[ thirty eight ]
It was only a matter of time before Giselle found out I was back in Madrid, nearly three months to be exact. She had probably thought that after seeing those pictures, I wouldn't return. But I was a professional and couldn't skip out on my job because of personal problems. My job was one thing, and my life outside of work was another.
Toni and I kept in contact, and remained friends. The other players on the team had quickly become friends of mine, since I would spend a lot of time each week with them. And James remained distant. He wanted me to be the first to approach him, since he had agreed to give me space. But now that I knew he and Giselle were going to have a child together, I didn't want to interfere in their lives. The last thing I wanted was to leave a child without a father.
In two more months I would be returning to Colombia anyway and our contact would be minimal as long as he was playing abroad. The only thing that hurt me still was thinking that he could have a daughter with her and name her Salome, just like we had talked about. That had been our dream, and it killed me to think he would be living it with someone else.
But I knew I would need to get over it eventually.
One afternoon, just one week before I was supposed to meet with James, I was the last one to leave the media offices. I had been preparing for a video we were going to film with five of the players in which they would take part in several challenges. Before we could film, we had to know where everything would be, which angles the cameras would film from, everything needed to be perfect. I locked the door to the office on the third floor and walked out into the dim hallway. When I reached the top of the stairs, I rubbed my tired eyes and jumped back slightly when I almost bumped into someone.
It was Giselle.
She was standing there with her arms crossed over her chest and on her face was a glare that was directed at me. "You're back to steal my boyfriend, aren't you?" She asked me, her words full of venom. My brown eyes immediately fell onto her stomach, as though hoping to confirm that the rumors were true. And there I found a baby bump that she showed off proudly.
I shook my head at her question. "James and I are over for good. We haven't spoken in weeks." I had left out the part where James had asked to meet with me in a week. It was a date that had been set months earlier.
"I thought you learned your lesson when I sent you those pictures." She continued. A smirk formed on her lips as she seemed to remember that day. For her, it was the day she was able to get James back in her life. For me, it was the very day my heart was shattered for the last time. And fixing it was taking longer than I thought. "Why can't you stay away from James?"
"He was the one chasing me." I reminded her. "Its not my fault your boyfriend doesn't love you."
She threw her head back as she laughed. "He doesn't love me, but at least you won't have him. And he'll hate you when he finds out what you did to me."
"I did nothing to you." I told her, biting my lip as I saw she was standing much too close to the edge of the stairs.
Lifting up her shirt, she taunted me. The baby bump was fake, it had all been part of her lies to separate us. "James never slept with me." She confessed to me. "I just got him drunk and forced him into my bed that night. He kept saying your name and he wouldn't touch me, then he just fell asleep so I undressed him and took those pictures. But now he'll never forgive you because he'll think you killed our baby." She grinned at me.
"You're crazy." I said to her.
How could she have gone to such great lengths just to separate us?
