants that were caked with snow.

“You did awesome,” Josh said, sliding next to me like a show-off, powder flying everywhere.

“Shut up,” I told him. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not!” he said, lifting his goggles on top of his head. “I mean it.”

“Whatever.” I bent down and awkwardly scooped up my skis. “Get a beer in me and get it in me now.”

“I wonder if they’ve gotten a table already,” Josh mused.

We made our way through the throngs of people walking awkwardly in ski boots, just as I was, and stacked up our skis and board along the rack.

“I see Claudia!” Josh said.

I went and joined him and saw her at a table by the wall, waving at us and looking adorable in her little snowboarding outfit. I probably should have started snowboarding instead of skiing, but how was I to know I’d be so damn terrible at something I used to be good at?

“How was it?” she asked us as we snaked our way towards her.

“Great,” Josh said.

“Crap,” I said. “I nearly broke my legs a million times.”

“Well,” Claudia said, lifting up her beer. “All those shots at the bar last night probably didn’t help, did it?”

I dismissed her logic and sat down. “Why are you back so soon? I thought all you professional people were going to spend all day on the slopes on all them fancy black diamond runs.”

She shrugged. “All the shots last night didn’t help me. Ricardo looked worse than I did, so I’m surprised he’s still out there. His loss. I will drink all the beer.”

“No, we will drink all the beer,” Josh said, signaling for the waiter who quickly came over. We ordered a round of beers for us and for our missing ski bu

Josh leaned back and put his face to the sun. “Oh man, I don’t want to go back to work. Can we just live here?”

“Well, I don’t want to go back to work either,” I said. “It’s all grey and shit outside and dark, and things are so boring during the off season.”

“At least your job is kind of fun,” Josh pointed out. “And at least you live in a foreign country. Doing paperwork for Las Palaminos or wherever you work sounds a lot better when you’re doing it in fucking Spain.”

“Speaking of Spain,” Claudia said, looking over my shoulder. “Look who made it back alive.”

I twisted in my seat to see Mateo putting his skis away. He gave us a wave when he spotted us and I gri

When I started getting my first bout of homesickness around Christmastime, I’d brought up the fact that Claudia and Ricardo had wanted to go to Whistler. Of course, she had said before Mateo had shown up on my plane, resulting in a two-day trip to Vancouver before we returned home to start our new life together. Still, I thought the Whistler trip was something we could all save up for. Besides, I had to return briefly to apply for my work permit. I had been paid under the table for my office services at the Las Palabras office but now I was ready to make it official.

As it was, Claudia and Ricardo were getting kind of blue about the Madrid winter and wanted a change of pace from the usual European ski spots. With Mateo on board and taking care of our hotel and part of our flights, the four of us were able to fly to Whistler and invite Josh along.

Well, actually we invited my mother and Mercy and Charles too, to be nice, but they declined. Oh well, couldn’t say I didn’t try. I wouldn’t stop trying to get close to my mother and sister, but at least I was learning not to take it personally anymore. Sometimes your family was through your blood and sometimes it was through your love.

While the waiter came back and put down the beers, Mateo came over to the table and leaned over me for a lingering kiss. He tasted like snow and fresh air.

“How is your knee?” I asked. “Can it handle skiing?”

“It is holding up.” He lifted his aviator shades and peered down at me. “I saw you, you were doing very well.”

I rolled my eyes and snorted. “Oh, now you’re yanking my chain too?”

“What is this chain you keep speaking of and why is anyone yanking it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Claudia said, completely earnest. “Seriously, whose chain is this? A dog chain?”

Mateo made a small barking sound and laughed.

I slapped him on the arm. “Sit down, you dog. It’s an expression.”

Claudia made a tsking sound. “These damn English expressions. The moment you think you have the language under control, more letters explode.”

“I do know one expression though,” Mateo said, sitting down next to me and resting his hand on my knee. “We shall get buzzed like a bee.”

We all raised our glasses and clinked them together.

“To getting buzzed like a bee,” I said, smiling broadly at my crew, feeling warmth from the sun and warmth from my friends.

“Here, here,” they said in unison.

We drank and we laughed. Ricardo soon joined us and we drank and laughed some more, until the sun went down and the stars came up.

The End

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Keep reading to read the prologue of my upcoming dark romantic suspense book, Dirty Angels.

Acknowledgements

After so many books it’s hard to know what to say other than thank you and it’s hard to know who to thank, other than…everyone.

But Love, in English (LIE) was different. This book had me pulling from personal experiences in foreign lands. No, Las Palabras does not exist but there is a program just like it out there that I was once a part of. No, Mateo and Claudia don’t exist but there are Spaniards out there who inspired me to capture their essence in these pages. No, I am not Vera (though I kind of wish I was) but I did suffer from her lust for new experiences, that feeling that life would be better off somewhere else.

This book had me throwing out all my horror and suspense and action scenes out the window and made me dive deep into the world of Vera and Mateo. It was scary, to be honest, writing a romance with no crazy plot attached to it. But being scared is a good thing. “It scares me, so I should do it” is what Mateo said and I couldn’t agree more. Love, in English ended up being one of the best writing experiences of my life.