As Long as You Love Me (Previously Kiss and Tell)

Chapter 3 ♔ Broken Down

My phone pinged in such quick succession that it could only have one origin. Mami.

I was at work, though. That was the legitimate excuse I used to not read the texts right away. Instead I kept my cellphone face down on my desk while searching for drawings for the part number I needed. My supervisor had sent me on a boring, but necessary errand of making sure every drawing was uploaded to the system and if not, to upload them. And if they were unavailable, to find why and make them available. The latter portion had potential for exposure if, upon finding missing documentation, I could march up to the engineering in charge of that part and demand that the drawings be created stat. However, I'd been at it for three hours and hadn't stumbled upon a case like that yet. Which meant this was mostly administrative work.

It was boring and I hated it, but getting it done was my priority for today, and that meant I couldn't let my phone be a distraction. Or so I told myself. Once I made it home tonight and called mami back she would most likely rip me a new one. But I preferred that to having to deal with all the emotions talking with her would bring while I was still on duty.

Chatting with anyone back home was... not exactly pleasant. Most of our conversations were strained under the pressure of keeping them light, when all we wanted to do was complain. About the worsening situation. The fact that a papercut was enough to kill someone, with the way the healthcare system had collapsed. The interminable lines to find basic goods at prices so steep that years ago you could've bought a house with the sacks of bills people had to bring to buy flour for arepas. Or the fact that mami was alone in a household where two out of three residents thought that at least now the country was truly ours, broken down as it was.

I was toeing the fine line between letting her take the brunt of papa's and Cora's beliefs and trying to save myself, versus succumbing to my own need to commiserate with someone about how misguided they were.

Meanwhile, I had barely exchanged a word with papi in the three years since I'd left. He still couldn't forgive me for betraying him.

As for Cora... if she wasn't talking about politics, she prattled on about Rodrigo, her boyfriend since high school, who now was a political activist in a student party affiliated to the government's.

It was a bit too much for me, even considering the fact that none of us wanted to talk about Carlos. Inevitably, every time we mentioned his name we spent days immersed in the same grief as the day we lost him. Without saying the words, we all agreed to keep our thoughts about him to ourselves.

Meanwhile, Gabe had none of those excuses. Or sense of responsibility. His cellphone went off as frequently as mine did, but he did pick it up every other minute or so, his fingers moving across the screen so fast they were a blur. Once I glanced at his face from the corner of my eye and caught a deep frown I'd never seen on him before. Somehow it had never occurred to me that someone whose life was so charmed had any issues, but maybe he was human after all.

Our phones buzzed at the same time and I made the unfortunate mistake of meeting his eyes. He cleared his throat. "What's that? An angry boyfriend?"

"No." I huffed and volleyed back. "What's that, then? An angry girlfriend?"

"Yeah, actually," he replied before going back to what I now imagined to be a heated discussion with Liz. From what little I knew about her she could be, uh, intense.

But I shook my head because I wasn't about to give an ounce of pity to the Campus Babe, as people called him. Problems were exactly what he needed in order to grow up and out of his womanizing ways.

"Hey, you guys," Jeff's head popped in all of a sudden from the hallway. Gabe and I jumped in our skins, as though we'd been caught redhanded doing something—and the glint in Jeff's eyes looked like he suspected as much. "Can you follow me for a quick chat? I have some news I'd rather you hear from me right away."