You Chose Another, Now Forget Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Both Names on the Door

Inés shows him the studio glass where both names still stand and offers him a desk and one rule; Valeria cancels his bank card and phone line, then threatens to tell their friends he left her for Inés.

The studio was three streets from Emilio's office, on the second floor of an old brick building.

Inés walked ahead of me up the stairs, carrying my drawing tube under her arm.

At the top was a glass door.

Painted across it in white letters were two names.

SALAZAR & MONTALVO.

I stopped on the landing.

"You never changed it," I said.

"A new door costs four thousand pesos." Inés pushed it open with her shoulder. "Nobody asked me to."

She said it lightly, and she did not look back.

Inside, the room was bright and full of paper.

Six drafting tables stood under tall windows, and two young architects looked up from their models and went back to work.

At the far end was a table I knew.

It had a long scar in the wood where I had once dropped a steel ruler.

There was a plant on it, alive and green.

"Someone has been watering my table," I said.

"I have," Inés said. "It's a bad plant. It never dies."

She put the tube down on the desk and leaned back against it.

She was thinner than I remembered, with ink on her fingers and a pencil stuck in her hair.

"Emilio told me enough," she said. "I won't ask you anything else."

She tapped the desk.

"I'll say what I can do, and you tell me no if you want."

"Go on."

"The house we're building in Zapopan needs a staircase. I've drawn it four times and hated it four times."

She shrugged.

"You're the best I know at stairs. I'll pay you per drawing, the same rate as anyone."

"That's charity."

"It's four hundred pesos a sheet. If it were charity, I'd pay more."

I laughed, and it surprised me.

It was the first time I had laughed since the restaurant.

"Why would I take it?" I said.

"Because you need to draw."

She did not smile.

"I watched you not draw for five years, Rodrigo. I saw it every time you came to a party."

I looked at the plant.

"I'll try one staircase," I said.

"Good."

She put a key on the desk beside the tube.

"The sofa in the back room folds out. Emilio said you have nowhere to go."

"I'll find somewhere by the weekend."

"Then it's for the weekend."

I picked up the key and put it in my pocket.

"One more thing," Inés said.

She folded her arms.

"I have a rule, and I want it said now so we never have to guess."

"What rule?"

"Nothing happens between us until your papers are signed. Not a word, and not a hand on an arm."

I stared at her.

"Inés, nothing is going to happen."

"Then it's an easy rule."

She met my eyes.

"I won't be the reason you left her. And I won't be where you land when you fall."

I did not answer.

I did not trust my voice.

After lunch I went out to buy a toothbrush and a shirt.

The girl at the shop tapped my card on the machine, and it flashed red.

She tried again.

"Declined," she said. "Do you have another?"

I did not. I had one card, one phone and one wallet, and every one of them came from Valeria.

I stood there with the toothbrush in my hand until a man behind me coughed.

Inés was beside me suddenly. She had followed me down the stairs.

She put two bills on the counter without a word, and the girl bagged the shirt.

On the street I said, "I'll pay you back."

"With the staircase," she said. "Per sheet."

At six my phone went dead in my hand.

It did not run out of battery. A grey bar crossed the screen, and it said No Service.

I called my own number from the studio's landline.

A recorded voice said the line had been cancelled at the request of the account holder.

That was how I learned that Valeria had cut me off while I was still eating my lunch, hours before the phone died.

I spent the evening at Inés's spare table with a pencil and a sheet of tracing paper.

I drew one stair, very badly.

I drew another.

By ten o'clock the young architects had gone home.

The only sound in the room was Inés's pencil, two tables away.

I had forgotten how much I liked that sound.

At eleven I went to the back room and unfolded the sofa.

At half past, the landline rang.

Inés picked up, listened, and held out the receiver to me with a strange look.

"It's for you. It's Valeria's number."

I took it.

"Where are you?" Valeria said.

Her voice was calm and warm.

"I'm sleeping at a friend's."

"Which friend?"

"That's none of your business anymore."

"Everything about you is my business until you sign."

I heard a glass set down on her end.

"Come to the house on Sunday at two. Our friends are coming for lunch. Every one of them."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because if you don't," Valeria said, "I will tell them all you left me for another woman."

I said nothing.

"I'll even give them her name," she said. "Inés Montalvo."

The line clicked and went quiet.

I stood there, holding the phone, and across the room Inés looked up from her drawing.

Her pencil had stopped.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend