Chapter 61

Chapter 61

Mira’s POV

I had had enough pretending I didn’t want Alejandro, like I hadn’t missed how we were before all these began so I called him at 9am but it went straight to voicemail.

I called again at 11, because apparently I had not yet learned my lesson, and got the same result.

By 1pm I had graduated from calling to staring at his contact name on my screen like it owed me something, willing it to light up with a callback that was never coming.

Alejandro Montenegro. Saved without a title or a nickname because the day I gave that man a cute contact name was the day I needed someone to sit me down and have a serious conversation with me about my life choices.

“Put the phone down,” Zara said from the kitchen.

“I’m not doing anything.” I argued.

“You’ve been doing nothing loudly for the past four hours.” She appeared in the doorway with two mugs, extending one toward me. “Drink this and stop torturing yourself.”

I took the mug and curled my fingers around it.

“I just want to know if he’s okay,” I muttered.

“He’s fine, Mira. Men like Alejandro Montenegro are always fine. The universe wouldn’t dare.”

She had a point and I hated it.

I put the phone face down on the cushion beside me and picked it back up approximately forty five seconds later.

“Mira.”

“I’m just checking the time.”

“Your phone shows the time on the lock screen. You don’t need to open it.”

I put it down again.

The thing about silence from someone you were used to hearing from was that it had its own specific texture. It wasn’t just the absence of noise, it was an active presence, sitting in the room with you and taking up more space than it deserved. Alejandro not answering his phone felt different from a normal missed call. It felt like a statement.

Which was annoying because I’d made my peace with the gala. Or I was in the process of making my peace with it. I was somewhere in the middle of that process, approximately at the stage where I oscillated between genuine understanding and wanting to throw something expensive through a window.

“Do you think Candy is still there?” I asked.

Zara looked at me over the rim of her mug. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m just asking a question.”

“You’re asking a question designed to make yourself miserable. Stop it.”

I pressed my lips together and stared at the television, which was showing a cooking programme I had zero interest in.

“She rearranged his furniture,” I said. “Within three days.”

“Mira.”

“His living room furniture, Zara. The furniture he picked himself. She just moved it around like she owned the place.”

“How do you even know that?”

“Marlo told you and you told me.”

She sighed the sigh of a woman who deeply regretted sharing information. “I’m telling Marlo to keep things to himself.”

“Please don’t.” I turned to look at her. “It’s the only update I’m getting.”

Zara set her mug down and looked at me with that expression, the one that meant she was about to say something I didn’t want to hear but needed to.

“You need to stop calling him,” she said simply.

“I’ve called twice.”

“You’ve called three times, you called at 9, 11 and 1, and you’ve been picking up your phone every forty seconds for the last four hours. That’s not two calls, that’s a pattern.” She tilted her head. “And it’s not good for you.”

I opened my mouth.

“Not just emotionally,” she continued before I could get a word in. “Physically. You’ve been stressed for two weeks straight and your body cannot afford that right now and you know it.”

The mention of my body did what it always did, pulled my attention inward to that low persistent ache that had taken up permanent residence in my chest. It wasn’t sharp today. Just present, the way it was most days now, a quiet reminder that I was operating on borrowed time that I hadn’t told anyone the full extent of.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re the least fine person I know,” Zara replied without missing a beat. “And I mean that with love.”

I looked at her for a moment.

“What am I supposed to do?” I questioned, and my voice came out smaller than I intended. “Just sit here and pretend everything is fine while he’s in that house with her and not answering my calls?”

“Yes,” she said gently. “For now. Yes.”

“That’s terrible advice.”

“It’s the only advice that keeps you from looking desperate.”

“I’m not desperate.”

“Three calls before 2pm to a man who isn’t picking up says otherwise, babe.”

I grabbed my phone and turned it face down again, properly this time, sliding it under the cushion so I couldn’t see it.

Zara nodded approvingly.

“Good,” she said. “Now drink your tea and watch this woman butcher this risotto because she’s been stirring it wrong for the last ten minutes and I need someone to suffer with me.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

We watched the cooking programme in silence for a while, Zara providing a running commentary on everything the host was doing incorrectly with the confidence of someone who had once made instant noodles for dinner three nights in a row. I let her voice fill the room and tried to let it replace everything else.

It worked for about twenty minutes.

Then my phone buzzed under the cushion.

I had it in my hand before I’d consciously decided to move.

Zara watched me with resigned patience.

I looked at the screen but it wasn’t who I expected. It was Ace.

“Hey,” he said, his voice doing that thing where it was calm without being flat, warm without being excessive.

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Fine,” I said, which was my standard answer and meant approximately nothing.

“I’m outside,” he said. “Brought food. Let me in or don’t, either way I’m eating this in the car because I drove forty minutes and I’m starving.”

I heard Zara laugh quietly beside me.

“Give me a second,” I told him.

I went to the door, opened it and he was standing there exactly as he always was, unhurried and unbothered, a paper bag in one hand and his keys in the other, his glasses slightly crooked the way they always were.

“You look terrible,” he said pleasantly.

“Thank you, Ace.”

“The good kind of terrible,” he added, stepping inside. “Like someone who’s been through something and is still standing.”

I looked at him for a second.

Something about the way he said it, easily, like my still standing was never in question for him, loosened something small and tight in my chest.

“Come in then,” I said, stepping aside.

He brushed past me into the hallway, already calling out a greeting to Zara, and I stood at the door for a moment before closing it.

My phone was still in my hand.

No missed calls from Alejandro.

I turned it face down in my palm and followed Ace inside.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​